Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller [97]
“Well, what were you expecting?” says Vanessa.
I shrug. “Not his tongue.”
“What did you think snogging was?”
“Not tongues.”
Vanessa rolls her eyes. “You can’t say I didn’t try,” she says.
“I know, I know. I didn’t.”
Vanessa considers. “Geoffrey was your best bet,” she says at last.
There are few expats-like-us, which translates to very few snoggable sons. I say, “I’ll be okay.”
“It’s not healthy.”
“What isn’t?”
Vanessa looks at me, at a loss for words, and waves at me. “You,” she says at last. “Your whole . . . everything.”
I press my lips together to prevent tears from coming.
“I hope Geoffrey didn’t tell everyone that you bit him.”
But he had.
Which is why it is a relief when Dad announces that he will not be renewing his two-year contract with the President for Life as manager of Mgodi Estates.
“We’re moving,” he announces.
Our choices are Papua New Guinea, Mozambique, and Zambia. It is 1983.
Papua New Guinea is floating anonymously off the tip of Australia. I read that it is mostly covered with forest. It is famous for its mineral reserves and cannibals.
Mozambique is seven years into a civil war, which follows on from its ten-year war of independence against the Portuguese. It is widely acknowledged to be the most miserable nation on earth. It is famous for its land mines and child soldiers.
Zambia is recovering from belly-rocking, land-sucking drought. It is famous for its mineral reserves and political corruption.
I am keen to move to Papua New Guinea, which is as far from Geoffrey’s injured tongue as we can get without actually falling off the planet.
Dad thinks Mozambique might have a future.
“In what?” Vanessa wants to know.
“A future,” Dad insists. “Everything has a future.”
“Not if you’re dead,” I mutter.
Vanessa looks away. “Are there any other . . . people there?” she asks.
Dad says, “That’s the best part. There’s no one there.”
No snoggable sons.
The Germans for whom we would farm in Zambia have clothing factories there. They make a tremendous profit manufacturing uniforms for the various and numerous armies of Africa (no shipment of uniforms without payment). Their seven-thousand-acre farm is a tax ruse but they still want the place to run at a profit. They have found their last three farm managers to be incompetent, dishonest, and drunk (usually in combination).
The Germans have offered to buy Mum horses if Dad will agree to work on their farm. They will pay for Vanessa and me to attend our private schools (in Zimbabwe, where Vanessa is now at secretarial college) and they will buy us tickets to and from Zambia so that we can fly back home during the holidays.
So Mum and Dad go to Zambia and take a look at the farm. There are virgin forests and three dams, two rivers and passable roads. There is a large main house and a guest cottage, and a total of three flush loos at our disposal (if you count the loo in the guest cottage). There is more or less full-time electricity (when the Zambian Electricity Supply Commission can compete with summer storms). There is a schoolhouse and a building for a clinic for the farm staff (neither have operated for some years). There are whitewashed stables and a dairy, an old, dry orchard (“But it might revive with some water and fertilizer”), and a swimming pool (“A bit green and slimy, but that’s all right”).
There is a farming community of twenty or thirty families in Mkushi district (where the farm sits), not far from the border with Zaire. If Zambia were a butterfly, our farm is situated right where Zambia’s wings would meet.
If we move to Mkushi, we will neighbor Yugoslavs, Afrikaners, Englishmen, Zambians, Indians, Greeks, Czechs.
“Too many people,” complains Dad.
“You don’t have to socialize with them.”
“It’s the bloody League of Nations.”
“So?”
Dad mutters something.
Mum says, “If we move to Zambia, then we will have lived in every country in the former Federation.”
And the symmetry of this fact seems to be enough to seal the