Living for Disco

“The boys room, it is not ok”, I said to Father Ethelbert, after shepherding the said boys to their cowshed. I took one look at the bathroom, and I knew all was lost. Something dark streaked the walls, and I’m damn sure it wasn’t water. When we reached the room things deteriorated.

“This room is mostly for little kids”, explained our guide, shamefacedly, as we took in the rickety beds, stained mattresses, and lively resident insect population. Something in the room smelled unpleasant. Job picked up one of the mattresses, gingerly by a corner. “That would be why there are piss stains on the mattresses” he said, bluntly.

“Ahahaha. No, that is only rain water. The roof, it has holes in it.” I slapped a mutant mosquito the size of a small dog off my leg, and looked outside at the gathering storm clouds with despair.

“So, Father, we need to move the boys. Their room it is not ok”. He sat across from me, nodding gently, and stroking his beard.

“This room, it is for small children. We cannot house the small children in the supervisors’ house, because they do not know how to treat things right. They might put newspaper down the toilets”. I thought of the horrors in the dingy bathroom I had just seen and shuddered.

“Yes, but these boys, they are not small children. And they cannot sleep in that room. Can we bring some mattresses over to the supervisors’ house, and they can sleep on the floor?”

Father Ethelbert hummed and hawed. He went into great detail about their responsibility to the people who may own the guest house next time.

“So you see, if we are to put the little children in the supervisors’ house, then if we sell this place, the next people, they will be hearing ‘But Father Ethelbert, he put the little children in the supervisors’ house, so why do you not do it?’, and then they will give us a bad name, because we make their business difficult. Do you understand me?”

I thought perhaps he was being a little too concerned about some imaginary future buyers who may or may not have a problem with putting little children in the supervisors’ house, despite the fact that housing little children in a chilly, damp, foul-smelling cowshed could constitute child abuse, but I chose not to say this for fear that my negotiations would collapse.

“I understand. Of course. But these boys, they are not little children.” I looked over at the five hulking specimens of youth, who sat stony faced, watching Mariah Carey shriek about something on Divine Divas, while the other Father sat quietly waiting for them to leave so that he could watch a badly dubbed Mexican soap called When You Are Mine on NBC, in which everyone swigs tequila, and a man called Diego wanders around with a squirrel on his head, looking constipated, and saying things like “I will resign from Café Telero and return to the hacienda for the sake of my unborn baby. And I will never see Paloma again. But our love will be strong for eternity”.

After some protracted negotiations, Father Ethelbert agreed to give me a discounted price for allowing the boys to sleep on the floor in a spare room in the house. Obstacle one, successfully overcome.

I thought that I was free at this point, but Father Ethelbert had other ideas.

“Come”, he said, as I was about to depart to eat my dinner. “We have much to discuss.”

Apparently, Father Ethelbert had a problem with the fact that our original booking, for which they had received the fax without a hitch, had been for 26 people. It had since been reduced to 21 people, but the fax informing them of the reduction had mysteriously not arrived.

“So you see, we have already bought all of the food, and no-one will eat it, so it must be paid for.”

“That’s no problem Father. We thought that that might be the case in some places, so we are prepared to pay you for 26 people, but we would like to make sure that all the food is provided. These young people, they eat a lot!” I envisioned a mountain of food being attacked and devoured by a rampaging horde of teenagers. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. They’re like locusts.

Father Ethelbert nodded, and stroked his beard.

“Yes, but do you understand. We had to buy all the food. We didn’t receive a fax saying that the booking had changed. We must now charge you for all the food.”

I agreed once more to pay for 26 people, rather than 21.

“But, do you understand my point of view?” he insisted. “We had to buy all the food…”

I sat there, dumbfounded. I wondered when he was going to get the message that I was prepared to pay for all the food. I was hungry, and I was imagining my dinner being heartily devoured by a horde of rampaging teenagers, intent on nothing but shoveling food into their heads. They invariably left a mess of plates and food all over the floor and the table, despite my protestations, and exhortations to them to ‘clean up after yourselves – where are your manners?’ I found myself wanting to say “Were you raised in a barn?”, and “What about all the starving children in Africa – a family could survive on what you’ve thrown on the floor”, but thought it best to keep that to myself. In any case, I knew that when I finally got there all that would be on offer was a pile of scraps. My stomach growled. I tuned back into Father Ethelbert just as he was earnestly repeating “Do you understand my point of view?”

“Yes! I appreciate your fucking point of view. I’ll pay for the fucking food. Alright? Jesus, Mary and Joseph, will you just shut the fuck up and let me eat my dinner?”

Of course I didn’t say this out loud. I was brought up to be polite. Also, I’ve already managed to offend one Catholic priest since I’ve been here. I thought perhaps another one might doom me to an eternity of fire and brimstone. And earlier in the day I was responsible for overseeing a condom demonstration in the Roman Catholic Mission Hall, so as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, I’m probably skating on thin ice.

So I amid much protesting and ‘do you understand’ing, I wrote Father Ethelbert a cheque in the hope that the sight of the money would actually bring home to him the message that my words were failing to deliver. “May I have an invoice and a receipt?” I asked wearily, as I pushed the money across the table into his waiting hands.

Thus ensued a protracted session of mental arithmetic that went like this:

“Hmm. Five times forty, it is what….”

“Two hundred.”

“Wait, wait. Five times forty…” Scribble, scribble. Cross out. Scribble. “Ah, two hundred. Now, add that to this, what is six times sixty?”

“Three hundred and sixty”.

“Wait. Hmmm.” Scribble, scribble. “Ah, wait. What were we doing before? What is this two hundred? How many people are in the supervisors’ house?”

Many hours later I arrived for my dinner.

It’s a good thing that steamed cabbage is not popular with the youth of Namibia.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 27th, 2006 at 9:31 am and is filed under Under African Skies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.