Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller [27]
It is only then we see that both men are armed with thick shiny black Bibles.
Mum shuffles her gun behind her back. “Oh shit, Jesus creepers,” she mutters, and then, more loudly, “Hello.”
The men approach. Our pack of dogs growl, hackles raised, around their ankles, swarming. One of the men, blond and overweight (overweight for the heat, overweight for a war, overweight for a poor farm this far from the city), comes forward, his Bible outstretched, hand extended. He introduces himself and his partner: “And we’re here to tell you about the Lord.” He’s American. I start to giggle.
Mum sighs. “Well, come in for a cup of tea, anyway,” she says.
The other man is fat, too. As he turns to follow Mum into the house I see that his shorts have gathered into the crack of his bum; his legs extend baggy and gray and hairy like elephant’s legs from the too-pulled-up shorts. His shirt is stuck to his back with sweat, two wet rings extend from under his armpits. I giggle some more.
Mum says, “Bobo, go and ask July to make us a tray of tea, please.”
I find July asleep on the cool, damp patch of cement behind the laundry.
“There are some bosses from God,” I tell him, poking his rib with the toe of my manutella, “come all the way from town for tea.”
“Eh?” July jumps to his feet.
“Faga moto,” I tell July. Which means, literally, “Put fire,” but figuratively, “Get moving.”
July glares at me. “You are too cheeky,” he tells me.
“Hurry! Hey! Hurry. They are waiting.” I am eager to make the most of our afternoon’s surprise. We don’t have fresh visitors very often. Especially not since the land mines and ambushes got worse.
“Tea’s coming,” I say, and sit on the floor with my back to the dead-ash-smelling fireplace where I can observe everyone well. The sitting room is stifling: the sofa and chairs breathe out heat; humid, heat-saturated air billows in the windows. The dogs start to pace restlessly in front of the missionaries, who are sitting in the dogs’ chairs. The fox terrier glares; the Labrador-ridgeback is growling softly, looking baboon-murderer indignant. The springer spaniels make repeated attempts to fling themselves up on the visitors’ laps, and the missionaries fight them off, in an offhand, I’m-not-really-pushing-your-dog-off-my-lap-I-love-dogs-really way.
The blond American says, “We’ve come to share the teachings of Christ with you.”
“How kind.” Mum pauses. “We’re Anglican.”
Which makes the missionaries glance at each other.
July brings the tea. He smells strongly of green laundry soap and of freshly smoked gwayi—a raw, coarsely chopped native tobacco. The cups are greasy and unmatched, and all but one are chipped. Mum hands out the chipped mugs to the guests and to me; she keeps the best mug for herself. On a plate are slabs of homemade bread with slices of curling butter and cucumbers balanced on them. The cucumbers have been liberally sprinkled with salt and they are beading water.
Mum asks me, “Will you hand out the sugar?”
The missionaries sit with their cups of tea balanced in mismatched saucers on their laps, where there is a good chance a zealous spaniel might, at any moment, send the cup flying. I offer them sugar and then a slice of salty cucumber and bread, which they are too polite to refuse and too polite to know how to eat. The bread is days old and crumbling; the dough for the bread was a mix of corn and wheat to make the flour last longer. The visitors are disarmed. They can’t get to their Bibles now, what with the tea and the dogs and the toppling bread.
The tea makes us sweat. Mum says that’s why tea is good for you. If you drink a cup of tea and eat something salty in the middle of the afternoon, you won’t get heat exhaustion. The sweat will cool us down. The sweat runs down the back of my legs, tickling. The salt will replace the salt we lose in sweat. I munch my bread; the dogs become more frantic in their efforts to climb onto our