Time for a whole box of Black Magic

Mmm.  Milk and dark chocolate with a soft centre.

‘He’s here’, said Marcia walking into the lounge.

Marcia is from Uige, the Bakongo tribe.  She is to all outward appearances educated and cosmopolitan but she is still African.  She will eat international dishes using cutlery but use the fingers of her right hand if it is a traditional dish and there are no foreigners present.

I was bitten by a snake that even I admit I did not see and two months later I am, if anything, worse.  I am not going to muck about with typically British understatement anymore, I am in agony.  I have not slept in weeks.  Marcia is doing all the work because I can’t walk.  It started with a nip on the toe, now my whole foot is involved.  All the Docs say is to keep swallowing the antibiotics and, most recently, iron tablets as well.  I am sick and dizzy with the pain and all the tablets I am ingesting.  I am sadly all too familiar with the bowl of my toilet as I vomit into it every night as quietly as I can so I do not disturb hard working Marcia’s sleep or that of little Alex.  Saturday afternoon I finally keeled over out of sheer exhaustion and Marcia thought I had suffered another heart attack so squirted a whole bottle of Nitrolingual between my teeth.  I am still recovering from the bloody headache.

‘Who’s here?’ I asked, not interested in the slightest.

‘The N’Ganga’

I averted my gaze from my book and surveyed the N’Ganga.  He must have been right at the back of the queue when God was handing out skin and fat.   Talk about ‘chiseled’, or ‘muscle definition’.  There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him.  All his veins stood out, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.  He was at least a foot taller than I was and had to bend down to come in through the door.  The man was bloody scary.  I had no idea what an N’Ganga was.

‘He has come to look at your foot,’ explained Marcia.

‘Oh, he’s a Doctor?’

‘Sort of,’ said Marcia.

He examined my foot carefully.  ‘It’s Gimbassa,’ he announced.

‘I knew it was Gimbassa,’ Marcia said.

‘What’s Gimbassa?’ I asked.

‘Mina Tradiçional,’ they both chorused.

‘A Traditional Landmine?’ I translated in my head.  I must have come across as a little bit confused so Marcia reminded me of her brother who had, apparently stepped on one last year and in the end had his leg amputated just below the hip.  I remembered the amputation but I hadn’t realized he had stepped on a mine.  The N’Ganga told me, with a gravitas that would make a high court judge summing up before awarding a penalty of death look like a standup comedian, that this was very serious and definitely life threatening.  He told me to take my trousers off.  One look from Marcia silenced the outraged objection about to fly from my lips.  He examined my leg.  ‘It has nearly reached his knee,’ he told Marcia, ‘if it goes above the knee, he will die.  There is no time to lose, I must treat him now.  Has he been circumcised?’ The two of them were now conversing across me; I felt like a laboratory animal under inspection.  What the hell does a foreskin have to do with a snake bite?  I tell you, I was bloody relieved that Marcia could confirm my todger had already been snipped.  The way this conversation was going, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had whipped out a razor blade and told me to drop my keks and behave like a man.

It is terribly easy to insult an African so rather than leap to my feet shouting, ‘Who the Fuck is this guy?’ I merely asked what a traditional landmine was. Marcia translated for the N’Ganga.  They both laughed the sort of laugh people use when they realize they are in the presence of the congenitally stupid.

‘There is someone who wants to kill you,’ Marcia started to explain.  I suppose some people would be quite shocked if their wife casually pointed out to them they were on a hit list but I found it amusing.  Someone?  I thought.  I am sure there are many, I could write a list; ex wives and girlfriends, outraged fathers, people who owe me money, most recently the guy I smacked with the ashtray… ‘so this person has gone to a Quimbandeiro and he has arranged for you to step on a Mina Tradiçional.’ Marcia concluded.

‘Quimbandeiro? A witch doctor?’

So I hadn’t been bitten by a snake after all, I had been Hexed!  Cool.  Imagine having someone who cared enough about you to have you hexed.  I was quite flattered.  Whoever it was hadn’t the guts to square up and try planting one on me.

Sensing I wasn’t taking this at all seriously, Marcia tried again.

‘Andy!’ she always calls me Andy for some reason.  (My last boss was called Andy so maybe I should have him hexed just in case Marcia had liked more than just his name), ‘you are going to die!’

Ooh I was so tempted to be flippant and point out that her prediction was one she could bet on, but I could see she was genuinely upset so bit my tongue.  Being blessed with a wife who loves you so much she is willing to try anything to keep you alive is not something to ridicule so I would play along.  But, no matter how much I cared for Marcia’s feelings, I wasn’t letting this guy anywhere near my dick.

He unpacked a small, genuine Gucci leather Man Bag made in China out of plastic and pulled on a white robe before laying out a cloth and a bottle of Eau de Toilette.

‘Can I get my camera and take pictures of this?’ I asked Marcia.

‘Tómas!’ Marcia shot back, horrified.  She only ever calls me Tómas if I am in the shit.  Pity really.  I would have thought an image of a tall black African dressed like the Pope kneeling at the feet of a fat white bloke clad only in his underpants could have excited a few comments on my blog.

‘I need a plate you no longer require’, the N’Ganga announced.  Marcia hurried off to fetch one.  Have you ever noticed that if you ask your wife for a glass of water she will bring you one in whatever cheap bit of molten and molded silica that’s quickest to hand but if a complete stranger pulls up and asks for the same, she’ll serve him with your best crystal and probably offer him first dibs off the plate of scones you had been patiently waiting to cool down?  I haven’t got much decent bone china left so was quite relieved when Marcia returned with a bit of market bought porcelain.  Obviously she had already decided the value of my life had a limit.

The N’Ganga, clad in his robes, performed a more detailed inspection of my afflicted appendage and announced that there were five points of infection.  Fair do’s I thought.  I still couldn’t see any sign of a razor blade so I was pretty relaxed.  He sprayed his hands with Eau de Toilette again and then started to massage my foot, which wasn’t so relaxing and then unexpectedly clamped his lips on the base of my toe and sucked hard which was pretty alarming.  Before I could jerk my foot away, he leant over the plate and spat out a damn great black thorn.  I was surprised, not least because at over three inches long, I reckon I would have noticed its presence in my toe long before he decided to perform religious fellatio on it.  Four more times he performed the same procedure on my foot, each time resulting in a new object spat onto the plate; a palm seed, a pebble tied with string, a dried berry and, finally, a bit of twisted dried root; a regular Houdini regurgitating the keys to a cure. I was really disappointed when I glanced over towards Marcia.  Instead of seeing her creasing up with mirth, thereby allowing me to explode with laughter and, with my good foot, kick this charlatan out of my house, her face was as inscrutable as a championship Chinese Mahjong player’s.

The N’Ganga went into a fairly convincing catatonic state but I did notice he rolled one eyeball down to see what I was doing.  I was staring at him slack jawed.  No doubt reassured I was paralyzed with awe, he continued doing nothing.

‘It is a woman,’ he announced suddenly.

‘Who is a woman?’ I asked.

‘Ssshh!’ hissed Marcia.

I shushed.  For God’s sake.  I reached over to the coffee table, grabbed my fags and lit up.  ‘You can’t smoke!’ protested Marcia.  I bloody well can, I thought and, as if reading my mind the N’Ganga said it was perfectly in order for me to smoke.  So I poured myself a whisky as well.

‘It is a girl your husband knows very well’, he intoned.

Ah well, that’s Marcia then.  I always knew she would tire of me and kill me in the end.  Jeez, I’m amazed I lasted this long.

‘Does she live in the village?’ asked Marcia.  What a daft question, I thought, of course you do!  Then I went cold.  This was getting dangerous.  If he said this was a jilted lover of mine living in the village, I was in deep shit with a life expectancy less than a First World War pilot.  Marcia has forgiven me for many things but I really did not want to test her tolerance to accusations of me tucking into the local natives.  I was as regularly unfaithful to two previous wives as they were to me, the only difference being they got theirs for free.  Marcia is my last chance and I really did not want to literally and physically fuck it up so in all the years I have been with her, I have never stepped over the traces.  If she can believe that this guy just sucked a thorn out of my foot, what chance did I stand trying to convince her that the guy was a lying con man if he accused me of infidelity?  Grabbing a kitchen knife and stabbing him through the heart before he could utter another word would be construed as a sign of guilt hard to argue against in an Angolan court of law so I held my breath wondering what dramatic turn my life was about to take.

‘She lives’ he pronounced before pausing to great effect (please, I thought, just get on with it, I am sat here only in my flaming underpants with a lot less material available to soak up a bit of unexpected incontinence), ‘in the CITY!’ he finished.  Thank goodness for that!  Even Marcia knows I have only visited the city twice in the past three years.

‘I have only visited the city twice in the past three years!’ I told Marcia, ‘and on each occasion Roddie drove me!’

‘Three times,’ she said, ‘are you forgetting when you drove to town yourself to collect Dominic?’

Oh hell.  I’d forgotten about the time I was so angry when my diver welshed on the agreement to bring Dominic down here for his hols so I jumped in the car and went to fetch him myself.  Normally it would only take about four hours but we just had to keep stopping off to buy delicious snippets at the various markets and a football and a really cool pair of swimming shorts for little Alex on  the way back.  We had a great time.  It took six hours.  Marcia was frantic by the time we got back.

‘Ok’ I said, ‘so I was in Town six months ago.  This happened six weeks ago.’  Wonderful how women can ignore pure logic.  So somehow, during this flash trip to the city, I had stepped on a traditional mine laid by an irate female city dweller hell bent on killing me blessed with the skill to wire in a six month time delay to detonation.  To be brutally honest, I really wasn’t buying it but wanted to avoid an argument at all costs.  Besides which, most of the women I slept with in the past carried stilettos (thin bladed knives, not high heeled shoes) in their handbags and resolved issues with non-paying clients in seconds, not months.  This would have to be someone who had held a grudge, nurturing murderous intent for over seven years, the time I have been with Marcia and then suddenly decided, that’s it, I’m gonna kill him!

‘This is a woman who knew your husband well and is jealous.  She does not want you to have him, she wants to drive you apart’ he told Marcia.  Death would do that I suppose.  Young wives do like to have their husbands stiff, but in a bed, not a coffin.  It was impossible to read Marcia’s expression so the N’Ganga continued. ‘Perhaps, on his last trip to the city, she saw him in his expensive 4x4 and became jealous.’  Expensive 4x4?  It’s a ten year old Jeep with 235,000 kilometers on the clock that cost me $2,000 and a dead truck!  And who, in their right mind, could possibly be jealous of any woman with the courage and fortitude to take me on?  This was, as my old English teacher once told me having read an essay of mine, a load of bollocks but if Marcia became convinced I’d been playing for another team, the razor blade would come out and I’d lose a lot more than a bit of useless skin.

‘I know who it is,’ Marcia announced.  On such scanty evidence, even Poirot would have been impressed at the deductive powers I was witnessing.  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ Marcia continued, ‘It is your ex-wife!  She wasn’t going to let you have Dominic so you drove all the way into town and fetched him!  Of course she hates you!’ 

Well I am sure there is no love lost between my ex-wife and me but with all the alimony I owe her, I doubt she wants me dead.  At least not until I pay up.  Had the N’Ganga invented a secret concubine, however, Marcia would want me dead so I guess I was pleased with the result.  Just to set the record straight, Dominic’s mother was perfectly happy for me to have Dominic.  I hurtled off solo into town angry as hell not with her, but my driver who had once again let me down deciding that he could only collect Dominic the following day.  Any parent separated from their child would agree that even just one extra day with them was worth burning rubber.  Did you know, a V8 Jeep Cherokee will do an indicated 120 mph and fly over potholes?  I am still impressed with my old Jeep.  So was Alex, strapped in the back shouting ‘faster Daddy!’  As I said, on the way back we meandered, just having to stop at every roadside market.  Chicken gizzards roasted over charcoal, delicious in the company of two boys separated by ten years, yet exuding the love and respect that exists only between siblings.  Sad isn’t it that adults, who should know better, fuck everything up to the detriment of their own offspring?

Apparently, under local lore, anyone stepping on a traditional mine who, before they died a horrible death, had the prescience to engage an N’Ganga could not only be cured, but arrange to return the compliment.  I was now offered the opportunity to occasion the demise of my ex-wife using traditional means.  Dominic is widely regarded as a polite, well behaved and intelligent young man.  I had no hand in that.  The good man he is turning into is all down to his mother and I am very pleased with the result.  The very last thing I wanted to do was curse her.  She and I may have been incompatible but there can be no question, she was a better mother than I was a father so the last thing I wanted to do was anything that would disturb this happy equilibrium. I may not believe in this Hexing shit but I wasn’t about to let people start opening fire just in case traditional stray bullets existed.  Dominic loves his mother and in my book, that makes him a real man.

Marcia always suspected that I still held a candle for my ex-wife ignoring the fact it was me, finally exasperated, who walked out on her.  I didn’t want her dead though, so once again I found myself treading carefully through a mine field.  If I did not leap immediately at the chance to suffer horrible death on the mother of my first born son, could this confirm all Marcia’s suspicions? 

Maria reads the bible every night (I also read every night before going to sleep but I tend to choose a good book).  Just like everyone else around here, she manages to reconcile a belief in traditional magic with Christian religious dogma.

‘I am sorry,’ I said, ‘but Jesus says I should just turn the other cheek.  Thou shalt not kill’

Now that was rich coming from me but they both bought it.

Having agreed I was happy with just a cure and not revenge as well, he sprayed Eau de Toilette directly into suppurating wounds.

‘Ouch!’ I said as my glasses steamed up as a result of the sweat I broke into.

Then he unwrapped a squib of newspaper, about the size of a walnut, exposing a black crystalline powder.  It looked very worryingly like the smokeless powder contained within modern firearms cartridges.  I put my cigarette out and surreptitiously pocketed my lighter.  He rocked back and forth moaning as he waved his hands over the powder before sprinkling some over the sores and rubbing it in.

FUCK ME SIDEWAYS!

It was jolly painful.  My eyes watered ever so slightly.  I may even have squirmed a bit.

‘Força!’ encouraged the N’Ganga, telling me to be brave.  Bugger the seventh Commandment; I wanted to strike him dead.  As full blown shock set in, the pain subsided a bit.  Fortunately the loss of circulating body fluids that occasion shock had exited through my pores and not my willie.  The N’Ganga then announced he had to inspect the garden.  I hobbled after the two of them as far as the verandah so I could see what was happening.

The N’Ganga hauled out his Eau de Toilette again and started giving each fence post a bit of a squirt.  Having covered fifty yards he finally realized what I had figured out immediately I saw his strange ritual start; 250 mls was never going to be enough.  To do my place he would have needed a crop sprayer.  Still, it was fun to watch the solemnity with which Marcia, at a respectful distance, accompanied his every move.  Finally the N’Ganga stopped and inspected an otherwise unremarkable patch of sand.  He returned to the house, collected the plate on which rested the surprising contents of my foot and his packet of powder and asked Marcia for an empty rice sack.  He spread out the sack, laid the plate upon it and sprinkled over the last of his powder before igniting it.  There was a bit of a woosh and I was pleased to sense in the breeze the scent of sizzled hair as a brief column of white smoke rose to the heavens around his ears.  Then, using his walking staff, he smashed the plate with an enthusiasm suggesting he was pretty annoyed about the loss of his eyebrows.

We all settled back in the lounge.  I have no difficulty with Portuguese but occasionally like to play the illiterate so Marcia translated giving me confirmation of what I had just heard the N’Ganga tell me.  The evil spirits he had sucked out of my foot had been cremated allowing the wind to scatter them.  I was now cured.  Magic, I thought, why does it still hurt?

I suppose I could be pissed off that I survived being a bomb disposal officer in the British Army.  I survived clearing landmines in Moçambique and Angola.  I survived running diamond shipments through bandit country.  I have been blown up, shot at, stabbed, suffered all sorts of tropical diseases, had my head kicked in more times than I care to remember, have been evacuated by air to South African hospitals twice to be patched up, have had two heart attacks and now, in retirement, I was finally disabled by stepping on a traditional landmine (they’re not covered in the three volumes of Ammunition and Explosive’s Regulations so I was not trained to deal with them let alone recognize them). 

No, what really pisses me off is that after two months of ingesting antibiotics and letting Nature take its course, my foot was about due to start healing anyway.  But, when it does, it won’t be as a result of modern medicine, it will be because of the intervention of a Witch Doctor.

‘So What?’ I hear you all say, ‘So long as you can walk again!’

Yes.  I agree.  But I will never hear the end of it.

Once he'd gone, I got the camera out
The plate may be dead but the sack'll still do for bagging the rubbish

 

A young priest took over the parish of an old, retired priest.  Every Sunday, as the young priest rode past on his bicycle on his way to Church they would exchange pleasantries.

One Sunday the old priest noticed the younger one pitching up, late, on foot.

‘What happened to your ‘bike?’ asked the old priest.

‘Somebody stole it,’ said the young priest.

‘Ah,’ said the old priest. ‘What you need to do now is give a sermon on the Ten Commandments giving special emphasis on Thou Shalt Not Steal’

The next Sunday the young priest rode up on his bicycle.

‘Told you it would work, didn’t I?’ says the old priest.

‘Well, not exactly, Father.  I got to Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery and I remembered where I had left the ‘bike’

 

Prescience

I had just finished returning all the washed dishes to the cupboards and then gave thought to what I would cook for dinner.  I always think better in a clean kitchen.

I had serviced the generator in the morning, changing its oil and filters and it thanked my by giving up smoking, its exhaust was pure and clean when I restarted it.  My foot is still giving me hell but I have decided to ignore it.  If it falls off I shall deliberately not notice out of spite.

The night before last I did beef.  Last night I did a Chilli con Carne without the chilli (Dominic can't stand chilli but doesn't play with Barbie dolls so I am not overly concerned.  He'll be a man one day).

I had a root around the freezer. 

There were some joints.  They'd take far too long to defrost. 

Loads of mincemeat.  We had that last night.  I suppose I could have done a Lasagne but when I checked, I didn't have enough cheese. Besides, the weevils had got into my half kilo bag of Italian herbs so I would have to microwave the bag and sift out the corpses,  I hadn't time for that.

Chicken it was then.

I have absolutely no idea why, but I defrosted seven chicken legs.  Alex, Marcia and I only need one each.  I then peeled loads of sweet potatoes.  I hate peeling sweet potatoes.  The juice turns to sticky glue and the skin gums up the peeler so why did I sit there on the stoep peeling so many sweet potatoes?

I decided I would roast the chicken with a honey pepper glaze, par boil the sweet potatoes before crisping them off in the oven after rolling them in olive oil and dusting them with a sprinkle of sea salt, use the juices of the roasted chicken to make a smooth cream sauce and serve it all with steamed broccoli.  Sounds delicious but completely over the top for three people.

The only production I was interested in from my Filipino carpenter were the houses he was building for me.  This evening I realised that during his many years in Angola he has been productive in other ways.  For whatever reason, still unclear to me, he turned up with his four delightful children.  They will be billeted in my house.  Alex, of course, is thrilled.  So many new pals to play with.

Tired, obviously bewildered (like I say, I have no idea what's happened but there's always a spare bunk in my house if you need one), the kids were starving and in desperate need of a shower.  Nicely scrubbed up they reappeared and by the merest chance, I had enough food for all.  Well, not quite.  If you count me, that makes eight.  I only roasted seven chicken legs basting them carefully with that rich, delicious mouth-watering sauce I had been looking forward to all day.

Fuck it. I need to lose weight anyway.

Just something I spent all day knocking up and didn't get to eat.
The kids are all lined up on the sofa watching cartoons.
I am sitting here starving, writing this shit.

Advent Calender

An old mate of mine who I met when we were both working as consultants with Angolan Customs has just sent me this:

Now why did I immediately think of Cro Magnon in France and the Fifth Columnist in Thailand?

Diplomacy

I guess he did not include beetroot in his diet

I once asked a Scottish Minister whereabouts in England he came from.  Such a faux pas could have been excusable, at a stretch, had the Minister not been wearing a kilt, a Sporran and no doubt a Skean Dhu tucked into his sock he was itching to use.  Even Marcia had twigged the guy was definitely not English.

Marcia and I had been invited to the Queen’s birthday celebrations at the British Embassy and the Ambassador was kind enough to introduce us to the Minister.   A UK politician.  You can imagine how I danced on tippy toes sucking in and out of a paper bag to cure my palpitations.  I don't suppose I will ever again get the chance to apologise to the Ambassador for not taking the introduction seriously.

We all, in our time, ask stupid questions and are in turn sometimes asked stupid questions and have different ways of dealing with them.  In this case, the Minister diplomatically took it as a joke and merely said, ‘Aye, right!’ and laughed it off but the Ambassador knew I’d spent too much time at the cocktail bar again.

Here in Angola, the question I am most often asked to answer is how, in my opinion, such a small island as Britain could end up dominating half the known world.  Well, it is quite simple, really.  A chap called Robert Moray pulled together an unlikely alliance of former Parliamentarians and Royalists and after the Restoration secured royal patronage for a society dedicated to the philosophical study of the sciences whose initial, but unstated aim was to improve the King’s Navy, especially the means to determine Longitude and improve ship design so that Britain could kick the Dutch in their herrings and dominate world trade…

Much later…

…and with access to all these natural resources, both domestic and international, Britain was able to kick start the industrial revolution and with an efficient Navy was able to extend its influence across the globe and ensure that any colonies with nascent notions of independence were subdued lest there be another tea party…

Much, much later…

The guy is standing there friendly as anything just trying to break the ice, I’m not going to bore him to death with a considered answer.

‘Comfortable furniture,’ I usually say and then, sensing the bewilderment of my interrogator add, ‘especially chairs.  A chap cannot be expected to formulate the means to exploit original thought unless he is comfortable enough to consider them. 

An African assimilating post prandial positive thoughts in my battered old English chair.
He's only three P's short of getting it right.

There can be no doubt.  I am getting bloody cynical, worse than usual. 
Let's just cut the bloody toe off and have done with it.
Leave me with enough leg to have a leg over.
I just want a decent night's sleep.
I'll confess to anything. 
I shot Kennedy and I can still remember where I buried Jimmy Hoffa.
I just want to sleep.

Just some stuff. I guess I am tired and pissed off.

When I was a kid, I loved to read. If I walked into someone’s house and they had a loaded bookshelf I was instantly impressed with them.  This is why I liked Uncle Trevor.  He wasn’t my real Uncle, he was a long term mate of my Father’s from Army days but the two of them, on discharge from the Army settled on the same road, Myatt Avenue in Chaseterrace, a village in which, for the first time, I went to school in England.  It was horrible.  If I wasn’t being beaten up for being me (which, as the years have gone by I realize is hardly a crime), I was being beaten up for protecting my younger brothers. 

Uncle Trevor could quote most of the famous English poets.  He could recite the Ancient Mariner from start to finish in a manner so expressive it would grace any Shakespearian stage in Stratford and enthralled us boys.  It was Uncle Trevor who introduced me to Kipling and Owen.  When my father died so early and, as his oldest son, instead of a boring eulogy I recited Tommy Atkins, Uncle Trevor burst into tears, a fact that did not escape me even though he had positioned himself quietly at the very back of the church in his ill-fitting suit knowing my mother did not approve of him, and caused my own voice to break. 

Uncle Trevor was an alcoholic.  But all us boys loved him.  If we were in for a thrashing from our Mum, we knew we only had to run round the corner to Uncle Trevor’s.  He was a big fat bastard and no.one could get past him down the corridor to where we were hiding trying to avoid a hiding.

Alcoholics don’t have many friends so it was hard for Uncle Trevor to see his last real mate buried so he cried.  I wanted to cry too.  It may have been his mate but this was my Dad we were burying but, nevertheless, I was suddenly more concerned about Uncle Trevor.  I knew that he was fucked.  There was no longer anyone for him to lean on anymore, no more bungs to get him out of the shit.  All that was left was Mother and she wasn’t particularly keen on either of us.  We both knew we were screwed.  So the pair of us stood, side by side beside my father’s graveside and the only thing I could think of to say as they lowered my dead Dad down was, ‘Do you know why they line the graves with crimson  cloth?’ ‘No,’ sniffed Uncle Trevor.  ‘It’s so you can’t see the worms queuing up to get in’ I said.  I know it is wrong but two old soldiers were giggling as we lowered one of our own into cold Leicestershire soil.

My mother had the last laugh.  I was in Africa so she just forgot to tell me that Uncle Trevor died after a short illness a few years later.  I recall her outrage when I cleared my dead Father’s shelves of his Kipling collection and gave them to Uncle Trevor.  She was never going to read them.  Now there was no chance I would hold one of my father’s treasured books in my hand.  Both he and Uncle Trevor were dead.

As a kid, I learnt how to be selectively deaf.  Well that’s what they call it now.  Looking back, I see it as retreating into a world of Enid Blyton or later on, all the other wonderful books I was exposed to on people’s bookshelves.  I can recommend High Citadel by Neville Shute, I read it aged ten.  It’s brilliant.  Ever since I have been itching to try chewing coca leaf paste so I could climb the Andes without oxygen.  You could shout my name, you could scream in my ear.  If I was buried in a book, the rest of the world did not exist.  My real world was horrible.  The worlds of Captain Marryat and Biggles were so much more attractive.  Why should I wake up to yet another thrashing?

Alex is five and he can’t even write his own name on a piece of paper yet he is an absolute whizz on an iPad.  How is this possible?  He can type his own name and access You Tube.  I had to ask him to show me how to pull up a type screen which he did in an instant, but he can’t put pen to paper.

So we spent the afternoon trying to copy out alphabets and writing names.  I could see he was constantly distracted by Ben 10 and other cartoons on the TV so I switched it over, for the first time ever, to a music channel.  This seemed to work.  I would print out alphabets in big block type and together we would work our way through them.  Basically all he had to do was copy the letters.  Then I printed out our names, Alex, Marcia and Tom.  He did well with those too.  Then we danced a bit to the music.  A few tough rappy ones came on so I let him punch me in time with the beat.  He still hit like a girl, slapping rather than punching so we worked on that for a bit and pretty soon he had bust my lip.  Blood never tasted so sweet.  In only a few hours I had taught the kid to write not only his own name, but those of his parents as well.  And his right jab was spot on.

Then this appeared on the music channel.

 Substitute the abusive father for a very aggressive mother and you can see why I tried to lose myself in books.  So many people have asked me why I ended up in Angola.  Well, basically it was to be as far away from my mother as I could get before I ran out of money.

I am by no means the best father in the world but I will make damn sure my kid does not go selectively deaf like I did at his age. 

The thing that genuinely upsets me about this video (don’t get me wrong, I love and related to the music and lyrics), is that in the end, the kid gets shafted, literally.  They dump him in a mine and steal his dog.  Well that’s the way I see it.

I may be cynical, but as far as I am concerned, it can be bloody tough being a kid if all you have to rely on is adults.

It's Progress Jim. But not as we know it.

Six weeks ago, after two years of stuttering progress, the new shop and cottage were finished and we moved in.  Five days after that I was bitten by a snake.

Rather than continue with the original contractor, we poached his Filipino carpenter and two labourers and took possession of all the woodworking tools on site and sent the crew down to the restaurant site to start building the cottages. 

Whereas before their morale had been rock bottom (it was not unusual for them to wait months for their salaries), they are now a really cheerful bunch.  Four weeks into the new job, now working for us, it was pay day and they were paid.  The materials they need arrive on time and they get fed.

Normally I would be all over them, all but living on the site but because of this festering foot I can only visit occasionally.  Running around on site giving them detailed directions is out of the question so they have largely been left alone to get on with the job.

 

Four cottage bases and the walls going up.  Eventually there will be twelve.

This will be an en-suite air conditioned  double bedroom with sliding glass door leading onto a veranda

Charlie likes the windows.  Who says windows should be square?

I was hoping my young quantity surveyor would give it the thumbs up
but he was still in Ninja mode

All the wood is raw from the sawmill and must be planed and thicknessed on site.
This takes time, of course.

A view to the restaurant.  A bit of gardening in order as soon as I can walk again!

This is what it is supposed to look like when it is finished.

I am doing the Night Shift

What the Excel spread sheet and the manufacturer of the expensive ice cream machine I bought did not tell me is that there is a lot of wastage. especially in the beginning.  Get the mix wrong and the freezing barrels freeze.  What's wrong with that?  After all, aren't freezing barrels supposed to freeze?  No, actually they are not.  They are supposed to churn and cool to the 'ice point' which, according to the operator's manual I can set anywhere between 1 to 10.  I'm ex Army and thrice married.  I am comfortable with orders, not choices.

To be fair to the manufacturer, they have stated in their manual that with an air cooled machine, as mine is, the ambient temperature will make a difference.  It gets damn hot here.  'Bugger' I thought, I should have bought a water cooled machine but, at the time I ordered my air cooled machine, I did not know I had enough water only a few metres beneath my feet to create ice bergs.

Couple my inept handling of the machine as I got to know all its foibles with a desire to experiment with the mix and you can imagine I ended up pouring a lot of my profit down the drain.  Get the mix wrong and the freezing barrels will freeze and jam the stirrers.  The machine will then start to scream and make all sorts of other horrible noises until a safety device (well over used in my case) operates and switches the machine off.  All you can do is leave it switched off and let it thaw out, then dump the contents and start again.  I may not know how to make a perfect mix but I have become a bloody expert at dismantling, repairing and cleaning the machine before I fuck it up again.

It is like anything though. VW make the best people carriers in the world but stick a novice in one and they are going to stuff it into a shop window.  Hardly the fault of VW but pretty damn frustrating for the owners of both car and shop.  I bought an imported ice cream machine in Africa.  What the hell do I know about making ice cream?  I just thought it would be nice to make ice cream.  I like ice cream.  But that's like some kid suddenly deciding he wants to be a taxi driver, going out and buying a car and letting himself loose on the Queen's highway with a screaming passenger.

As a result, my spread sheet is pretty bloody useless.  I know what I am paying for the ingredients but I am either pouring  the product down the drain or, if it actually squirts out the nozzles into a cone, giving it away free to any passing kid so delighted am I that the bloody machine did what it said on its very expensive tin. 

I have this gut feeling a dollar a cone is about right.  At the moment, as far as I can tell, I get back what I am putting in and Excel confirms this, I am giving ice cream away for nothing.  Well, at least I am not losing money and the local kids are very, very happy.  Let them laugh, one day I will work the damn machine out and start to make a profit on a dollar a cone.

For the first time in over six months, we have had rain.  Rain is good on so many levels.  Obviously it waters the parched soil, heralds the start of the planting season and freshens the air.  But it also improves the fishing.

A few fish suppers.  They're bigger than the kid.

Sadly I didn't catch these, I can't walk so haven't been out on the water in a while, but it is good to know the fish are out there and willing to be caught again.

There are six fish there and they weigh around 14-16 kilos apiece so the lot amount to about a hundred kilos.  I paid ten thousand Kwanzas, one hundred US bucks; a dollar or 100 kwanzas a kilo.  Gutted and properly frozen, I can move them on for 600 Kwanzas a kilo. Dressed and filleted, they're worth 1,800 Kwanzas a kilo.  I will only get about 50-60 kilos out of dressed fish but a lot of good meat and bone to make fish stock. 

Guess what I will spend the rest of the night doing?  Absolutely correct, I shall  put a bit of effort into turning one hundred bucks into around a thousand bucks. 

I'm doing the nightshift but at least Marcia will let me hook up the speakers to play my music and I can drink myself to death while I do it.

At least my effort will help pay for the ice cream machine which is, according to Excel, an indulgence.  Mind you, I did not see anyone complain last night when I served them, as a dessert, tinned peaches poached in their own syrup reduced with real vanilla pods, mixed spice and cloves gently ladled over my ice cream.

A thoroughly decent chap.



Kitchen Master Frank

A Gentleman engaged an employment agency to find for him the perfect Gentleman’s Gentleman.  Our American cousins refer to these stalwarts of any decently managed household as ‘Butlers’.

Our Gentleman was offered many Gentleman candidates for this honourable position, all of whom proved dissatisfactory in one way or another.

Having been given one last chance, the Agency sent to their frustrated Gentleman client a certain Mr. Hoddle

On his first day, Mr. Hoddle created upon the mind of his potential employer the most gratifying impression.  Polite without being servile.  Attentive without being intrusive.  Notable for our Gentleman was the skill with which Mr Hoddle had motivated the other household staff to produce a most excellent supper, the loving care with which he had decanted the wine and the inoffensive manner by which he had ejected the ‘hanger’s on' from his Gentleman employer's house.

Our Gentleman was satisfied he had finally found his perfect Gentleman’s Gentleman.  All that remained for the man under scrutiny to do to secure a lifetime’s gainful and most honourable employment was to draw a bath for his Gentleman.  Unsurprisingly, it was perfect.  The water, the correct temperature and laced with just the right amount of salts.  As the Gentleman sank beneath the steaming, beautifully scented waters, grateful on so many levels, he let out the most enormous sub-aqua fart.  Suffused with embarrassment, he glanced at Hoddle who merely fluffed up a towel preparing it for his Gentleman’s inevitable exit from his bath and retired from the room.

‘Fuck Me!’ thought the Gentleman, who was nouveaux riche and inclined to such outbursts, ‘I am going to employ this guy!’

A little while later there was a discreet tap at the door.  ‘Your hot water bottle, Sir’, said Hoddle entering clutching the same.

‘But I never asked for a hot water bottle, Hoddle,’ protested our Gentleman.

‘Begging your pardon, Sir, as you climbed into your bath, I distinctly heard you say ‘whataboutahotwaterbottlehoddle’.

 

Frank is fourteen years old.  Frank isn’t his real name but it is close to his real one and he seems happy with the moniker I have given him.  His real name is Francisco.  My Father was called Francis but everyone called him Frank.  So I called Francisco Frank.

Frank’s father is a serious alcoholic.  Coming from me, that is saying something. Two years ago, Frank’s mother died, of exhaustion presumably.  That left Frank, at twelve, effectively in charge of the household.  I did not know any of this when I met him.  To me he was just another kid on the street.

I have had many maids in my time and despite the unending Dor de Cabeça (headache) they have caused me, I only change them out when I move house.  Even though they steal like magpies, I always thought along the lines of better the evil you know.  The only things I had of my Grandfather were a pair of gold and onyx cufflinks and a tie pin.  All I had left of my Father was a gold watch and a pair of gold cufflinks.  I had to travel light so was happy with these small tokens.  No-one knows what became of them, everyone denies knowledge.  Suffice to say, they have gone.

I was delighted, therefore, when as a result of this latest move, our old maid refused to move with us.  I can look a man in the eye and tell him he is a useless prick and that if he is still on my property in five minutes I’ll beat him to death with the soggy end of the arm I rip off him but I cannot sack a woman.  They get all emotional.  They bang on about the kids they have to feed, how near to death they all are and how it will all be my fault when they have to start burying the decaying fruits of their prolific wombs.  I did not have to sack my old maid, she refused to walk the extra half kilometre to work so I commiserated and paid her off.

‘What do we do now?’ Marcia asked me.

‘I’ll do it, Marcia,’ I said.  And for a month, I did exactly that.  I washed and ironed.  I sorted out electrical problems.  Every night there was a meal on the table, a table I had to restore.  I rebuilt broken machines and fixed stuffed up cars.  I washed and dried dishes and kept a clean house.  I finished off the kitchen installation, unpacked all the boxes and found homes for all our kit.  I sorted out the plumbing and realigned the satellite dish so Marcia could watch her soaps on the Portuguese channels.  Every day I was up at the restaurant site making sure the guys were working and had everything they needed to keep working.  Every evening, I bathed my poisoned foot in salt water and wondered when my toe would finally do the decent thing and fall off.

Back in the old days, before I had a pump installed and a generator to power it, in order to deliver clean water to the locals I had to haul the water up out of the well using a bucket, fill the twenty litre containers and load them up onto my truck before making the deliveries.  All that exercise has probably added months to my life so I shan’t complain.  It was during this time that I first met Frank.  He was the only one that would leap on board the truck and help me.  Everyone else took it as their natural birthright that a white haired wheezing old codger should deliver them free water without them having to lift a finger.

I wasn’t sure about Frank when I first met him.  He is a tall, gangly youth but decidedly thick, or so I thought at the time.  I know my Portuguese is not perfect by any means but Frank’s Portuguese, his mother tongue, was incomprehensible to me.  I found my self peering into his mouth wondering if he had a tongue in there so slurred was his diction.  Not being in any way politically correct and most mornings a tadge insensitive I decided he was a retard, mentally deficient.  Perhaps he had been dropped on his head as an infant or his Creator had not been kind to him when it came to issuing brains. Still, he could swing a 20 litre container of water off the ground and onto the truck and off again when we were making our deliveries through the village, and for a skinny kid like him, even if I had to shout at him and dig him in the ribs to make him understand, he wasn’t bad.  I could have 120 containers on the back of that truck but he knew to whom each belonged and exactly where they should be dropped off.  One volunteer is worth ten pressed men so even if he had mental issues, I was glad to have him along for the ride.  I respected him, realised that he had problems but he was a willing young man and certainly not one I would call stupid even if I could not understand a word he said.

Marcia always got very upset with me when she discovered I had been giving credit in the shop. Or sweets to the kids, powdered milk to poor mothers, tinned sardines and biscuits to fishermen under the usually unfulfilled promise of payment by a portion of their catch.  This was why she banned me from the shop.  Marcia could not understand why I was going to all the effort to deliver water to what she considered ungrateful neighbours so I could hardly reach into the till and pull out a few Kwanzas to pay this kid for helping me.  So I used to pay him with food from the shop.  Nothing exotic, just staples; a bag of rice or pulses, sugar, salt, dried meat or fish.  That’s all he ever asked for.  I’d give it to him when Marcia wasn’t around but usually slip in a few packets of biscuits into his plastic shopping bag.  Like I said, the kid wasn’t stupid and he’d figured out the score, I was scared shitless of Marcia so it was our little secret.

Now I have the pump installed on the well.  I have piped all the way to the entrance and installed a generator.  The locals can come with their containers and help themselves to clean water so my water deliveries have stopped.  There’s no need for me to cart water once a day, they can collect it anytime they want.  And this presented Marcia with a problem.  All the neighbours would see me hanging washing.  Visitors would find me rinsing dishes or cooking.  This was women’s work and Marcia was embarrassed so she employed another female maid. 

 

The maid lasted three days.  Like I say, I don’t like sacking women but I had taken an immediate dislike to this woman.  Now I know a lot of people would say that was wrong, a flaw in my character.  I just think that people disliking each other on sight is something that happens occasionally.  Of course she didn’t help her case by turning up late, leaving early, bitching half the time and spending the rest of it nosing through my stuff.  If I had complained to Marcia I know she would have taken my dislike of her choice of staff personally and put it down to me being a grumpy old sod, which I am.  So decided I would ‘Constructively’ dismiss the new maid.  I loaded the work onto her.  Do the dishes.  Mop the floors.  Do the laundry.  Rake the yard.  Wipe polish over the floors.  Dust the surfaces.  Iron the sheets and clothes.  Fold them up properly and lay them on the shelves.  Not like that, like that.  OK, that’s the house sorted, now start on the shop.  I wasn’t asking her to do anything I wasn’t already doing.

All my kitchen cupboards are neatly laid out.  Theoretically, I should be able to find the utensil or pot I need blindfolded.  Not with this one (or most of her predecessors either).  They’ll stick an open packet of milk under the sink with the detergents and wonder why I complain about the source of the smell.  They’ll jam pots in wall cupboards so the doors won’t close and mix crystal glasses in with cast iron ware and wonder at all the broken glass they have to clean up.  Last time I went to the city, the maid took the suit I wore to Marcia’s Mother’s funeral, the only one I could still climb into, and put it through an African hand wash.  To be fair, I have put so much weight on in the last couple of years, I need a new suit anyway.

‘She says it’s far too much for her’, said Marcia when I asked her why the maid hadn’t turned up for a week.

‘Fair do’s, I didn’t like her anyway’, I admitted; ‘just another one of those lazy cows who spends all her time emptying our fridges to cook herself a humungous lunch in-between nicking anything valuable’.  I could get away with saying that to Marcia now because the maid had left of her own bat claiming overwork and not enough pay as her reasons rather than my irascibility.  Here the standard excuse in any kind of labour dispute with a white employer is ‘racism’ so I was doubly grateful that I had not even a finger in her employment or the payment of her salary, and that my hand in getting rid of her had not been recognised.

‘I need a boy to help me clean up the garden,’ I told Marcia, ostensibly changing the subject, ‘I was thinking of Frank.’

‘Frank?’

‘Frank, Francis, Fransisco, whatever he is called, the boy who used to help me with the water, I like him.’

‘But he’s deaf!’

‘Is he?’ I asked genuinely surprised as hell.

‘You mean you never noticed?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ I admitted, ‘I used to just slap him round the head when I thought he was ignoring me.  But I would like him anyway.’

‘How long do you want him for?’

‘Well, as long as it takes.  The garden looks like a building site and is strewn with builder’s rubbish and litter.  Also, we need to cut the dead palm fronds off the trees; they are a real fire hazard.  There’s loads he can do to help me.’

Marcia considered this for a moment.

‘I don’t need a maid, Marcia, I need an extra pair of hands’, I said, risking buying back the deal.

‘I think that is a good idea,’ Marcia said, ‘but I will pay him his salary in food from the shop.  He has two younger brothers and a baby sister to look after.  If I give him money his father will steal it to buy whisky.’

‘Now THAT is an excellent idea!’ I said, closing the deal.

So Frank came onto the payroll (food roll). 

Never mind all the other things this lad can do well (the garden is getting towards immaculate, his timekeeping perfect), boy can he keep a clean kitchen!  Everything is in its place.  There is not only a dustbin in the kitchen (a recycled 20 litre paint container he had the sense to retrieve), it has a plastic liner.  It is these little touches that count for so much.  He never greets me in the morning on his punctual arrival by enquiring (like a cloying sycophant) after my health or whether I enjoyed a good night’s sleep.  A fresh packet of cigarettes always appears on my desk yet I never seem to be able to either fill the ashtray or run out of whisky.  He ALWAYS knows where I have left my car keys, telephone or sandals yet I never see him!  How can a boy who I now know to be largely deaf, learn how to creep about the place the way he does? 

I hated it, you have no idea how badly I hated it, when maids helped themselves to anything I had in the fridge and scoffed the bloody lot.  If I complained, I was being unreasonable.  What right does an employee have to eat off my bone china using silver cutlery when we make do on a daily basis with Chinese porcelain and stainless steel? I wouldn’t have minded if they had fed me and Alex a slice or two but all of them happily watched the little boy starve. 

 

Frank asked for permission to gnaw on a day old bread roll.  I wasn’t having anything of that.  He likes eggs I discovered.  So does Alex and so do I.  So I taught him how to make scrambled eggs on toast.  Not the scrambled eggs they make here, merely tossing a few into a vat of oil, stirring them around a bit and then serving a heart attack on a plate.  No, I taught him how to whisk the eggs nicely in a bowl, adding a bit of salt and ground black pepper, a little bit of milk and then introducing the fluffy mixture into a pan only lightly greased with butter, banging the lid on and letting nature take its course while the bread, neatly sliced in half, crisped up in the oven.  I showed him what a cheese grater was and how with its product we could dust the omelette before slipping it out of the pan and serving it and how much nicer it all tasted if one was sitting at a table with a pot of decent tea, full cream milk, sugar and a bit of indulgent tomato ketchup.  I only had to show him once.  Goodness, if this lad can encourage Alex to sit at the table every morning and eat a decent breakfast he’s worth his weight in gold.  I might even be tempted to eat breakfast myself if he added a few mushrooms.

Entirely separately, Marcia and I had come to the same conclusions.  Maids are generally useless and this boy deserves a bit of a bunk up to look after his siblings.

As an aside, I am beginning to think Frank's deafness is psychological, a device against his abusive father and everyone else who took the piss out of him when he was a scared and very lonely little boy.  I have snuck up on him a couple of times and softly called out his name, ‘Frank’ I’m the only one who calls him by that name, and he has turned round every time.  Others can scream ‘Francisco’ until their lungs turn inside out. 

He knows I know.  But that’s Ok.  So long as he keeps my kitchen cabinets in order and sneaks the odd bottle of whisky out of the shop for me, it can stay our little secret can’t it? 

Being selectively deaf is a huge attribute for a Gentleman’s Gentleman.

 

 

Muamba da Galinha. A Peasant Dish and one of my favorites.

How dare we kill an animal to eat its flesh and then throw half of it away?

I respect people who choose to be Vegetarians, Vegans or even Venusians (those who refuse to eat Cadbury's Eggs or pasta) but I feel sorry for their kids, who are just busting for a MacWhopper with Chips and a Milk Shake.

We raise our own animals here with the intention of killing and eating them.  Mainly chickens as none of us has had the guts to take a knife to Goosie's neck.  He's an ornery beast and will nip your ankles if you're not paying attention but he's part of the scenery now and keeps the dogs in line and unwelcome visitors from darkening my door.  As a recluse, I can thoroughly recommend a goose as a guard so I can't bring myself to eat him.  There are so many parallels between us.  He wanders the garden chewing everything and everyone in sight because he is on his own and I wander my lounge at night with a gutful of whisky suffused with the stark realisation I might as well be on my own.  Neither of us are getting our leg over.  At least I have TV.

So I kill chickens for food.

I have done a lot of hunting in my time and I have one hunting rule which I have passed on to my oldest boy and will, in due course, pass on to little Alex: 'Don't kill anything you aren't going to eat'.  Technically, by my simple rule and with a decent lawyer on your payroll, if you had the appetite and a big enough freezer, you could legally blow way an elephant and have enough ivory to carve a lifetime's supply of toothpicks but I think you all know where I am coming from.  As omnivores, we have to kill to survive but what we do kill, should be sustainable and we should use all of it.

I could say, 'They are only chickens'.  But I saw every one of them emerge into this world and every single one of them eats grain out of my hand.  They will sit on my shoulder or on my lap.  I don't have fleas but they will peck in my hair like female gorillas grooming an alpha male.  And then I select one and chop its head off.

If you are going to kill an animal, then be prepared to eat it.  From its arse to its lips.  Does Kentucky Fried Chicken offer packets of fried chicken lips?  I never died from eating a Big Mac or a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and by God I have enjoyed them.  We may question from where McDonald's get their ground beef and how Kentucky look after their chickens but there's no denying, if you are hungry enough to eat a horse (a non-endangered source of meat available in all good UK supermarkets), they're both finger lickin' good and although there might have been outbreaks of obesity and flatulence, I haven't seen any mass outbreaks of botulism.

So, here we go. If you have a few scrawny chickens running around, this is what you do.. 

First catch them, kill them, pluck them and draw them. 

(I spared you those images.  Unlike Cro, I was pretty bloody useless when it came to drawing fowl.  My art teacher always said my efforts were indistinguishable from Lowry paintings.  At the time, in the early Seventies, I took it as the insult it was intended to be.  I'd like to meet the bastard now and at least get my paintings back.)

Then chop them up and chuck them into a pan with a bit of water and stick them on the boil,



I could not find the chicken lips while dissecting the chickens but saved the breasts and thighs
for later and for this exercise in providing sustenance, just ran with the feet and wings,
plonking them in a pan with a bit of water, banging the lid on and boiling them up a bit.

In the meantime I collected a few simple ingredients.
A few garlic cloves beaten to a pulp with a bit of rock salt.
Roughly chopped tomatoes
an onion
and a couple of plastic sacks of beaten and pounded to hell peanuts.

Chop the onions up (you can see I took my time over this). Add the
tomatoes and garlic paste and fry it all up in a pan.

I squeezed out the peanut paste into a small pan of boiling water

and kept stirring it until it looked like milky breakfast tea.

I added the onion tomato mix to the chicken

and then added the peanut juice

Served with rice, and maybe a side dish of really hot local peppers and a cooling  cucumber salad
made with natural yoghurt and finely chopped mint, this is delicious.

Etiquette Tip:  Provide guests with crisp, clean, starched linen napkins, finger bowls and, as the host, dive in first so as to lead by example.  This really is finger lickin' good!