Of course the students overdid the lingo; but it was also a political act. They had been taught by the British to say “Pardon” and “chaps” and “My singlet is very tatty.” They had learned expressions like “It’s jolly hard” and “He’s a cheeky devil” and “Pull your socks up”—and they didn’t wear any. The country was about to become independent, and so learning to talk American was a way of getting even with the British.
They didn’t hate the British. They hardly knew them. They were somewhat beaten and bewildered, and they felt their country was a flop — they knew they were in the bush — and so they blamed their confusion on the British. When they were angry, which was usually when they were drunk, they could be very self-pitying and abusive. But the antagonism did not go very deep.
It was simple, I knew. Like many other Africans they were very lonely. The end of colonialism meant that they had woken up and found the world very large. Being poor was only part of it. They felt small and weak. And every day they were reminded of this by big strong Americans. It had probably been a good thing that the British ignored them. We took them seriously, but the gulf between us seemed to make them very sad. They did not know what to do or where to go.
And then it occurred to me that we were tempting them.
“I want to go to the United States,” Deputy Mambo said. “I want to go to Kansas City.”
Kansas City was always mentioned in songs.
“And Pasadena.”
That was a new one on me.
“Mr. Rockwell is from Pasadena. He says there are no Africans there. That’s why I want to go.”
Willy Msemba wanted to go to New York. It was the setting of My Gun Is Quick. He wanted to meet a “tomato.”
It made them more lonely when we said we were leaving next year and that they would be running the school.
“I want to go to your country,” Deputy Mambo said.
I did not believe he was serious. It was temptation — a moment of envy and fantasy. I could not imagine why anyone would want to leave Africa. Was it because they had no novelty in their lives? It was the curse of being poor — monotony. And so they were attracted by anything new. Language was one such novelty: the American way. They had started saying “Lemme see” and “I wanna do it” and — frequently—“I gudda get outa here,” meaning Nyasaland.
They were eager to learn. I was still an English teacher, although I had taken over all the headmaster’s duties. But being headmaster was no burden. I had discovered early in my life that promotion made life easier. It was simpler to be a headmaster than a teacher, better to be a teacher than a student, and the hardest job of all was the janitor’s. Eddyson Chimanga, the pigeon man, had the longest hours, the heaviest work, and the worst pay. Teaching English was a sort of penance I performed.
The American way of speaking was picked up by the girls at the Beautiful Bamboo, too. All of them now spoke English fairly well, and most of them were better at it than my students — a bigger working vocabulary, full of exotic items. Faak. Saak. Beech. Sheet. Bustud. Demmit. Deets. Breek. Us whole. Shooting. It was not only the Peace Corps Volunteers who took them home; it was also their listening to popular songs in a concentrated way. I wanna hold your hand, they said. And, Whuddle I do when you’ve gone and left me.
In a short time — just months — the American language had spread widely and taken hold.
If you don’t like it, an African girl said to me one night at the Bamboo, and she showed me her drunken face, shove it up.
I laughed. Perhaps this was what it was like to have children and watch them grow. They were learning.
Lemme get this thing off. It was Margaret, a thin Angoni girl, struggling with her dress and doing a little two-step as she danced out of it.
It always excited and amazed me to see how women’s clothes looked so small and shriveled when they took them off. A man’s made a bulky mound, but a woman’s were no more than a tiny heap, and insubstantial, like a shucked-off snakeskin.
Hey, cut it out! she said. Not so fast! Gimme a chance!
I suspected that the students too spoke that way and for the same reason — because they liked us. They wanted to imitate us. They were lonely. They really did want to get out of the country. It made our jobs as teachers easier, and it enlivened every weekend for me.
It was very pleasant to be liked. To be conspicuous and liked was the best of it. I felt special. I was young and far from home: I belonged here. It was the easiest place in the world to be. All week I was headmaster, and then on weekends I walked into the Bamboo with a buzz of excitement, thinking: Whatever I want …
I still spent Friday night with one, and Saturday night with another, and Sunday with a third.
Rockwell said he had heard that some volunteers were picking up girls in town and taking them home.
“How can people do that?”
I said, “Are you saying that we’re just exploiting them? That we’re not giving anything back?”
“That’s the opposite of what I mean,” he said. “They’re exploiting us. All we do is give.”
He meant his latrine.
“All they do is take.”
I said, “We’re not doing much for them. This is an experience for us. They’re not getting much in return.”
“They love it,” he said.
He was partly right, which was always his most annoying characteristic.
“You probably take African girls home with you.”
I said nothing. I concealed everything from him — everything I did. And I concealed it from everyone else. It was important, it was my strength, that no one knew anything about my secret life; that way they did not know me at all.
“ ‘This is an experience for us,’ ” Rockwell said. “You sound so grateful.”
“I am grateful. Ward, we could be in Vietnam.”
“I’m four-F on account of my feet, so speak for yourself,” he said. “Listen, they’ve got incurable diseases. Hookworm, eye-worm, bilharzia, malaria, sleeping sickness.”
“You don’t get those from screwing, Ward.”
“They’ve got the clap. We had a movie about it in training.”
“Oh, dry up.”
“You’re going to get the crud.”
Everyone said that. He got a dose in Rhodesia. But this was not that kind of place. It was innocent, it was new. We were still children, all of us. That was perhaps why it seemed such an odd experience, at times a kind of frenzy, and to an outsider like Rockwell it must have looked like insanity. It had become such a habit that I hated to be alone.
Sex was an expression of friendship: in Africa it was like holding hands. There were times when I felt uncomfortably that it was exploitation, but then I thought: How could it be? It was friendly and fun. There was no coercion. It was offered willingly.
“You like me?” Boopy said.
“I like you, sister.”
“You buy me beer?”
“I buy you two beers, sister.”
“You take me home?”
“I take you home right now, sister.”
“That is better,” she said, and pinched me with her skinny fingers. “Okay.”
They never asked for money. It seemed to be the easiest thing in the world, and now that I had moved out of my house in Chamba and was living in the African township of Kanjedza I felt I was practically on equal terms with the girls.
Equality itself was a new thing. But I also tried to please them. I was gallant and attentive. I was very grateful. In Nyasaland these were novelties, which was why I was such a success. I was not imposing a system on them, I was simply attaching myself to their system and trying to treat them fairly. These African girls had been kicked out of their villages. I was far from home, too.