The Constant Gardener

They approached the camp. On a patch of red dust beside the main gates, children were playing basketball with a white food bag nailed to a wooden post. Judith led Ghita to reception to collect her pass. Signing the book, Ghita leafed casually back, only to have it fall open at the page she was pretending not to look for:

Tessa Abbott, PO box, Nairobi, Tukul 28.

A. Bluhm, Medecins de l'Univers, Tukul 29.

And the same date.

"The press boys had a ball," Judith was saying enthusiastically. "Reuben charged them fifty U.S. a shot, cash. Eight hundred bucks total, that's eight hundred sets of drawing books and coloring crayons. Reuben reckons that'll produce two Dinka van Goghs, two Dinka Rembrandts and one Dinka Andy Warhol."

Reuben the legendary camp organizer, Ghita remembered. Congolese. Friend of Arnold's.

They were walking down a wide avenue of tulip trees, their fiery red trumpets brilliant against overhead cables and white-painted tukuls with thatched roofs. A lank Englishman like a prep-school master rode sedately past them on an old-fashioned policeman's pushbike. Seeing Judith he rang his bell and gave her a lovely wave.

"Showers and honey boxes across the road from you, first session tomorrow eight a.m. sharp, meet in the doorway to hut thirty-two," Judith announced, as she showed Ghita to her quarters. "Mosquito spray beside your bed, use the net if you're wise. Care to mosey down to the club around sunset for a beer before dinner?"

Ghita would.

"Well, look out for yourself. Some of the boys are pretty hungry when they come back from the field."

Ghita tried to sound casual. "Oh by the by, there's a woman called Sarah," she said. "She was some kind of a friend of Tessa's. I wondered whether she was around so that I could say hullo to her."

She unpacked her things and, armed with her sponge bag and towel, set out bravely across the avenue. Rain had fallen, damping the din from the airfield. The dangerous hills had turned black and olive. The air smelled of gasoline and spices. She showered, returned to her tukul and sat herself before her work notes at a rickety table where, sweating helplessly, she lost herself in the intricacies of Aid Self-Sufficiency.

* * *

Loki's clubhouse was a spreading tree with a long thatched roof under it, a drinks bar with a mural of jungle fauna and a video projector that threw fuzzy images of a long-dead soccer match onto a plastered wall while the sound system belted out African dance music. Shrieks of delighted recognition pierced the evening air as aid workers from distant places rediscovered each other in different languages, embraced, touched faces and walked arm in arm. This should be my spiritual home, she thought wistfully. These are my rainbow people. Their classlessness, their racelessness, their zeal, their youth are mine. Sign up for Loki and tune in to saintliness! Bum around in aeroplanes, enjoy a romantic self-image and the adrenalin of danger! Get your sex out of a tap and a nomadic life that keeps you clear of entanglements! No dreary office work and always a bit of grass to smoke along the way! Glory and boys when I come out of the field, money and more boys waiting for me on my R and R! Who needs more?

I do.

I need to understand why this mess was necessary in the first place. And why it's necessary now. I need to have the courage to say after Tessa at her most vituperative: "Loki sucks. It has no more right to exist than the Berlin Wall. It's a monument to the failure of diplomacy. What the hell's the point of running a Rolls-Royce ambulance service when our politicians do nothing to prevent the accidents?"