My Driver by Maggie Gee

Author:Maggie Gee
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781846591334
Publisher: Saqi

21

It’s early evening at the Sheraton. Vanessa will soon be doing her reading. As usual, she is a little on edge, and not entirely able to pay attention to the tide of political debate that ebbs and flows between the delegates, who are drinking complimentary glasses of wine.

‘Museveni is finished!’ a Ugandan declares, a bright young poet and lecturer just back from two years at the University of Iowa. His presentation about the marginalisation of local languages was misted with French deconstructionist words, but now he is crisp and vigorous. ‘He has become old and greedy, like the others. The westerners have eaten too well. Ugandans are tired of it. We will not re-elect him.’

‘That’s what people said before the last elections,’ says a white South African. ‘When he’d sworn he wouldn’t stand another time. Then he changed his mind, and they voted for him. Africa basically has kings, ja? Like Moi and Mugabe. They’re in for a lifetime.’

‘Well, you’ve got to admit he’s made things better here,’ says Geoffrey Truman, who feels almost Ugandan, with his thrice-a-year visits to Sanyu Namamonde, where he has a comfortable berth, nourishing food, and cold beers beside the Speke Hotel’s sunlit swimming pool while Sanyu gives him gentle massages, in return for which, he helps her out – there are school fees for the elder boy, and the younger one, too, will soon be boarding-school age, which is causing him to make a few calculations, and yet ... The good life. So much sweeter than London. He could never get a woman like Sanyu in London, young, healthy, affectionate to him. ‘You’ve seen Kampala. Lots of new business, hotels going up, prosperous. You feel safe on the street. The police are on top of things. Otherwise CHOGM would not be coming here. It’s a different country from what it was twenty years ago. You just can’t compare Amin and Museveni.’

‘But you should not compare them,’ says a writer from Femrite, the organisation of Ugandan women writers. ‘It is like comparing the German leader, Angela Merkel, to Hitler. Of course, the new person will look better.’

Then another Ugandan takes up the discussion. ‘In fact, under Museveni, there has always been war. For the Acholi in the north, as you are aware, there is genocide. In the east, there have been massacres of Museveni’s enemies, things that in the west you do not hear about ...’ (As he looks, briefly, at the foreign delegates, his voice drops slightly, for you never know who’s listening: in the deepening sky outside the window, there are storks, as ever, small as mosquitoes, casually planing on the early evening thermals: friend or enemy? How can you be sure?) ‘And in Democratic Republic of Congo – Ugandan army has been very busy there. There was a four-year war, in which millions died. And now our wonderful Museveni might go to war again. Perhaps State House needs more gold, and diamonds. Perhaps there will be another war, in Congo.’

Unconsciously, Vanessa is

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