A comedy drama about a wealthy African man. It is the story of a young, wise-cracking, black businessman living in London. Upon the death of his mother, he travels to Africa to find his father but while there, discovers far more about himself. Here are two excerpts.
Ivory Coast – Africa - 1974
On a savannah valley of heat, dust and poison, in an outer suburb of the scattered city of Daloa, by their tin and grey-brick huts, mothers pounded grain, fetched water and washed clothes as their children endlessly played. It was March. The dry season.
Pigs, goats and chickens scrabbled in the heat, snuffling and pecking in the dust. There was no need to tether the bigger animals as there was nowhere to go and some part of their brains knew that. The largest livestock, cattle, was corralled off and silently chewed through the day waiting to be either milked or slaughtered.
Much joyful banter and gossip filled the air as each woman expressed their opinion about their men, who, if they were to be believed, were probably the laziest sons of bitches ever to have walked on god's earth.
An endless air force of obscenely large black tsetse flies licked and walked around the cattle's mouths in the rising temperature of the bland spring morning. At mid morning, the sky was virtually a solid colour and only a few wispy white clouds floating several thousand metres above them, wreaked the perfection of the blue. The earth was hard and yellow, like waxed dry custard, the rainy months to come just a dream for all the wildlife, human or otherwise.
The fifty or so women, all of them having been up since before sunrise, worked hard as they chatted knowing that when the sun became high enough, physical labour would become impossible. Only then would they would relax, mend clothes and sort out their food. Their meager stocks of cassava, yams, rice, dried fruit and hard vegetables.
If stocks ran to it, they might bake bread; each family unit taking turns to use the communal muffle. They might play games or take a book to their young boys. Piglets and chickens would be slaughtered, meat dried, bones boiled, ornaments carved. Skin decorated.
Kefilwe was a mother. Married three weeks after her eleventh birthday, five years ago, she briefly stopped her work and lifted the dashiki that hide her angular nose and chin and stared into the distance, aware that something was not right that morning. Something she could smell.
But briefly, she returned to her backbreaking work of pounding her pole into the dark grain her distant cousin/husband had brought.
That spring, he had found work in one of the many sawmills scattered throughout the area and worked there five days out of seven, it being far enough away to warrant staying in the communal house provided by the company where he would sleep, drink and gamble with the two hundred or so other men who also lived too far from home to travel each day.
Kefilwe's sense of smell grew stronger over the flying dust of the grain and her eyes trembled as she called her daughter Kali to her side, troubled as if there was a coming storm, which was impossible. Then one or two other woman also stood tall, sniffing the dried air for clues until one of them, an old woman in her early thirties, squinted and raised a pointed finger at a cloud of pale dust miles away.
Instant pandemonium took over the clearing and within one single minute the village cleared leaving tethered cattle and burning fires. Each mother raced for the safety of their home, dragging their now considerably frightened children in with them. Once inside, there was a prepared routine, a set of actions well rehearsed in time of safety but now, when their worse reality was about to descend upon them, confusion overcame them all as their well-drilled plans fell apart.
Inside her single-roomed hut, Kefilwe dragged back a once bright rug exposing a set of seven boards which she took up exposing a dugout four feet long by two feet wide and two feet deep while her five year old stood nervously by. Now both Kali and Kefilwe could hear the thunder of the horses and the rumble made her move faster. She grabbed a small decorated bag and a container of water from a shelf, took Kali and smothered her with sweet desperate kisses as the slave bandits stormed into their village.
As frightened as she could ever remember being, she steely gazed at her only child, kissed her on her forehead, told her she loved her and dragged a colourful carved wooden pendant in the shape of a butterfly from around her long and shapely neck and placed it over her daughter's. There was no time for anything else. The cracks of whips and the wails of women and children filled the dry air outside and Kefilwe knew they only had moments. Both now are crying but forcing the child down into the hole in the earth, she took one last look and pressed her finger to her lips before she replaced the boards and then the carpet over the wet-eyed and traumatised child.
Seconds later, the covering which served as a door was ripped outward and a barbarous-faced heathen, his face decorated with the heavy scarring of the rites of passage, without a word, stomped over to her, took her by a leg and dragged her out into the sunshine while she screamed so loudly that she thought her own ear drums might burst.
An hour later and the village was a scene of red carnage. Everything alive that could not be sold had been killed for either pleasure or food. Not one animal in the food chain higher than a rat remained alive. The poor cheap family homes had been ransacked for anything sellable. Clothes, adornments, pottery...and people.
Kefilwe stood in line in the boiling sun, now chained by her ankles between an older woman who stood in front of her dripping with whip lashes across her thin shoulders and a shaking weeping child, no older than nine who trembled behind and whom the twenty or so bandits had been strictly forbidden to touch by their leader.
Kefilwe was now semi nude, only just managing to find her wrap after the brutal and uncompromising rapes. She had very little idea of what had happened to her during the last two hours for each man had blended into the last. Quite shortly after she had been dragged into the open, she had drifted into a trance after the second rape and choose to visualize her daughter in her mind's eye, almost certain she had escaped detection and the resulting explosion of horror.
At one point, after a short hiatus, her head drifted sideways and she saw some of her friend's children who had not been so lucky, being gathered together. But Kali had not been one of them.
She wore no underclothes. Across her own face, bruises were beginning to develop and her arms, legs and buttocks like the woman in front of her, bled from the heavy blows of the cane sticks which the men carried around their waists.
She hoped to God they were not going to torch the homes. She hoped to God that Kali would remember her mother's orders and stay until the darkness came. She knew she would probably never see her daughter again, would submit to a short life of slavery and would die within years if not months. She touched her chest feeling for the comfort of her butterfly pendant, carved by her own mother, then flinched at its absence.
The men fired their guns with whoops of passion and after chaining the lead prisoner to his horse, their captain, a fat and greasy fifty year old, mounted it, kicked his heels and the possession moved away to the North. They did not torch the village but left it to bleach in the sun like a skeleton. Five days later, Kefilwe's husband, Mr. Zoumana would return, would be sad for a day but then would travel to the south to actively seek another eleven year old to ruin.
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It was an odd time for Tree. Later, he would reflect and ask himself serious questions about what he had done. Later, he would excuse himself with complex explanations, enough satisfy his conscience.
He felt an increasing anger about Maria and could not understand what was happening. Those names the cleaning guy had called her? And using the place as a pick-up joint? It hardly seemed like it was the same woman yet...even if he had not seen her himself, he could believe it for it was Maria after all. There was something of the cocotte in her. Some free spirit who needed a great deal of love...no, he corrected his thoughts. Make that attention. But that didn't stop his angry thoughts.
He felt an increasing loss for Kali, who didn't seem to be leaving his thinking either because he could hardly get through a minute without thinking of her. Naked of course, and swimming, and happy and other pleasurable pictures often clouding or illuminating his mind depending on what he was doing. As the poor lady had done 3000 miles away, Tree too had sat with that same picture of their time together. Now it had been trimmed and placed in his wallet.
That's why he asked Buena to dinner. To simplify matters. To complicate matters. To have an excuse to drink copious amounts of red wine, later, to partake in a little social weed taking and hopefully, even later, to satisfy his thirteen-year-old obsession with one of the most desirable females he had ever met.
To impress her, he arranged a table at a quiet, unpretentious Italian restaurant that lay at the very north tip of Mayfair. He had flowers delivered, had ordered a good champagne and until the intoxicating bubbles reached their brains, their conversation bordered on the lines of sense and normality. Then, the passions which his amygdala held back were breeched.
As their waiter emptied their first bottle, Tree nodded to him while Buena took a break from telling her story by lifting her glass to her already wetted lips and rather rudely, tossing back the sparkling remains.
"Waiter? Another bottle of Champagne." He turned back to her. "Yeah, so go on."
"Well, it was two in the morning, you know, nothing was happening much and I had a call."
"Yeah? Yeah?"
"When I got down to casualty, he was there...covered up. I had to bite my lip when I saw it..."
"What...?"
"I shouldn't tell you really."
"But you're going to! Go on. I don't know who it is."
"Well, this white guy had taken the hose-pipe off the radiator of a car and held it in place by wedging it between two mattresses..."
"Oh fuck off!" Tree's expletive was mouthed but still audible.
Her voice dropped to a whisper too.
"He had! It was there, stuck on the end of it, covered with Vaseline!"
"Shit! Didn't it fall off when he, you know, lost it?"
"No, that was the thing. He was still excited. Embarrassed too of course at the same time. His wife came home from work and found him in their bathroom with him sitting on the loo with a towel covering him. From her perspective it was huge!"
"She must have thought her luck had changed!"
"It wouldn't go down. She said she tried pouring cold water over it but it was stuck fast so she bundled him into their car and brought him down to the A&E. Well, word got round of course. There were people laughing all over the place. Reception was in chaos."
"You're winding me up!"
"I'm not. You wouldn't believe what we pull out of people either!"
"No! Don't believe you!"
"It's true. Tree, what happened to you was nothing. At least that was natural. How is it now anyway?"
"It's fine actually, thank you very much for asking. Tell me another."
"Okay. Well one time, this old fat guy was brought in by air ambulance would you believe with a suspected heart attack and of course he goes in right in front of everybody. I remember, the queues that night were terrible. Anyhow, my friend goes in to the cubical to see him, does a few tests and comes out looking mystified. Nurse asks him what's wrong and without any emotion at all, he asks her for a pair of surgical gloves!"
"Gloves?"
"Exactly! He goes back in and, because he was pretty pissed off mind you, rams his forefinger up the guys arse and he farted for about ten minutes! The guy's pain went away but the place stank to high heaven! One of the nurses had to go and get a can of air freshener and the stink was so bad she had to run around spraying the whole A&E! But the best bit was when he had to leave. Because he had to face three lines of giggles and the angry scowls of the people who had sat there with real emergencies! My friend said he'd never seen a man look so humble and embarrassed."
"Brilliant! Where's that Champagne?"
"Yeah, You know, being a doctor isn't all it's cracked up to be. Long hours and no social life."
"Pays good though isn't it?"
"I suppose so. Have you talked to that employee of yours yet?"
"No, can't find him. He was going to tell me something earlier but it didn't happen. I'll speak to him tomorrow."
"What does it feel like to be rich?"
"I don't know. Am I? I don't own any property worth that much."
"The paper says you do."
The Champagne arrived and the muted waiter replaced their glasses with two clean ones and filled them. After he had removed himself from the intimate cubicle, Tree lifted his glass.
"It's a dream being with you like this. I never thought it would happen."
"I'm not a gold digger by the way. You've changed that's why. Getting rid of that stutter was brilliant. You come across now as confidant."
"I feel it. Life's never been better."
Their food arrived and Buena reached for her napkin but her hand travelled further across their deliberately small table and touched his hand.
"And now I know what I've been missing all these years."
"And what's that?"
"I know I've been a fool because all the girls at school thought you were the best looking."
"No!...Really?"
"They did honestly, cross my heart. I've been stupid Tree."
He returned her gesture with one of his own. He interlocked his fingers with hers and gently squeezed.
"We're together now. That's all that matters."
She offered him a delicious pout. "But you said you had a girl-friend?"
Now Tree's heat was palpable. A roaring locomotive couldn't stop him now. Deception was just another word in another unknown language. The primitive testosterone being pumped out by his testicles flooded his energetic lithe body and utterly overwhelmed any higher functions his brain once had. The future was not for him. Staring into her dark uncompromising welcoming glistening eyes, eyes for which we have no words, set in a sea of stunning softness where he hoped soon to melt and join, the restaurant, Maria, Kali and his troubled work life now faded into nothingness. The twenty jet engines pulsating and thrilling between his legs had no brakes. The future was now.
"Oh her? Oh, I dumped her soon after meeting you again. She's not in the picture anymore."
"So...is there's something between us?"
"Actually, I don't want there to be anything between us. Nothing. Not even a sheet."
Buena nodded down to her food in reference to something else. "And everything's working?"
"Everything baby."
He had overdone it. It was the consequence of trying too hard. Trying to impress. Trying to be right. Trying to be kind. It was probably the third bottle of Champagne, which tipped them both into a laughing sort of drunkenness. A sort of stupefying drunkenness, which quelled even the six million year old, twenty jet engines which overtook Tree earlier. They fell into a cab, which was hailed for them, and until a month later when his Visa account came through, he had no idea how much he spent that evening. Having reached his flat, Tree was well beyond caring or giving any thought as to who was going to be at home, if anybody. They clumsily undressed each other and tried to have drunken intercourse but found talking less exhausting instead.
Despite the thrust of his loins, his passion finally submitted to the alcohol and physically died away leaving him only with her in his arms, after he had satisfied her with other, non-wasp-damaged organ.
"I must go to Africa. You make it sound fantastic."
"It's the coolest place on earth but it's still not as beautiful as you."
"Will you take me there Tree? Soon. Take me soon."
"I'll take you there. I'll take you anywhere you want. I'll give you anything you want."
"I just want you baby. I've always wanted you."
Tree stopped arousing one of her large dark nipples and drunkenly stared directly at her. Inches away from her.
"Dr. Mathews. Will you marry me? Marry me and spend the rest of your life with me?"
"Oh Tree! You're so impulsive. You're drunk!"
"Will you? Say yes. I'm not that drunk."
She lifted herself up, and her breasts wobbled as she eyed him directly. "Tree? You sure?"
"Buena? I wouldn't have asked if I hadn't meant it. Just say yes and we won't have any more problems."
She kissed him. First on his forehead, which he took to be a no, then on his nose, which he took to be confusing then full on his lips which he took as his happy answer. She drew back after a powerful and close hot moment.
"Yes! Yes I will."
Perhaps that reality sobered him up but his jet engines began to roar again and within a minute they had powered up the wide-bodied jet and soon it was flying into unknown spaces with no flight plan, no compass and no protection but with its radar on full power. However, as Tree pressed his weight on top of her, he could not see the relief on her face.
They were not disturbed during the night and it was only after making coffee and using the bathroom in the morning that Maria sleepily came into his head. A touch of panic ensued but when in the kitchen, he calmed down remembering what he had seen in the swimming baths the day before. Eventually, he poured the coffee and took it back to his bedroom. Tree took three tablets. Two for his hangover and one for his toe.