“D.V.,” said Max.
Everyone laughed as I led them to my father’s outbuilding. He had on seeing them quickly put on his browning singlet and was now shaking hands with everyone with as much enthusiasm as if he had been our patron. My young brothers and sisters were all over the place, some making faces at their image on the shining car bodies. The cars must have been washed at the ferry, I thought. It was typical of Max to want to come in clean and spotless. Two or three of my father’s wives came to the door of the inner compound and called out greetings to the visitors. Then Mama, the senior wife, came out hurriedly clutching a telegram.
“It came this morning while you were out; I just remembered it,” she said to me. “I told Edmund to remind me as soon as you returned, but the foolish boy . . .”
Everyone laughed again and my father catching the hilarity terminated the rebuke he had begun to deliver to “those who can’t read but love to handle other people’s letters . . .”
“We must withdraw our earlier statements,” said Max, “and give three hearty cheers to the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs.
“Hip, hip-hip——”
“Hurrah!”
“HIP, HIP, HIP——”
“Hurrah!”
“For they are jolly good fellows
For they are jolly good fellows
For they are jolly good fellows
And so say all of us.
And so say all of us, hurrah!
And so say all of us, hurrah!
For they are jolly good fellows
For they are jolly good fellows
For they are jolly good fellows
And so say all of us.”
The singing and the laughter and the sight of so many cars brought in neighbours and passers-by until we had a small crowd.
“Why don’t we launch our campaign here and now?” asked Max with glazed intoxicated-looking eyes.
“Why not indeed?” said Eunice.
“Not here,” I said firmly. “My father is local chairman of P.O.P. and we shouldn’t embarrass him . . . In any case people don’t launch campaigns just like that on the spur of the moment.”
“What is the boy talking?” asked my father. “What has my being in P.O.P. got to do with it? I believe that the hawk should perch and the eagle perch, whichever says to the other don’t, may its own wing break.”
My comrades applauded him and sang “For he is a jolly good fellow” again. This time the loudspeakers had been switched on and t
he entire neighbourhood rang with song. By the time four or five highlife records had been played as well, the compound became too small for our audience. Every chair and kitchen-stool in the house was brought out and arranged in a half-moon for the elders and village dignitaries. A microphone was set up on the steps of the outbuilding facing the crowd. What impressed them right away was how you could talk into that ball and get the voice thundering in a completely different place. “Say what you will,” I heard someone remark, “the white man is a spirit.”
Max’s unprepared speech—or perhaps it was prepared in its broad outlines—was on the whole impressive. But I do not think that it persuaded many people. Actually it wasn’t a speech in the strict sense but a dialogue between him and the audience, or a vociferous fraction of the audience. There was one man who proved particularly troublesome. He had been a police corporal who had served two years in jail for corruptly receiving ten shillings from a lorry driver. That was the official version anyway. The man’s own story was that he had been framed because he had stood up against his white boss in pre-Independence days. I believe there was a third version which put the blame on enemies from another tribe. Whatever the true story, on his release, “Couple”, as the villagers still called him, had come back to his people and become a local councillor and politician. He was at the moment very much involved in supplying stones for our village pipe-borne water scheme and was widely accused (in whispers) of selling one heap of stones in the morning, carrying it away at night and selling it again the next day; and repeating the cycle as long as he liked. He was of course in league with the Local Council Treasurer.
Max began by accusing the outgoing Government of all kinds of swindling and corruption. As he gave instance after instance of how some of our leaders who were ash-mouthed paupers five years ago had become near-millionaires under our very eyes, many in the audience laughed. But it was the laughter of resignation to misfortune. No one among them swore vengeance; no one shook with rage or showed any sign of fight. They understood what was being said, they had seen it with their own eyes. But what did anyone expect them to do?
The ex-policeman put it very well. “We know they are eating,” he said, “but we are eating too. They are bringing us water and they promise to bring us electricity. We did not have those things before; that is why I say we are eating too.”
“Defend them, Couple,” cried someone in the audience to him. “Are you not one of them when it comes to eating aged guinea-fowls?”