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Chapter Thirty Two
- LANGAA RPCIG
- Chapter
- Additional Information
217 Chapter Thirty Two T he actual explanation of what had happened was so bizarre that it was as difficult to believe as the completely unexpected circumstances by which the facts suddenly dropped into the laps of the astonished stockholders. The AIR AFRIQUE bird arrived Douala and departed for Bangui on schedule. The first sign of trouble was the weather. It was a rough flight from the beginning, and halfway through they ran into such bad weather that plane jerked for about ten minutes, frightening to death people like Madam Genevieve and Limen Isidore who had never flown. Huge columns of cloud mixed with heavy rain lashed at the plane, forcing it to fly up this way, down that way. Then when Bangui was sighted they couldn’t land because of fog and heavy rain in the run way. The pilot, an Italian veteran, circled the town for about ten minutes and was about to decide to go back to Douala or Ndjamena when the weather suddenly cleared. He plunged into the airport like a kingfisher diving for a fish. The passengers screamed and clung to each other until the plane bounced and skidded to a halt. It was 1.15 in the afternoon. They went through the Customs and police and Gendarmes without the slightest problem. It was when they left the airport building that the nightmare began. They had not expected Lee Ping Yung and his men to be at the Customs or Police. But they should have been hanging around and making themselves visible while they presented 218 Linus T. Asong their passports to the police. This had not happened. They had imagined as they emerged from the airport building brandishing their stickers of CRABS AND SHELLS CAMEROON, to find a crowd of Chinese in green aprons and yellow baseball caps waiting anxiously to receive them. Outside the airport building there were only a handful of people. Bangui International Airport is not amongst the busiest in the world and after the other few passengers who had travelled with them took taxis away the place was empty. There were no signs of green aprons and yellow caps. Perhaps the Lee Ping Yung team got the time wrong. They gave themselves five more minutes, which stretched to ten, fifteen, twenty and then thirty. Thoroughly confused, they went first this way and then that way like the lost sheep that they really were. During this time, Cranford completely hid his face from that of Madam Genevieve whom he believed must be staring accusingly at him. But, she was not even looking at Cranford. With a resigned acceptance of her fate she followed the others silently. Irritability turned to bitterness and bitterness turned to desperation. Then they all sighted a diminutive white man coming towards the airport building. “That must be our man,”. “Here comes our man,” somebody reported excitedly. Everybody sprang to their feet and immediately charged towards the little man who for a while was both afraid and embarrassed by so many people marching towards him. He turned and started walking back with quickened steps when Mr. Godfred Mukulu Foso, the Customs Inspector stepped forward and persuaded him to listen to them. He greeted the panic-stricken gentleman and proceeded to introduce himself, their mission and their problem: “I am Godfred Mukulu Foso, retired Customs Inspector. I am a member of the CRABS AND SHELLS team from Cameroon. These are my colleagues, they are all members. [44.204.218.79] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 01:39 GMT) 219 The Crabs of Bangui We are the team that was to come here today. You must be Mr. Lee Ping Yung.” The rest of the story was continued on the veranda into the airport building because of the threat of rain. Still visibly trembling with fear. the man looked at them uncomprehendingly and said curtly in a mixture of bad French and English: “Ei em tourist, merci, excusez,” Cranford was brought in to talk to him. The man was a Japanese tourist, knew only one Chinese family whose abode he was willing to lead the visitors to. He had never heard of CRABS AND SHELLS, but that may be perhaps because he was a stranger. The Chinese man he led them to was a very old skinny, little, smiling man who ran a restaurant of oriental foods. He had been doing that for 25 years, spoke English, Spanish and Russian very well. He also spoke French. When shown copies of...