Lions, Kisses and Petrodollars

By Gabriel Timar

Set in the late 1960s, the tumultuous love affair of Geoff and Michelle and a questionable real estate transaction in Canada are the backdrops to an accurate, though irreverent, humorous and politically incorrect still photograph of the post-independence of Africa.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: May 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781613093726

Book preview

Dedication

To Ilona

One

My head collided painfully with the curb, and my left arm dipped into the stinking liquid gently flowing in the narrow concrete trench, typical of every major city in Africa. Nairobi was no exception. Most of their sewers were open in the late 1960s.

Oh damn, I grunted. I tried to get up, but my legs were rubbery, and I couldn’t stand. Suddenly, two strong arms pulled me into a sitting position. Through the haze a friendly face appeared. "I will have to send your tuxedo to the cleaners again. Bwana, you should know when to stop."

The friendly face belonged to Marcus, my best friend and business partner. We usually called each other bwana, the Swahili equivalent of sir. I shook my head and tried again to stand, but my effort ended in dismal failure.

Stay put, Geoff, Marcus snapped. You are in no condition to go anywhere. I’ll bring the car around. Just do me a favor. Don’t move.

I realized I could not move, no matter how much I wanted to. I was too inebriated, and my ego demolished. Honest, I am not a habitual drunkard and disorderly person. I got into this unenviable predicament due to a small error in arithmetics, and perhaps an ill-considered move that compounded the minor incidents into a major catastrophe.

I had dinner in the Merry Poacher Inn, one of the favorite watering holes of our tribe. It seemed to be a good idea at the time, as all my friends and acquaintances agreed that one had to disinfect his insides before swallowing the magnificent food cooked by Chef Umbegheni. As alcohol is a disinfectant, I duly attempted the sterilization of my stomach by consuming a few shots of gin.

In the afternoon, Marcus had suggested that I should not drink too much in the evening, five shots max, because our clients were supposed to arrive in the morning. Unfortunately, when I drink, my arithmetics deteriorate. As I started counting the shots of gin I ordered, I lost count, and I had to start counting again. Finally, I lost count of how many times I lost count. However, I do not think my drinking was excessive.

Since the service was rather slow, purely for a little innocent fun I pinched the well-rounded bottom of Mimi, the waitress, when she cruised by my table. It was not a very good pinch, but it somehow upset her balance. She stumbled and poured the hot consommé onto the bejeweled neck of the matron at the next table, and all hell broke loose. I really do not understand why it happened, as I had first-hand, detailed knowledge of her derrière. Believe me, it could stand up to a much better pinch without flinching.

Anyway, the matron’s escort, a well-built, elderly gent in a ten-gallon hat, which I am sure he did not remove anywhere, stood up slowly, and came over to my table. Without a proper introduction that I considered most impolite, he wound up, and let a right-cross fly at my chin.

Obviously, he did not know me. Irrespective of the number of gins I had consumed, when it came to ducking, no one, but no one could compete with me. I ducked, and he missed. Apparently, he was not an experienced fighter, because after delivering the punch he lost his balance, fell over me and landed on the table behind mine, right in the middle of the lobster thermidor. Whatever followed has remained a little hazy ever since. I assume that Juma, the bouncer, threw me out. I do not know and do not care what happened to my attacker.

Just as Marcus brought up the Land Rover, I managed to stand.

"Get in, bwana," he said.

No. I am going back to teach Juma a lesson.

About two years before this incident, when he’d given me a similar low-cost flying lesson, I’d decided to do that. However, for one reason or another, I never got around to doing it. Instead, on the following day I’d sheepishly visited the manager, paid for the damages, given Juma a healthy baksheesh and reminded him sternly to be gentle next time.

Now, I meant it and lurched toward the Merry Poacher. However, I eventually made it to the car.

"Not today, bwana. You are not in good enough shape to take Juma. Besides, our clients will arrive in the morning. You must be fit and presentable."

As always, Marcus was right. As soon as we took off, I fell asleep. My next clear recollection of the world was the cold water running down my back. I was standing in the shower. How I got there and how I managed to undress, I do not know, but I am sure Marcus had something to do with it.

In a few minutes, the freezing cold water had resuscitated me. I dried myself after a fashion, wrapped a towel around my midriff, and staggered out of the bathroom. Marcus, fresh as a daisy, was sitting in the lounge nursing a pilsner. I flopped down on the armchair and looked at him.

For services rendered, he said and lifted the bottle.

I nodded. I did not have the strength to speak.

"You have a nasty cut on your forehead, bwana, Marcus continued. You should put a Band-Aid on it. If you wish, I can stitch it up. By the way, do you want a beer?"

I nodded again. In addition to his many talents, Marcus was a mind reader; the pilsner materialized. I grabbed the bottle by the throat and lifted it to my lips. Half of the beer went down in one swallow, and my sanity slowly returned. I looked at the cuckoo clock on the wall; it was eleven o’clock. It had to be p.m. because it was dark outside.

"Off to bed, bwana, Marcus said. The client’s plane will land at seven o’clock. I’ll wake you at six. Good night."

He pulled me up and delivered a smart, gentle kick in my butt. I was on my way. Even with such an excellent direction, it was quite a chore reaching my bed, but I managed to crawl into it, and slip into oblivion.

THE NEXT MORNING, MARCUS gently kicked me off the bed. It was easy for him; he did not have to go very far. Besides, for some unknown reason, he’d slept alone and woken without a hangover.

We shared a massive old house we had bought in mint condition shortly after Kenya became an independent country. It was built after the First World War for the British civil servants; during the colonial era, usually two junior officers had lived in it. However, the new masters of the country had thought it was not good enough for their civil servants and sold it to us for a measly five hundred pounds. The house was ideal for two wild and woolly bachelors. There was a sizeable living room and a dining area in the middle. The two large bedrooms, each with a bathroom, were at the opposite ends of the building.

My powers of recovery were amazing. Apart from a mild headache, I was all right. The cut on my forehead was not as bad as I thought. I decided that if anybody asked what happened, I would just grunt accident, nothing else. Most people would have assumed that a huge, souped-up engine attached to a sports car had supplied the motive power that caused the damage. Nobody would have dreamed that it was a three-hundred-pound Kikuyu bouncer named Juma.

I dressed carefully. I put on a faded but otherwise freshly starched, sleeveless safari jacket with matching trousers, a wide brimmed hat, and the appropriate desert boots. As the first impression is the most important, I had to project the proper image of the professional hunter since I made my living taking wealthy seekers of the lost magic of Africa hunting in the bush.

The less well-heeled individuals went on photo safaris and claimed that if one wished to acquire the appropriate souvenirs and impress the neighbors, it would not be necessary to kill animals. More often than not, the cloak of those environmentalists was cover for a thin pocketbook. Very few people could afford more than three thousand U.S. dollars a week for a proper hunting safari. It was a lot of money in those days. In comparison, the rest of the tourists paid only a couple of hundred bucks a week for a photo safari and shed crocodile tears over the notion of the barbaric hunters exterminating the wildlife in Africa.

For the record, it is utterly ridiculous to blame the licensed hunter for the extinction of certain species. He is after good trophies, coming from old males. Good wildlife management practices demand the culling of them anyway.

The real culprit was (and still is) the poacher whose agents sold giraffe and elephant-hair bracelets on Jomo Kenyatta Avenue to the tourists. The poacher got about three hundred shillings worth out of an illegally killed giraffe, when the hunting license for the same animal was somewhere in the neighborhood of two thousand shillings, not to mention the astronomical fee of someone like me. It was obviously cheaper to be an environmentalist and buy the bracelet on the street from the poacher.

At six thirty, Marcus and I left for the airport. Since first impressions are lasting, as a matter of policy, I reserved the most battered, tiger-striped, white Land Rover exclusively for picking up the clients.

Those were the good old days when the steel and concrete monstrosity of the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport was only a distant nightmare. The old Nairobi Airport had proper character; it resembled a railway station more than anything else.

The privilege of entering into the restricted area to greet my clients on the tarmac cost me a few shillings, but it was worth every penny as it made them feel important.

The Lufthansa plane arrived on time. I held a little sign in my hand with the name Parmentier on it. According to the unofficial intelligence report of my agent in Switzerland, the new clients were the owners of a nightclub chain somewhere in the south of France.

The couple stepping up to me certainly looked the part. Only a nightclub owner would travel to Africa on a hunting safari wearing a dark, pinstriped, woolen suit. Looking at them, I immediately concluded that the business had to be very lucrative to permit the acquisition and support of such a fabulous woman. In my estimation, Mr. Parmentier was at least sixty. He was short and dumpy, just like a nightclub owner should be. On the other hand, Mrs. Parmentier was in her mid-twenties; the elegant, designer outfit accentuated her coke-bottle-like figure, and the fire in her dark eyes could have solved the heating problems of many arctic communities.

After the introductions, I took their passports and whisked them through immigration. I regularly paid considerable bribes to the officials and had a good relationship with them. Besides, I always slipped a five-pound note to the customs inspector to overlook the excessive quantities of booze and cigarettes my clients invariably imported despite my repeated warnings. It strikes me funny that a person paying three thousand dollars a week for the services of my firm without flinching begrudges the one-dollar tax on a carton of cigarettes for the same week.

Before I returned the passports to my clients, I used to take a sneak look at them just to make sure I’d guessed the lady’s age correctly. As much as statistics prove anything, my own statistics proved that I estimated them accurately. This time I was wrong. Mrs. Parmentier was thirty-four and her real name was Michelle Leclerc.

The fact that she was not Parmentier’s wife did not surprise me at all. For some inexplicable reason, more than half of the so-called wives who accompanied my clients on hunting safaris carried passports with their maiden names in them.

We cleared the baggage, and the porters took it to my vehicle. I helped the couple into the uncomfortable back seats of the Land Rover and slid into the front seat.

"Kwnda na Norfolk," I told Marcus, sitting behind the steering wheel. As I had to promote the proper image, I told him in poor Swahili to drive us to the hotel where I’d reserved rooms for my clients.

Marcus spoke better English than I did, or for that matter better French, Spanish, Italian, and American than most of our clients. He was a civilized, cultured individual who would have given a very good account of himself even at the royal court, but good business relations demanded that he often act the noble savage. He used to do it so well.

"Ndio, bwana." He agreed, and trod on the accelerator.

Marcus’ driving was his only personality trait I hated. Not that he was a bad driver...quite to the contrary. He was exceptionally good. Therefore, he took as many liberties on the road as he could. Actually, his driving was the first lesson for the would-be big game hunters, as they had to learn fear and discomfort. To accomplish that, my friend’s driving and the back seat of the Land Rover was an eminently suitable combination.

We worked out a standard route from the airport to the hotel. We turned off the paved main road and raced through a small shantytown. All the goats and chickens knew our Land Rover by sight and kept off the road when we appeared, but the people were less careful. Occasionally Marcus needed all his skills to avoid running over someone.

Leaving the built-up area, we went into several hairpin curves. Marcus negotiated them with controlled skids a few inches from the stone-lined ditch. Following the last tight curve, we hit the asphalt road in a posh residential area. Marcus always slowed down considerably to let the clients see how upper class Kenyans lived.

On the main asphalt road, he had another trick up his sleeve. Where white-clad, Pitt-helmeted policemen stood on wooden boxes directing the traffic expertly with their batons, the vehicles moved at a sedate speed. Sticking to the speed limit, Marcus drove on, but he cleared the traffic cops’ pedestals only by half an inch. Although he did not break the law, the policemen were terrified of him. Some of them jumped off the box and risked being hit by a passing vehicle, before running for the safety of the sidewalk. Allegedly, they’d asked the commissioner to build large, concrete pedestals, but their request had been denied.

Navigating among the poorly maintained, colorful trucks, Marcus always cleared the brakeless vehicles by a hair’s breadth. Although the purpose of the drive from the airport was to scare our clients, it tested my allegedly iron nerves as well.

I sighed with relief when the Land Rover rolled to a gentle halt at the Norfolk Hotel. I swiftly extricated the Parmentiers from the back seat. Marcus’ driving had the desired effect because they did not walk steadily. I escorted them to the reception desk, and for the sake of formalities, I asked them if they had reasonable outfits.

I am afraid we had no time to shop for appropriate hunting apparel, Michelle said. At home, hunters must wear ugly red coats. Since its color is outlandish, and its material is too thick, we thought of buying something here.

I’d never heard of the French authorities prescribing red colored jackets for hunters, but I assumed she knew better as they came from France.

It was a good idea, ma’am. You can get the best of the best locally.

There is an outfitter’s store over there, Parmentier said, interrupting. They say they can make a safari suit within twenty four hours.

I wouldn’t go near them if I were you, sir, I said.

Why? he asked in a surprised tone.

The firm is operated by the local mafia. Granted, they turn out impressive safari suits, but they do not make them, just take the measurements and promise super safari suits second to none. Actually, they pick the suits up at their warehouse, then remove the manufacturers’ label and replace it with a large, gold-colored marker saying the world-famous Mwangi Tailors made and personalized the outfit to the specifications of Mr. or Mrs. so and so. The most exhausting work is the embroidery of the clients’ names. For this service, they charge the measly sum of one thousand shillings per suit. Needless to say, one could buy the same outfit at Woolworth’s for two hundred shillings, albeit without the exclusive label.

This is the fleecing of the tourists, Michelle said in an offended tone.

I’m afraid you are right, ma’am. Although some of them don’t mind a little bit of fleecing as long as the final product is impressive and creates the illusion of excellence. The Mwangi labels amply fulfill those requirements, I said.

What are you suggesting? Where can we buy safari suits?

After lunch I shall take you to a proper tailor and guarantee you will get value for your money.

How much will those suits cost? Michelle asked.

It depends on the material you select. For the tailoring, you will pay one hundred to one hundred and fifty shillings.

I am looking forward to visiting them, Parmentier said.

I’ll be back at one thirty and take you to the place, I said.

I always stayed at the reception desk until the bellboys whisked my clients away to their rooms. I wanted to be sure they were satisfied with the accommodation. In case they had any complaints, I was immediately available to champion their cause. While I wait, I chat with the receptionists.

Once I brought an American couple to the Norfolk. While talking to Andrea, the chief receptionist, an ear-piercing scream cut into the silence of the hotel. We had no time to react, as my client’s scantily clad wife rushed into the lobby.

There is a large snake by the window, she said breathlessly.

Where is your husband? we asked.

He locked himself in the bathroom. I want to get out of here. I’m fed up with Africa, she said, completely out of