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To our fathers and grandfathers – who had a hard time dealing
with a strange new world
– and to whom we owe forgiveness.
With respect and love.
There was something paralyzing about the smoke in the room. Not
just the smoke, but the cold mixture it formed with the multi-coloured
light that danced in the tavern as well as the stench of sweat and
liquor that strangled the air. Jay didn't know why in the world
he still came here. He had a family now. And his wife was such a
beautiful, tender lady. Why did he still need all this? He was jolted
from this 'forbidden' vein of thought by the slightly loud slap
of his latest bill on the stained wooden table before him. It was
loud enough to bring him back to the present, but gentle enough
not to irritate him.
That was the work of a very experienced
waitress. Her eyes lingered briefly, haltingly, over his and he
thought he caught a look he knew in them. A look of loneliness,
unfulfilled dreams, struggle, conflict. Why, they could have been
his very own eyes looking back at him. For a brief moment he wanted
to reach out and hold her and tell her it was going to be OK. Was
she so experienced as to arouse such feelings in him or had he just
had one too many again? One thing was certain: It was time to go
home.
If only Jay had not been that waitress' last customer that day;
and if only she had not been standing so vulnerably at the lonely
bus-stop when he drove by. If only he hadn’t stopped and offered
to take her home; If only he had just dropped her off at her house
and then left to go to his wife and children. If only she hadn’t
been so desperately in need of money to feed her two hungry illegitimate
children. If only she hadn’t been dying of a strange new disease
that she knew nothing about...
Thirty years earlier, Africa was free. The old statesmen of the
continent were heroes. The Britons, French, Germans, Belgians and
their likes were going home and leaving a neatly divided up territory
of new, restless and ambitious ex-colonies. The air was pulsating
with hope and haste. And while the grandfathers of a new vibrant
continent gallantly took up the reins of the new and naïve
nations, the young men enjoyed their fathers´ labours in the
pleasures of treasures left behind by their imperial masters. Men
learnt to drink whiskey in those days, and ladies learnt to swing
and twist in night-clubs.
Such was the lot of post-colonial African
high society. Such was the fare of our fathers.
But that was then. Now the once proud and young nations creaked
and fell under the rust of corruption and poverty. One by one. Statesmen
had turned into paranoid dictators and their young sons were older
drunkards. Their wives were oppressed and overwhelmed. The society
was staggering and sick. And dying. Dying of a strange new disease.
Now Jay was sitting on a comfortable armchair outside his neat stone
house facing the Savannah valley in the little rural district where
he had been born almost sixty years ago. He wore an immaculate white
shirt and comfortable, flawlessly ironed, sand-coloured khaki trousers.
His hair was neatly brushed back and he mused at his shining black
leather shoes. His wife had bathed him and dressed him and brushed
his hair, and her eyes still glowed the same way they had when he
had first met her. Why was she still here even after the betrayal?
The sky beyond the valley looked dark and ominous. The lead-grey
rain clouds hung threateningly low over the golden Savannah grassland
that was randomly violated by dusty olive-green thickets and bare
wound-like patches of orange-red soil. A midget of a herds boy appeared
on the horizon, hurriedly shooing his cows back home. The rain was
imminent. Dark clouds advanced steadily across the valley, progressively
shrouding it in a black mist. They dragged with them a strange foreboding.
The scene was fascinating and Jay was riveted to his seat. It wasn’t
until an ambitious, thick raindrop landed squarely on his now balding
forehead that he awoke from his stupor. He caught a whiff of his
wife’s perfumed body lotion as her hands reached out to him
to help him up. Where had she come from so suddenly? She had worn
that lotion for all the thirty years they had been married. Sometimes
he thought he only still survived and thrived upon that warm and
familiar fragrance.
The fan rotating from the ceiling was very quiet. It was hard to
keep focused on it as it turned and turned and soon became a blur
of sterile white plastic and polished wood.
The room smelled sterile. There were
distant muffled voices around him. Jay was thoroughly exhausted
and his back felt sore. He must have been lying on that bed for
a long time. He vaguely remembered an ambulance siren, a frightful
bustle in a bright room somewhere, and then this bed. The only constant
pervading the jumble in his mind was that fragrance he’d known
for thirty years. It had been there with him all the time. He was
certain.
When did he get so sick? Where did this terrible sickness come from
that was devouring to shreds a continent already so weak? Was it
a lusty, gay sailor from another world or a monkey from our trees
like they said? And what was going to happen now? He had a calm,
peaceful knowledge that he was not going to get up from this bed.
Strangely, he was grateful for it. But what then?
Somehow the priest’s visit only increased his fear of ending
up in a place of eternal punishment for a lifetime—actually
only 60 years—of wrongdoing. And he hadn’t even done
wrong every single one of those days in his life. He had taken a
few wrong turns, yes. Some of which had led him to this bed. But
surely, eternal punishment for 60 years? It didn’t seem to
add up.
Then there had been the other gentleman who had come along to see
him. He had given God a name, mankind a history and a future. He
had made him feel like he came from somewhere and was going somewhere
if he believed in this God and His Christ, and called on Him for
forgiveness and salvation. Although Jay couldn’t remember
when he had, he was somehow sure he had believed and had called
on that name. It was his only anchor now.
The fragrance was there again and Jay felt himself pulled back from
his mind’s wranglings and strangely led into vivid memories
by his wife’s fragrance. Her first smile. The gentle way she
straightened his tie before his first ever job interview. Her lying
in a clean, neat hospital bed all washed and fresh after their first
baby was born. A Saturday afternoon after the chores were done and
she sat in a sunny patch on the verandah reading a book. Sunday
morning in the little church on the hill, sitting next to her, looking
at her and listening to the better sermon that was her life of dedication
and commitment to him.
His eyes opened at last and he knew he was smiling up at his wife
more kindly and warmly than he ever had done in his life. He saw
her smile and held her gentle gaze as his eyes begun to shut once
more. He was falling asleep again. Isn’t that what the polite
gentleman had called it? Falling asleep? Resting until it was time
to get up again when things would be better. A new kingdom. A second
chance. In this hope he embraced the sleep. 
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