Vernon Mooers writes

THE WHITE MAN'S GRAVEYARD

chapter 21 (1)

Falmata lay snuggled up to him, her skin soft and glistening from the faint light seeping through the curtains. He loved her all right, but was that enough to keep this relationship together? Alex remembered the look on the hotel clerk's face when he'd checked in and he'd said she was his wife. But then, he recalled, the English have always protected their own image.

Alex remembered the first time they'd met at the hotel in Mekambo. He and Jorn Sorensen got pissed at the pool and talked to the bar ladies. It was nice talking to them. At least they were women. The Danish Doctor worked at the Hospital and was used to it. He, on the other hand, lived where the only women wore calabashes on their heads -- market ladies. They were mostly Muslims in his town and he didn't see women. They didn't go out, not even to the cinema. There'd just be a hundred men there. Even the bars were all frequented by males. It had been hard to handle and at least he could talk to those women.

When he saw her standing there in her braided, beaded hairdo by the bar with two other well-dressed office girls, he'd gotten up and gone over.

"I like you," he said, just blurting it out.

"I like you too," she replied laughing.

"You only like me because I've got money," he taunted.

"But of course," she snapped back.

Then he sat down again. It was true. They needed money. There were few jobs, especially for women and they were just trying to survive. Life was hard in Africa for women. They struggled and prices were too high to maintain any sort of existence.

Why should she like him anyway? He was from a totally different culture. He was not that experienced with African women socially. But she'd come over to the table and they'd danced. He wanted her because she was beautiful and her hand felt good when he touched it.

She'd come with them when they left and never asked for money. After two days he hated to leave her and wanted to take her away from that. She was still untarnished -- only three weeks in the city. Later, he'd sent her the money to come up and work for him, offering her a part-time typing/translating job, because she spoke Fang, Eshira and English and French. But it was really because he was lonely. He needed someone to get him through those long nights and had paid Falmata's school fees to attend the Teacher's College. Eventually, he'd fallen in love with her.

Expats were out of their element and did strange things. He'd only done what seemed natural. He'd been working so long among Africans, conditioned to associate with them and had friends. African women  were just the same as women anywhere. The hard part now was to face the other world and he questioned whether it was worth the hassle. Falmata was naive. It was an unnecessary burden to impose upon her.

Alex had a taste of it here. Class and racial snobbery, a tradition imbedded in Britain and was alive more than ever. The National Front was thriving and active. They have always been intolerant to those different, Alex thought, and violent. The football matches between rival teams often broke into riots. Ego-maniacs they were, hateful, never respectful of another's culture. The colonial empire was built on aggression and Canada had inherited its mother's genes.

That observation, and he had been guilty to some extent, in retrospect, had revealed itself when he'd first moved to Africa. The British blatantly were never absorbed into African society. On the contrary, they'd set themselves apart with their compounds and clubs. Expatriates isolated themselves from the Africans by decisive methods and protected their positions with guards and drivers and stewards and laws. They were rulers. They lived not among them, but rather, behind wire fences as if they were at the zoo, watching them on television as they walked with their bundles past the windows.

Falmata's family had been proud she'd married him, a white man. They had accepted him, accepted the different colour that didn't protect him from the hot African sun.

But his own people rejected him. The expatriates snubbed him. Except Steve -- he'd stayed too. Alex thought that those who lived in Africa would be different, but they turned out to be the worst, supervising those they viewed as inferiors. It didn't change them. They just felt more threatened. Maybe they saw their own weaknesses as human beings in them. A touch of equality led to a drop in superiority complex and they had to push them down more to retain it. Alex could understand it but he couldn't accept it.

The Twentieth Century. Hundreds of years and man was still socially primitive, Alex thought. It disgusted him. The idea of travelling in space and not progressing culturally. He wished they would leave him alone. That was the problem. They wouldn't. They'd still started wars and hated and killed and they wouldn't leave you alone. You couldn't escape. He had no choice but to face the world.