The Crabs of Bangui

Chapter Eleven

83 Chapter Eleven F rom Kumba he left for Douala. It is said that good deeds are never wasted, that they are like money in the bank which you could call on when the going is tough. This was precisely what happened to Hansel as he drove towards Douala. Having created the impression that he was in working relationship with the Chinese, it was imperative for him to know somebody in or out of the country who had connections with people from the Oriental or Chinese zone. It occurred to him that once upon a Saturday afternoon when he was sojourning in Douala he stumbled on a gentleman of oriental stock. He didn’t know him at the time. The man was surrounded by a noisy gang of young men. A member of the gang had found a ten thousand franc note just as the man passed by. The young man had drawn his attention to the money which he had picked up and ran up to the man and tried to persuade him that it was his money. The man was just lucky that he did not take the money because, in the first place, it was counterfeit and the next thing they would have done would have been to call in the police, claiming that he had tried to buy something from them with the counterfeit. When in the end the man refused to take the money they suddenly fabricated a charge against him. It was at the New Deido Market, the most disorderly and noisy as well as insecure place one could ever imagine on earth: behind basins of garri or beans which themselves stood on dead rats, rotten banana peelings a woman stood advertising second hand pants at the top of her voice. Amidst bundles of plantains were meat sellers, children, some as young as 84 Linus T. Asong four, sold bitter kola or sweets or biscuits; sellers of exercise books mingled with vendors of shoes, umbrellas, each trying to outdo the other in shouting to attract customers. There were no public toilets, any form of shelter stank of human wastes because men, women and children took advantage of the shelter to relieve themselves. There was everything in that market (it was rumoured that human skulls were available!), the problem was how to search for it since sheds were not numbered and the market was not mapped out according to the various items. Rats bigger than any pussycat could be seen fighting with dogs over some decaying foodstuff. The rats in Douala were a breed apart, giving rise to the popular belief that they were mostly human beings who had transformed. They were not afraid to sit in the parlour and watch television with human occupants of the house. They wouldn’t fall into any rat trap, wouldn’t go near any poisoned food and would scream like human beings when caught accidentally. People going to hunt them armed themselves as if they were going to fight lions, with sticks and cutlasses. And when hurt, a Douala rat would cry like a human child, shedding tears in the process. There is a story of a certain rat that, when caught, wept and pleaded for mercy in the Douala dialect. It was in this market that another white man who had been trailed, left his wife sitting in the car and went into a textile shop. A gang showed up suddenly and carried the woman out of the car as she screamed for help. Her husband hearing her wife’s voice ran out to find her struggling in mid air in the hands of bandits. He flung his brief case in his car and ran to rescue his wife. Immediately, another bandit opened the car and carried away the targeted item. The bandits soon released the woman, but his bag was gone. In the middle of all this confusion and sweltering heat, the tiny white man stood trapped on a trumped up charge, a total stranger, being accused of trying to entice an under- 85 The Crabs of Bangui aged girl with money with the intention of taking her away and defiling her. The man who vigorously denied the charge was having a very hard time expressing or defending himself. All they wanted to do was to get him into a situation in which he would lose his laptop computer or some money or both...