“Why I go kill my master?” he asked of a now considerably sobered audience. “Abi my head no correct? And even if to say I de craze why I no go go jump for inside lagoon instead to kill my master?” His words carried conviction. He proceeded to explain the mystery of the coffee. The Minister’s usual Nescafé had run out at breakfast and he had not had time to get a new tin. So he had brewed some of his own locally processed coffee which he maintained he had bought from OHMS.
There was an ironic twist to this incident which neither of the ministers seemed to notice. OHMS—Our Home Made Stuff—was the popular name of the gigantic campaign which the Government had mounted all over the country to promote the consumption of locally made products. Newspapers, radio and television urged every patriot to support this great national effort which, they said, held the key to economic emancipation without which our hard-won political freedom was a mirage. Cars equipped with loudspeakers poured out new jingles up and down the land as they sold their products in town and country. In the language of the ordinary people these cars, and not the wares they advertised, became known as OHMS. It was apparently from one of them the cook had bought the coffee that had nearly cost him his life.
The matter having been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction I began to feel vicariously embarrassed on behalf of Chief Koko. If anyone had asked my opinion I would have voted strongly in favour of our leaving right away. But no one did. Instead Chief Nanga had begun to tease the other.
“But S.I.,” he said, “you too fear death. Small thing you begin holler ‘they done kill me, they done kill me!’ Like person wey scorpion done lego am for him prick.”
I saw his face turning towards me no doubt to get me to join in his laughter. I quickly looked away and began to gaze out of the window.
“Why I no go fear?” asked Chief Koko laughing foolishly. “If na you you no go piss for inside your trouser?”
“Nonsense! Why I go fear? I kill person?”
They carried on in this vein for quite a while. I sipped my whisky quietly, avoiding the eyes of both. But I was saying within myself that in spite of his present bravado Chief Nanga had been terribly scared himself, witness his ill-tempered, loud-mouthed panic at the telephone. And I don’t think his fear had been for Chief Koko’s safety either. I suspect he felt personally threatened. Our people have a saying that when one slave sees another cast into a shallow grave he should know that when the time comes he will go the same way.
Naturally my scholarship did not get a chance to be mentioned on this occasion. We drove home in silence. Only once did Chief Nanga turn to me and say: “If anybody comes to you and wants to make you minister, run away. True.”
That evening I ate my supper with Mrs Nanga and the children, the Minister having gone out to an embassy reception after which he would go to a party meeting somewhere.
“Any woman who marries a minister,” said his wife later as we sat watching TV, “has married worse than a night-watchman.”
We both laughed. There was no hint of complaint in her voice. She was clearly a homely, loyal wife prepared for the penalty of her husband’s greatness. You couldn’t subvert her.
“It must be very enjoyable going to all these embassy parties and meeting all the big guns,” I said in pretended innocence.
“What can you enjoy there?” she asked with great spirit. “Nine pence talk and three pence food. ‘Hallo, hawa you. Nice to see you again.’ All na lie lie.”
I laughed heartily and then got up pretending to admire the many family photographs on the walls. I asked Mrs Nanga about this one and that as I gravitated slowly to the one on the radiogram which I had noticed as soon as I had stepped into the house earlier in the day. It was the same beautiful girl as in Chief Nanga’s entourage in Anata.
“Is this your sister?” I asked.
“Edna. No, she is our wife.”
“Your wife? How?”
She laughed. “We are getting a second wife to help me.”
• • •
The first thing critics tell you about our ministers’ official residences is that each has seven bedrooms and seven bathrooms, one for every day of the week. All I can say is that on that first night there was no room in my mind for criticism. I was simply hypnotized by the luxury of the great suite assigned to me. When I lay down in the double bed that seemed to ride on a cushion of air, and switched on that reading lamp and saw all the beautiful furniture anew from the lying down position and looked beyond the door to the gleaming bathroom and the towels as large as a lappa I had to confess that if I were at that moment made a minister I would be most anxious to remain one for ever. And maybe I should have thanked God that I wasn’t. We ignore man’s basic nature if we say, as some critics do, that because a man like Nanga had risen overnight from poverty and insignificance to his present opulence he could be persuaded without much trouble to give it up again and return to his original state.
A man who has just come in from the rain and dried his body and put on dry clothes is more reluctant to g
o out again than another who has been indoors all the time. The trouble with our new nation—as I saw it then lying on that bed—was that none of us had been indoors long enough to be able to say “To hell with it”. We had all been in the rain together until yesterday. Then a handful of us—the smart and the lucky and hardly ever the best—had scrambled for the one shelter our former rulers left, and had taken it over and barricaded themselves in. And from within they sought to persuade the rest through numerous loudspeakers, that the first phase of the struggle had been won and that the next phase—the extension of our house—was even more important and called for new and original tactics; it required that all argument should cease and the whole people speak with one voice and that any more dissent and argument outside the door of the shelter would subvert and bring down the whole house.
Needless to say I did not spend the entire night on these elevated thoughts. Most of the time my mind was on Elsie.
4
I usually don’t mind how late I stay up at night but I do mind getting up too early. I was still fast asleep that first morning in the capital when I heard the Minister’s voice. I opened my eyes and tried to smile and say good morning.
“Lazy boy,” he said indulgently. “Don’t worry. I know you must be dog-tired after yesterday’s journey. See you later. I am off to the office now.” He looked as bright as a new shilling in his immaculate white robes. And he had only come home at two last night, or rather this morning! The crunching of his tires on the loose gravel drive had waked me up in the night and I had looked at my diamond-faced watch which I often forgot to take off even for my bath. I had just bought it and believed the claim that it was everything-proof. Now I know better. But to return to Chief Nanga. There was something incongruous in his going to the office. It sounds silly to say this of a Cabinet Minister but I could not easily associate him in my mind with a desk and files. He was obviously more suited to an out-of-door life meeting and charming people. But anyhow there he was going off to his Ministry punctually at eight.
Much as I already liked and admired Mrs Nanga, I must confess I was inwardly pleased when she told me as I had my breakfast that she and the children were leaving for Anata in three days. Apparently the Minister insisted that his children must be taken home to their village at least once a year.
“Very wise,” I said.
“Without it,” said Mrs Nanga, “they would become English people. Don’t you see they hardly speak our language? Ask them something in it and they reply in English. The little one, Micah, called my mother ‘a dirty, bush woman’.”