Gambian Bluff by David Monnery

Author:David Monnery
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008155193
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2015-10-19T15:55:08.155000+00:00

9

Sibou Cham lay stretched out on the camp-bed in her office. She felt weary to the bone but sleep would not come – it was as if her mind had parted company with her body, the one racing madly along, the other abandoned for dead hours ago.

How many people had she treated in the last forty-eight hours? Eighty? A hundred? A hundred and fifty? She had no clear idea any more. The faces and the bodies were all jumbled up. This man’s face went with this shattered thigh, that woman’s face with that lacerated ear. Or vice versa. They all had red blood and fear-filled eyes and they were all praying to her, the goddess of healing.

Lying there, she felt more alone than ever. She wanted someone to share who she was, she wanted a body beside her that was not broken or bleeding, that needed no help to function but only love to make it feel whole. She wanted someone reaching out to her whom she could reach out to in return.

It was getting light outside, which did not seem right. Maybe she had slept for a couple of hours after all. She got up, walked to the window, and pulled the lever which opened the sheets of slatted glass. Outside two small grey lizards with yellow heads were chasing each other around a tree stump. On one of the mats which had been left to dry in the sun a small boy was curled up asleep, his bare legs caked with dust.

Africa, she thought. Who would care for Africa? It had nothing anyone wanted. Nothing to sell, nothing to bargain with. Only more and more people fighting over the same amount of land, more and more people angry at their inability to grab a foothold in that wonderful world of cars and TVs and hi-fi which the tourists parade before their eyes. African rulers had no power to transform the continent’s fate: all they could do – even the cleverest and the most well-meaning ones – was to try to soften the blow. No wonder there were coups. And no wonder they amounted to nothing more than a game of musical chairs. Except of course for those whose blood had been given to the dust.

In medieval times they had tried to cure patients by bleeding them; nowadays it was countries.

The Field Force depot in Bakau had always reminded Junaidi Taal of the prisoner-of-war camps depicted in Hollywood films. It was partly a matter of illusion: the watch-tower, which contributed so much to the effect, was actually part of the fire station next door, but the large trees which were scattered around the two compounds and overhung the wall between them, made visual separation difficult. From the road all that was visible was an impression of one-storey offices and barracks receding into the foliage, and the single, blue-painted tower rising above it.

It had rained heavily throughout the night, and as dawn broke on Sunday heavy drops were still falling from the trees, beating a sporadic tattoo on the corrugated roofs.

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