parade. The car, which already smelt oddly, picked up more nauseating stenches as the tires grew thicker with mincemeat of unattended waste. At one point, she thought she saw a man lying in the middle of the road, perhaps dead, but no one bothered to stop and help, her own driver included. She fumed, but conversation between them was difficult, as what the taxi man said seemed to suggest the man was catching up on sleep in preparation to lose sleep as a night watchman.
If she hadn’t done her background reading, she might have thought Sawang had been at the heart of a savage war and bombing in which chaos had mass murdered order. She knew Mimboland as the peaceful armpit of a turbulent Africa, and now she was being forced to reappraise what the books had told her by the bumpy reality of a city hardly at peace with itself. The city’s roads and refuse had been totally neglected, just as the air conditioning, toilets and other facilities at the nightmare of an airport. It was as if Mimboland had gone for decades without a government, for not even a warzone devastated by warlords and years of reckless abandon could look this miserable and disabled.
She was glad to be heading for Puttkamerstown, as she simply couldn’t stand Sawang.
Though empathetic to him, Lilly Loveless was also suspicious that the taxi man was not in a hurry to bring her to her destination. He exasperated her with his backstreet options, indirections and indecisions, but she was too scared to put her foot down. The car lurched along bumpily, yet no university was in view.
At one point, the taxi man stopped abruptly and turned to her. “Whosai you say you di go?” he asked. It was evident he either didn’t know the University, or he was simply eating up time in the hope of squeezing even more out of her.
“University of Mimbo!” she screamed and rolled her eyes, barely containing her mounting impatience. She could see he looked equally perplexed. She gathered courage and forced him to ask for directions.
“That’s far away from here, way out of the city,” a bendskin rider told them. “You’re in the wrong place, wrong direction,” the man looked questioningly at the taxi man, as if asking what he was doing with a taxi in a city he mastered so little. “Turn left, left again at the first roundabout, drive straight ahead for three hundred metres or so, make a right turn after the mango orchards, and drive on, looking out for the signposts for directions.”
Lilly Loveless took down notes, not sure her driver understood a thing. She would guide him. They thanked the Good Samaritan bendskin rider, and made a U-turn.
Lilly Loveless could see there were hundreds of motor bike riders like the one who had given them directions. They were picking up and dropping off passengers, apparently much abler to negotiate the potholes and traffic than the taxis that competed with them. She also noticed people on bicycles, some with crates of eggs mounted behind them. They seemed to ride so nonchalantly, unaware of the risk that, with one too-quick movement of the handlebars, a whole day of earnings could be smashed to the pavement in white and yellow glowing and moving globs punctuated by broken shells.
There was this lady, mounted on her bike, doubtless on her way to somewhere important, as she was not stopping for passengers. Lilly Loveless admired the strapless top she wore, made of a print fabric with leopard and tiger designs combined. Her two-toned braids matched her top. Some were gathered loosely on the back of her head while others tumbled to grace the space between her bare shoulders. Her long brown trousers were wide and her heels, braced against the pavement briefly for traffic to ease up, were high. Her handbag waited obediently over the handlebar of her bike…
There were lots of people on foot as well, furious and provocative in their busy-ness. The stench emitted by the farting gutters and refuse mountains made them spit in the streets as if in a spitting competition.
A few kilometres on, a nervous Lilly Loveless asked in silence: “Didn’t he turn the wrong way again?” Not to, said a voice in her, he’ll find his way.
Whatever the sights of Sawang and its inhabitants, Lilly Loveless’ mind was firmly on her fate. She was full of anecdotes about the unpredictability of this land of Mimbo, and it appeared the Mimbo people themselves made no secret of the attribute, as they would proudly proclaim: “Nothing is impossible in Mimboland.”
Lilly Loveless couldn’t contain her joy when the taxi man, after an hour and a half of countless contours and detours, eventually stopped at the entrance to the university still under active construction. A white banner held together by wooden poles and scaffolding had “University of Mimbo” inscribed in bold black letters, followed by “The Place to Be” in a much, much smaller font, almost impossible to read from any distance. She made a mental note of the contrast. She would ask Dr Wiseman Lovemore if there was more to the inscription than met the eye, although she had read somewhere that young Mimbolanders were reluctant to study at home, preoccupied as they were with dreams of seeking authentic qualifications from Muzunguland. A tall fence was being constructed around the university campus. This also she made a mental note of. She had read that this twenty-year-old university was one of the youngest in Mimboland, but she didn’t know it was this fledging, if her eyes and first impressions were to be trusted.
The plainclothes, casually dressed security guard in rubber sandals inspected the documents of the taxi man but would not touch the passport Lilly Loveless instinctively tendered him. “No need,” he smiled, and let them through.
“Dis na university, farm for book people,” said the taxi man, half serious, half mocking.
Lilly Loveless smiled comfortably for the first time since the airport.
“Whosai you wan maka drop you?”
“Department of Social Work,” she said, fidgeting with her trousers to untie her money belt.
The guard indicated the way and the taxi man proceeded to the Faculty of Social Sciences. “Ma road end for ya,” he announced, stretching out his hand.
Lilly Loveless handed him Mim$20,000, a stiff look in her eyes.
He got the message, thanked her, and drove away, a broad smile on his face. Even without the bonus he had hoped for, he was satisfied to have met a client who paid generously. Neither his wife nor his girlfriend would call him “Japanese handbrake” today. But first, he would head for the nearest kiosk to place his bet and hope on his favourite Muzunguland horse, and then prepare himself to watch the race on TV, sponsored by Pari Mutuel Urbain Mimbolandais.
It didn’t take Lilly Loveless long to locate Dr Wiseman Lovemore. He was quite well known – a solid presence on campus à la Dustbin. The first person she asked was able to take her right to his office, where he was explaining to a female student behind closed doors aspects of a lecture she had either missed or not understood, or had insisted on having as a private tutorial.
This would never happen in Muzunguland, a lecturer alone with a female student in his office, with the door closed, the thought crossed Lilly Loveless’ mind as she introduced herself.
Short, thick, big-headed, almost neck-less, and with eyes like a butterfly in a flower garden, Dr Wiseman Lovemore welcomed his guest with a smile, his mind at work – a hunter contemplating his tools in the face of game. He fumbled between an offer of tea and a seat, as he dismissed the student, mumbling something about continuing the exercise later.
Lilly Loveless was keener on sorting things out right away, so she declined the tea, which normally she would have loved, as the weather was chilly and tea with her was a way of life.
“Sorry we missed each other at the airport,” Dr Wiseman Lovemore shook hands with her warmly, slightly uncomfortable with her height and sharp, blue eyes that seemed to absorb everything they
