The Dead White Man

By Paddy Fleming

It was in the flood season that all manner of strange craft and exotic travellers called in at the Polder pumping station from time to time to re-supply or simply rest and stretch their legs. But, of them all, none was more exotic than the dead white man.

Over the millennia, the Kafue river in Zambia has created a vast wet-land in its middle reaches, known locally as the Kafue Flats, that extend for a distance of some 150 miles and attain a maximum width of over forty miles. The Flats are grass covered, devoid of any trees, and featureless save for the untold numbers of reed-fringed lagoons, oxbows and backwaters. In the annual flood the river bursts its banks and spreads out over the Flats to create a gigantic reed and grass filled swamp. And when the waters subside they expose a reed-fringed levee on either bank of the main channel on which grow the occasional fig trees and, more commonly, the tall, bulbous-stemmed, Borassus palms. The palms, which are visible for miles around, mark the meandering course of the river across the Flats.

The Kafue Polder, as the name implies, was an area of flat land about 1,000 acres in extent, jutting out into the Flats, surrounded on all sides by an earthen dyke to keep out the flood waters and allow year round farming within. The northern dyke followed closely along the levee of the river where a great bend brought it closer than usual to the high land; the southern dyke wound along the tree line at the extremity of the Flats. Let into the northern dyke was a pumping station overhung by an unusually large fig tree with a nearby grove of Borassus palms, which together stood out like a great beacon, visible for miles around on this otherwise featureless floodplain. When the river was in flood, as it was every year in the early 1960s when I was there, and the plains were covered by water, reeds and tall grass, the pumping station with its safe mooring and welcome shade provided one of the few dry access routes between the river and the high land.

One morning, sitting in my cottage on the Polder finishing breakfast, a pump attendant arrived breathless from the river. He carried the alarming news that there was a dead white man at the pumping station. In the car speeding to the scene, the attendant told of how the white man had died the day before whilst hunting crocodiles further up the river. His men had paddled him down in a boat to the first effective landing place where they had arrived a short while earlier.

I found the dead white man rolled in a blanket and lying in the bottom of his little boat. His head was resting on a canvas bag of bullets. After unwrapping him, it became apparent that the white man was not dead but comatose and running a very high temperature. There was little doubt, in my mind at least, that he had a bad dose of malaria and needed urgent hospital treatment. The pump attendants helped me bundle his huge frame onto the back seat of my car before I went back to search his tiny tin boat for his possessions. There were apparently none.

On my way to the district hospital some fifteen miles away, I had plenty of time to reflect on the sort of reception I was going to get when I arrived. The little hospital was presided over by the most formidable matron it has ever been my misfortune to meet. She was a large, middle aged, Afrikaaner who swore like a trooper in her native tongue, English and Zulu with equal proficiency. I was terrified of her, having once attended the hospital for treatment of a broken finger. I therefore decided to try the same approach that had worked so well for the pump attendant - I would say that I had brought a dead white man, dump him off and beat it.

As I drew up to the hospital through an avenue of poinsettias, I noticed her standing on the verandah at the head of a long flight of red, brick steps that swept up from the drive below. She stood gazing down imperiously at my arrival, a picture of tyranny in her white starched uniform, legs planted apart and arms folded across her huge bosom. She remained motionless like a great white eagle biding its time before swooping down on its hypnotised prey. I opened my door, climbed out and stood below her, acutely conscious I was no match for her, clad in a ragged khaki shirt and shorts, barefoot and apologetically clutching my bush hat before me in both hands.

'I've brought a dead white man,' I called up, coyly.

'Why?' she yelled back without moving.

The logic of the question left me temporarily speechless and I started to go to pieces.

'Well, maybe he's not quite dead yet,' I ventured, stupidly.

'God verdommer,' she replied, unfolding her arms and advancing down the steps. 'Either he's alive or he's bloody dead - there's no in between state. Where is he?'

'In here,' I said, shuffling towards the back door.

She beat me to it and wrenched open the door against which the dead white man's head was propped and out of which it now lolled.

'He's either got malaria or he's shamming', she said after a cursory examination.

Stepping back, she shouted for orderlies who arrived at the double, heaved the dead white man out of the car and carried him up the steps to the only little male ward on the left of the reception area. I joined the procession and noted that there were no other inmates in the four-bed ward. I wasn't surprised at that.

The orderlies laid the dead white man out on the bed below the only window and matron grabbed his arm and felt his pulse. I noticed he had huge hands, as big as plates.

'Where are your pyjamas and dressing-gown?'

The question was clearly aimed at me but was addressed at the comatose white man.

'I don't think he has any,' I replied, truthfully.

'Then he's shamming,' she yelled. 'In here for the free food. I know his type'.

I hastily explained the circumstances of my acquaintance with the dead white man, thinking it would get me off the hook. But she would have nothing of it.

'You know very well Mr. Fleming,' the name was spat out rather than spoken. 'Nobody is admitted to my hospital without two pairs of pyjamas, a dressing-gown, tooth brush and toothpaste and a washing flannel.'

I could have added from personal experience that the two pairs of pyjamas must be freshly laundered and pressed, but decided not to.

'Well don't just stand there,' she shouted. 'Go and get them.'

As I drove back down the dusty, corrugated road to the Polder, I realised how onerous my task was going to be because I possessed no pyjamas of my own and would have to question all my senior, married colleagues about their sleeping apparel.

Well, to cut a long story short, I did manage to find two pairs of pyjamas (freshly laundered) without losing my job. The tooth brush, toothpaste and washing flannel were not a problem, but the dressing gown was. In my cupboard I kept the most exquisite dressing gown that I had seldom worn - it was much too hot for those parts. It was a heavy, floor length, scarlet, silk-lined garment with gold braid on the cuffs and lapels that had been given to me a few years earlier as a twenty-first birthday present by some unremembered aunt. On the inside, silk-lined collar of this masterpiece was an Oxford Street address, which today would be called a 'designer label'. I reluctantly packed it into a large suitcase and set off.

At the hospital I handed over my suitcase to matron who immediately opened it, pulled out the dressing gown and examined it carefully. 'Going to a bloody ball is he?' she asked, holding the shoulders of the dressing gown up to her own with both hands.

I didn't reply, but retreated quickly down the steps and fled to my car.

Early the following morning a messenger came to the fields where I was working and told me to return an urgent phone call from the hospital. As I made my way to the office to return the call, I was convinced that matron was calling to announce the final demise of the dead white man. Matron answered the phone.

'The bastard's gone,' she yelled without preliminaries. 'I told you he was shamming.'

'Gone where?' I asked, in disbelief.

'God knows,' she replied. 'Probably to a ball because I've still got his stinking clothes here. I treated him yesterday with two courses of injectable quinine. He recovered sufficiently to eat most of my food supplies by nightfall. I know his type. I've met them before. And he's a bloody foreigner.'

'Foreigner?' I enquired.

'Ya, he doesn't speak properly English,' she replied in her own version of that language. 'I locked him in the ward last night because I don't trust foreigners. He got out through the window.'

Wearily, I put down the phone and walked out to my Vespa scooter parked outside the door. I had to go and look for the poor guy, I couldn't just abandon him. He didn't know where he was, had no money and his only crime was fleeing from matron, which any conscious and sane person would have done.

I sat on my scooter and Uci, my yellow Labrador, pronounced Oochi and meaning honey, followed.

But here I must digress slightly to put this story in its proper perspective: The senior field staff at the Polder were all issued with little Vespa motor scooters to cut down on the cost of paying individuals for the use of their own cars. I acquired Uci as a puppy at the same time as I acquired my Vespa. I taught her as a little puppy to sit between my feet where Italian women put their shopping bags. Unlike shopping bags, Uci grew and grew, but always sat in the same place, and always facing the same direction - left. Her first problem was her tail, which dragged along the road as it grew longer. That problem was instantly solved one day when her tail, bereft of any fur on the under side, grew long enough to go under the rear wheel sending us both flying into one of the drainage canals that lined all the roads on the Polder. Thenceforth, she tucked her tail in front of her, but not so tightly that it went under the brake pedal, which was an equally painful experience. As she grew larger, she leaned her shoulder heavily on my left leg, which splayed out almost at right angles and allowed her an unimpeded view forward around the leg shield of the scooter. My right foot kept her bottom from dragging on the road and occasionally flicked her tail into the right position.

That is how we always travelled and that is how we set off in search of the dead white man. We found him near the railway siding about seven miles from the Polder walking along the bush road clad only in a floor length, scarlet, silk-lined dressing-gown with gold braid and designer label. He was bare-foot, hat-less and sweating profusely from his arctic attire, malarial temperature and the scorching sun.

As I explained who I was, his powerful build and those enormous hands again impressed me. The few words he uttered, which were almost incomprehensible to me were about a ferocious woman who had stabbed him with needles, verbally abused him, locked him in a room and finally, stolen his clothes.

We bumped slowly back along the corrugated road to the Polder with all the scooter's suspension bottomed out - one normal man, one big dog and a giant, looking like a Father Christmas with a stubbly black beard, all perched on top of the tiny Vespa motor scooter.

I put the dead white man in my bed and administered a plateful of chloroquine for his malaria. In those days there was no talk of the malaria parasite developing immunity to drugs. Chloroquine was all-powerful and plentiful, and the more the better. I set up a camp bed and slept on the floor next to him.

Eugene Vincento, as he later proved to be, stayed with me for six weeks after he recovered from malaria - but that's another story.