Bonny suggested. it would give much more weight to the production to have you in it, Mr. Ning. She paused as another thought struck her, and then with a boyish grin she turned to Ephrem Taffari. But it would really be terrific to have you in the production, Mr. President. We could interview you on the site of the project at Sengi-Sengi. You could explain to us your hopes and dreams for your country. just think of that, Your Excellency.
Ephrem Taffari smiled and shook his head. I'm a busy man.
I don't think I could spare the time. But she could see he was tempted.
He was enough of a politician to relish the prospect of favourable exposure to a wide audience. It would be very valuable, she urged him.
For both Ubomo and your personal image. People out there in the big world have heard about you only vaguely. If they could see you, it would change their whole perception. I assure you from a professional point of view that you would look plain bloody marvelous on the screen.
You are tall and handsome and your voice is sensational. I swear I'd make you look like a film star. He liked the idea. He liked the flattery. Well, perhaps. . . They both realised that he wanted to be persuaded just a little longer. You could fly up to Sengi-Sengi by helicopter, Bonny pointed out. It would take half a day, no more. . .
She paused and pouted suggestively and touched his arm. Unless, of course, you decided to stay over for a day or two. That would be okay by me, also. Daniel and Bonny, accompanied as always by Captain Kajo, drove up from Kahah. Although it was only a little over two hundred miles it took them two full days, for much of that time was spent not in travelling but in filming the changing countryside and the rural tribes in their traditional manyattas that they found along the way.
Captain Kajo was able to smooth the way and negotiate with the tribal elders. For a few Ubomo shillings he arranged that they had the run of any of the Hita villages that they passed.
They filmed the young girls at the water-holes, clad only in tiny beaded skirts as they bathed and plaited each other's hair. The unmarried girls dressed their coiffures with a mixture of cow dung and red clay until it was an intricate sculpture on top of their heads, adding inches to their already impressive height.
They filmed the married -women as they returned to the village in long files clad in flowing red matronly togas, swaying gracefully under brimming calabashes of water drawn from the spring.
They filmed the herds of dappled, multi-coloured cattle with their wide horns and humped backs against 4 background of flat-topped acacia and golden savanna grasslands.
They filmed the herdboys bleeding a great black bull, twisting a leather thong around its neck to raise the congested vein beneath the skin, then piercing it with the point of an arrow and capturing the scarier stream of blood in a bottle-shaped calabash. When the gourd was half filled they sealed the wound in the bull's neck with a handful of clay, and topped up the calabash with milk stripped directly from the udder. Then they added a dash of cow's urine to curdle the mixture into thick cheesy curds. Low cholesterol, Daniel pointed out when Bonny gagged theatrically. And look at those Hita figures. I'm looking, Bonny assured him. Oh, hallelujah, I'm looking-" The men wore only a red blanket over one shoulder, held with a belt at the waist.
They allowed the skirts to flap open casually in the breeze, especially when Bonny was nearby. They let her film as much as she wished of everything they possessed, staring into the lens with masculine arrogance, the elongated loops of their earlobes stopped with bone and ivory earrings.
On the main road their Landrover passed ore trucks and logging trailers coming in the opposite direction. The weight of these massive vehicles, even though spread over a dozen axles and banks of massive tyres, rutted the road deeply and raised a fog of dust that covered the trees for a mile on both sides of the roadway with a thick coating of dark red talcum. Bonny gloried in the effect of the sunlight through the dust cloud and the shapes of the trucks lumbering out of it like prehistoric monsters.
When at last, on the second day, they crossed the river on the ferry and reached the edge of the great forests, even Bonny was awed by the height and girth of the trees. They're like pillars holding up the sky, she breathed as she turned her camera upon them. The quality of the air and light changed as they left the dry savannah behind them and entered this humid and lush forest world.
At first they followed the main highway with its milewic open verges.
Then, after fifty miles, they turned off on to one of the new development roads, freshly cut into the virgin forest.
The deeper they journeyed into the forest, the closer the trees crowded the roadway, until at last their high branches met overhead and they were in a tunnel filled with dappled and greenish light.
Even the bellow of the truck engines that passed them seemed muted, as though the trees were blanketing and absorbing the alien and offensive sound. The surface of the road had been corduroyed with logs laid side by side, and over this was spread a layer of flinty gravel to give the great trucks footing. The returning ore trucks bring the gravel back from the quarries near the lakeshore, Captain Kajo explained. If they did not, the road would become a bottomless swamp of mud. It rains almost every day here. Every mile or so there were gangs of hundreds of men and women working on the road, spreading gravel and laying new logs to hold the surface together.
Who are they? Daniel asked. Convicts, Kajo dismissed them lightly.
Instead of spending money keeping them locked up and fed, we let them work off their debt to society. A lot of convicts for such a small country, Daniel pointed out. You must have a lot of crime in Ubomo.
The Uhali are a bunch of rogues, thieves and troublemakers, Kajo explained and then shuddered as he looked beyond the toiling lines of prisoners to the impenetrable forest behind them.
Kajo was standing in front of Daniel, obscuring him for the moment with his six foot six height. Now he moved aside, and Daniel and the field-manager confronted each other. Mr. Chetti Singh, Daniel said softly. I never expected to see you again. What a great pleasure this is. The bearded Sikh stopped as though he had walked into a glass wall and stared at Daniel. You know each other? Captain Kajo asked. What a happy coincidence. We are old friends, Daniel replied. We share a common interest in wildlife, especially elephants and leopards. He was smiling as he extended his hand to Chetti Singh. How are you, Mr.
Singh?
Last time we met you had suffered a little accident, hadn't you?
Chetti Singh had turned a ghastly ashen colour beneath his dark complexion, but with an obvious effort he rallied from the shock. For a moment his eyes blazed and Daniel thought he might attack him. Then he accepted Daniel's pretence of friendliness, and tried to smile, but it was like an animal baring its teeth.
He reached out to accept Daniel's proffered handshake, but he used his left hand. His right sleeve was empty, folded back and pinned upon itself. The blunt outline of the stump showed through the striped cotton. Daniel saw that the amputation was below the elbow. It was a typical mauling injury. The leopard would have chewed the bone into fragments that no surgeon could knit together again. Although there were no scars or other injuries apparent at a glance, Chetti Singh's once portly body had been stripped of every ounce of superfluous fat and flesh. He was thin as an AIDS victim, and the white of his eyes had an unhealthy yellowish tinge. It was obvious that he had been through a bad time, and that he was not yet fully recovered.