Paul Theroux - My Secret History

“That’s just what I was going to say.”

“I’ll shepherd those lambs who’ve cast their idols well away,” Miss Natwick said, seeming to quote a hymn. After a moment, her face hardened and she added, “And if they haven’t, bugger them.”

Miss Natwick would then offer Rockwell a Kitkat or a chocolate finger from her handbag and they would be there until Deputy Mambo returned for another cup of tea.

Sometimes the school seemed hopeless — not simply the shambles Miss Natwick said it was, but chaos. It was always on the verge of flying apart. But it held. I thought: This is Africa. This is the world. It is not chaos but only disorder. Dirt is the norm. Bad water is the norm. Filthy toilets are typical. Stinks are natural, and all dogs are wild. If you walk barefoot hookworms bore into the balls of your feet. Stretch out your arm and mosquitoes inject sleeping sickness into it. Sit still for a moment and fleas leap onto your body. Embrace your lover and you get lice. Because this is the world. America is very unusual.

I went to Abby’s race at the track in Zimba. She had trained and slept well and drunk milk. But it did her no good. She came fifth in the two-twenty. She said she was through with running — it was too much for a woman with kids. She was better off, she said, collecting tickets at the Rainbow Cinema and fooling with me.

That was another day, and that night another night.

The best way to teach English, I felt, was to get in there and start them talking. I asked questions, I had them chant the answers, I made them compete, and when I ran out of prize candy I gave them cough drops from Mulji’s, which they liked just as much. Miss Natwick complained that the students said “What?” instead of “Pardon?” and she objected to their saying “You’re welcome.”

People complained that things happened too slowly in Africa, but my experience so far was that everything moved too quickly — it was a time of rapid change, and the change inspired hope and confidence. In a matter of months the students had taken on American accents. They said, “I wanna” and “I gudda” and “I’m tryanna” and “I dunno” and “Whatcha doin” and “Whaa?” The popular songs helped. I heard a little girl named Msonko sing, “Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone—” Miss Natwick wrote to the minister of education. She got no reply. There was no minister of education. There wouldn’t be one until July.

“No one’s in charge,” she said. “They’ve just shut up shop.”

“Flew the coop is more like it.”

“Blimy, the way you Yanks talk.”

“Suspended animation,” I said. “Politically.”

“Ward Rockwell is very well-spoken though,” she said. “But you’re as bad as the students.”

“Your needlework class is waiting, Miss Natwick.”

I was in charge! I was headmaster!

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.