“Where did you say we were going?”
“I thought I should welcome you with a drink and something to eat, if that is OK with you.”
“Good idea.”
“Let’s go to Mountain Valley, a place I know well.”
“Mountain Valley?”
“It’s a restaurant, a drinking place, and also …” he laughed.
“What?”
“It is also a resting place.” He was smiling mischievously.
“Resting place?”
“Yes, where men and women go to rest.”
“You mean sugar daddies and sweat mamas… where they bring their catch?”
“I couldn’t have stated it any better.” Dr Wiseman Lovemore thought to himself, this woman is dynamite, much more than meets the eye.
“Interesting, definitely a place worth discovering. The perfect start to my fieldwork.”
Mountain Valley was a walking distance from Mountain View. Rich in vegetation including a healthy abundance of flowers both wild and tended, the landscape attracted Lilly Loveless. If there was one thing in Mimboland to command her resilience and plead for forgiveness for all the sins of Sawang, she was sure it was the scenery of Puttkamerstown. There was the overarching Mount Mimbo, with all its hypnotic majesty, impressive and mystical like the chariot of the gods, to crown it all. Luckily the skies were clear, allowing the mountain to throw off its dark and white blanket of rain clouds and reveal the fullness of its beauty to welcome her eyes, marvel and sense of spectacle. She felt good, like a tropical flower that cannot blossom without the sun. Instinctively, she made the sign of the cross, and thanked the stars, which was significant, for she was neither Christian nor religious. A worshipper of nature maybe, nothing more.
Dr Wiseman Lovemore told her of the mountain race, an international event that takes place every year in the month of February, and that entails running up to the top of the 5000 metres high mountain and back. She was impressed by his lengthy account of how a local female participant who habitually races barefooted and hardly looks her age had been crowned “Mountain Hare” for winning more times than anybody can remember. Lilly Loveless felt tempted to take part in the next race, even if it meant only going as far up as the Upper Eden or Stop One, of what Dr Wiseman Lovemore said was a three-stop-race to the top. The mountain was full of gods, she was told, who needed constant attention, and who were known for showing displeasure once in a blue moon by coughing out red hot fire so vicious it could swallow whole villages.
Lilly Loveless had the feeling Dr Wiseman Lovemore was addressing the anthropologist in her by talking of gods and fire instead of volcanoes. She made no comment as a social geographer.
They walked past several relics of Muzunguland colonialism, which Dr Wiseman Lovemore, not a tourist guide by any stretch of the imagination and neither overly romantic about the past or keen on sightseeing, did his utmost to bring home to Lilly Loveless, whom he was determined to impress. There was the Bismarck Fountain, which had long ceased to flow, just like Bismarck after Willem II became Kaiser. There was the prestigious Lodge, initially constructed by Puttkamer as a birthday present for a daughter of the soil who had mastered the needs of his heart. A significant symbol of power or powerlessness in a way, the lodge had been passed down first to the Prime Minister of West Mimboland, then to the President of the Federal Republic as a federal palace, and finally to President Longstay of the United Republic as a Regional rest house, which in effect meant an end to occupancy, as Longstay hardly ever saw the need to venture into the periphery. He is famously known to have proclaimed recently when the country was up in flames with thirst for various freedoms: “Democracy is a very expensive disease; we feel better when it is cured. As long as Nyamandem breathes, Mimboland is alive.” To mark the solitude, disuse and neglect the Lodge now enjoys, the clock which had been faithful throughout the history of colonial presence ceased to tick in 1972. It is rumoured that President Longstay dreamt with such conviction that federalism was a wasteful nightmare that the clock ceased to tick in evidence. So, tourists, when they get close enough, can see that the clock’s hands are stuck at 5.45 – dawn or dusk they can’t tell, but who cares?
They came to the colonial graveyard, which Lilly Loveless said she must see, but which Dr Wiseman Lovemore was cold about, given his conviction that the dead must not be disturbed. So he stood by the main road while she went to see. She counted the number of graves, wrote down in her notebook the names on the tombstones, and placed the colourful leaves of a nearby plant on the grave closest to her as a symbolic wreathe.
“There are twelve of them,” she said, upon rejoining Dr Wiseman Lovemore. “What do you imagine they died of?”
“Illness, probably. Malaria,” he didn’t know for sure. “There was a war between the local population and the Muzungulanders who came seeking their land and taking over their lives,” he added. “But there were not that many casualties. So it must have been to the mosquito that they finally succumbed.”
“Probably. I’ll find out from the Archives.”
“Much as nature lured the Muzungulander to Africa, nature also had a way of cutting down to size their fantasies. If it wasn’t disease, it was tough terrain that made it particularly difficult for them to penetrate and humble the heart of darkness. And many fell by the wayside, thanks to these hazards.”
“If there is any truth in what you say, the Archives will be able to tell me.”
“I can see you swear by the Archives,” said Dr Wiseman Lovemore, half mockingly. “I’ll show you the Archives tomorrow. It is too late to go there today, as it is long past office hours.”
“No hurry.”
“It is curious isn’t it?”
“What?”
“That your Muzunguland forefathers in Mimboland should survive the war but fall to the mosquitoes. This means that both were involved in the liberation struggle. We might never have had our independence had the mosquitoes not joined in the struggle,” he chuckled.
“Interesting perspective,” was all Lilly Loveless could say. She had never thought of things in that light.
“Do you know why they fell to the mosquito?”
“No,” said Lilly Loveless. “Do you?”
“I read somewhere that when they came, they did not manage more than a bed of radishes, when all sort of vegetables do so well here and elsewhere in the region,” said Dr Wiseman Lovemore. “They depended on tasteless tinned foods instead of scratching the soil to grow food…”
“What has that got to do with dying from mosquitoes?” Lilly Loveless interrupted.
“Can’t you see? Dependence on canned foods means that your forebears did not keep gardens, and no gardens meant that they lived surrounded by bushes, and therefore mosquitoes.”
“Clever thinking,” Lilly Loveless agreed.
“Their failure to domesticate their surroundings led to the mosquito showing them pepper, which is why I believe there ought to be a monument in honour of the mosquito, in every African country,” he went on.
Lilly Loveless was a bit irritated.
“Yes,” he insisted. “We need a monument to the mosquito, in the public square!”
“That reminds me.” Lilly changed the topic in exasperation. “Could we pass by a pharmacy for me to pick up some mosquito repellent spray?”
“My pleasure.”