African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [192]
The same girl, invited to a Thanksgiving dinner by a teacher, and asked to say Grace, prayed, ‘Please, God, forgive us for having as much food on this table as would feed my village for a whole week.’ Some of her fellow guests were offended, quote the story as an example of bad manners and ingratitude.
I told this story to a Jesuit Father who was silent for a while and then said, ‘Quite soon those villagers will be saying, as they sometimes do to me, “Forgive us, Father, it was our ignorance.”’
But surely the question is, how after all this long time can this ignorance exist?
The answer has to be that the blacks have put their thoughts of the whites, their beliefs about the whites, into some region of legend or myth, where nothing has to be earned.
When sitting alone on the verandah on the mountainside that overlooks mountains and rivers and lakes, a young black man came cautiously up from the trees, and, smiling, sat down with me. I ordered tea. His name is Never Harare. Why Never? He believes it is because it took him a long time to get born. What is his real name? Ungana: he is surprised I ask. Although he has done several years in school, he has one O-level, and he is now a seasonal worker. He speaks good English. He is very intelligent. He is going to apply to become a policeman, but he hasn’t got the qualifications. Why, then, apply? I recognize the look on his face: It might happen, mightn’t it? I ask what he would like to be, if he could have his heart’s desire. This is not a question you may ask in Britain without expecting an embarrassed smirk. In Africa, not burdened with such inhibitions, the question at once opens the door into…in this case, and at once, fantasy. He brightens: he thinks I have a magic wand and can give him his heart’s desire. He would like to be a farmer. I ask why he doesn’t apply to be given land under the settlement schemes. He becomes limp with disappointment: what he meant was, a farmer like the white farmers, and live the life of the verandahs. Recovering, at least a little, he enquires what it would cost to buy a farm like this one? Thousands, many thousands. We sit looking cautiously at each other, both making adjustments and assessments. I am trying to find out if he thinks he could farm without any experience, let alone without capital, and be ready to deal with bank loans and overdrafts. I have in my mind’s eye the farmers of this area, with their expertise, many with a background of farming–a father, brother, or relative in one of the counties of Britain, with, many of them, money of their own…as we say. How then does this young man with the hopeful bright face see them? He doesn’t. He wants to live this life, just like all the others who were promised it–they thought, when they were still fighting in the bush. How does he see himself? As one who has been made promises. If he were actually here, sitting on this verandah as its owner, how does he imagine himself? Well, of course, living as the white farmers…but he knows in another part of his mind, that the whole farm would at once fill with his relatives to the tenth generation and he would not in any case live the life of the verandahs. It doesn’t matter. He is dreaming…when he walked up out of the bush to sit down by me, the farmer himself having driven off somewhere, he was walking into a dream, and now he is living it, drinking tea on this verandah with an old woman who says, What is your heart