The message from the Regional Director was sparse and uncompromising—no explanations, only urgency. He should leave at once. His destination lay fifty miles away through the jungle: a small, isolated trading post on the Katsina Ala River. A new agent had arrived there with his young wife and a six-week-old baby. A garbled report had come in. The woman was ill. How ill, no one could say. Reggie was to go, assess the situation, and decide whether a doctor was needed. If so, he was to arrange her immediate evacuation to Oturkpo hospital.
Arriving in Nigeria with the arrogance of a young man certain the world would yield to him, the map had seemed an invitation. But the country corrected him firmly and without drama. Fever came insidiously. Men disappeared into transfers, into illness, into silence. The heat was relentless, as was the rain. Nothing and nobody here cared for his endurance as a District Officer (DO). Every miscalculation carried consequences. He was no longer moved by adventure. It was habit. And beneath that habit lay a fatigue so deep it felt less like weariness and more like surrender. When he returned to Keffi, he would request a transfer. This would be his last hurrah.
Setting out before dawn, Reggie and his driver muscled through fifty miles of road little more than a thin, torn, twisting track gouged out of the jungle, until at last it surrendered them to the Katsina Ala. A rumbling, surging enormity— almost a quarter of a mile wide—moving with steady, relentless energy—it lay before them, mud-brown and grumbling, its vast surface boiling with buried, baleful power.
The riverbank teemed with tumult; traders hawking their wares demanding his attention, porters arguing price, the pungent smell of drying fish and diesel fumes clogging the air. Reggie stood at the water’s edge, momentarily transfixed, the noise and commotion swirling around him while the river itself seemed to pass, patient and indifferent. But even amidst this chaos and grandeur, and having only recently learned about it, he was obsessing about his wife’s infidelity.
There was no ferry. The only way across was by a dugout canoe with three paddlers, but with every possibility of being swept downstream, or by a motorized one.
Leaving his driver with the truck, he crossed alone; the canoe juddering over the turbulent water, the outboard motor screaming as if something had it by the throat. The river bucked beneath, nettled, irritated by the intrusion. Lean and fit, he quickly hiked the quarter of a mile uphill, to the trading post and the DO’s rest house, under a searing, savage sun, sweat stinging his eyes, soaking his shirt.
Three small cinder-block bungalows, crudely painted white, their corrugated iron roofs already blistered by the sun, each with a narrow verandah barely wide enough to justify the name, sat huddled together. As Reggie approached, several fly-bitten dogs barked furiously, straining at their chains, kicking up clouds of red dust. A young, bearded man stepped out of the largest bungalow. His crumpled, soiled clothing hung as if they had outlived the man inside it; his face hollowed by fatigue, and his eyes—red-rimmed and unfocused—were bruised with exhaustion, the stare of someone sleep had abandoned.
He gaped, unsure whether he was seeing an apparition.
“I’m Reginald Hughes-Smithson. DO from Keffi. I’ve come to see whether you require help.”
Relief flickered across the man’s face. “Thank God. Yes—yes, thank you. I’m Larry Hastings. Oakman Rice Enterprises. It’s my wife. She’s the one who’s ill.”
Inside the sitting room, the air was heavy and stale. In a corner draped with a mosquito net stood a small cot, and inside, a tiny sleeping infant, impossibly small and pale—the first white baby Reggie had seen in Nigeria. The man led him down a narrow hallway into the bedroom.
A young woman lay on the bed; her body a frail, faint form beneath a flimsy sheet. Perspiration plastered her blond hair to her scalp in wet, uneven patches, the sweat running down her temples like a waxwork left too long in the sun. Turning her head, she looked at him through yellowed, bloodshot eyes, bleary and barely able to focus. Reggie introduced himself, speaking softly, carefully. She nodded faintly, then whispered to her husband, asking him to prepare food for their guest.
“Did you take her temperature?” Reggie asked quietly.
Larry hesitated, then reached for a large, cheap, metal wall thermometer on the nightstand. “This is all I have,” he said, defensively, noticing Reggie’s expression. “I put it under her arm. It’s difficult. She’s been running a fever—ninety-nine.”
Reggie said nothing. Unsure of what to expect, he had brought a small first-aid kit containing two medical thermometers. After wiping one with alcohol, he placed it carefully under the woman’s tongue and waited.
His stomach tightened as he read it. “One hundred and three. How long has she been like this?”
“Four days. No, maybe five.”
“Then why didn’t you take her to hospital?”
“She won’t go. Insists it’s only a fever. Says the baby’s too young for the journey.”
“And treatment?”
“I increased her antimalarial prophylaxis. It’s all I have.”
Reggie sent a houseboy with a note to his driver, addressed to the doctor in Oturkpo thirty miles away. He noted the temperature, adding that the woman had been sick for several days, and urged him to come quickly. A canoe would be waiting at first light.
By nightfall, Larry was visibly shaken. His wife had become delirious; her words dissolving into incoherent fragments. Reggie checked her temperature again; it had risen.
****
When the canoe arrived, it carried not only the doctor but also the local education officer, who claimed he was unwell.
“It’s good to see you,” Reggie said. “Hughes-Smithson, DO from Keffi.”
The doctor shook hands firmly. Short, bearded, deeply sunburned arms and legs, his eyes had the classic crow’s feet and squint of somebody who’d spent years in the tropics. His sallow complexion the telltale sign of years of taking quinine as an anti-malaria prophylaxis. He spoke with a broad Scottish accent. A battered Panama hat sat low on his head, and a large, scuffed, leather medical case hung over his shoulder.
“Jamieson,” he said. “Angus. But how the hell did you get here?”
Reggie gave a brief, humorless smile. “Regional orders.”
“Well,” Jamieson said, “let’s take a look. Where is she?”
****
The doctor quickly emerged, his face set and drained. “She’s dying,” he said flatly. “Probably typhoid. Rose spots—breasts and abdomen. But I need to do an interval blood count. Luckily, I’ve brought my field microscope.”
“It’s typhoid, all right,” Angus announced later. “There’s nothing I can do here. She won’t last the night. I’ve given her a sedative.”
Reggie took Larry to the DO’s rest house. The education officer joined them shortly afterwards, looking unexpectedly recovered.
“We need a wet nurse immediately,” Reggie said. “If the baby isn’t fed, it will die.”
The education officer nodded. “I’ll speak to my cook’s wife. She’s nursing.”
After a siesta, the doctor and the DO walked around the compound, looking at the small school under construction and chatted with the guard of the produce storage sheds on the wharf.
****
The joyless dinner was long over when Reggie saw a flicker of light through the window—the doctor’s torch bobbing toward the house, sweeping deliberately along the ground. The compound, they had warned him earlier, was notorious for snakes.
He did not sit down.
“She’s gone.”
The words landed with a finality that no one tried to soften.
“Larry,” he said gently, “your first responsibility now is the baby.”
The words broke him. Weeping uncontrollably, he slumped in an armchair, barely moving, his eyes fixed on the ticking clock above the door.
“Yes… yes, I know,” he muttered at last. “But please. First—please—get her out of the house.”
Angus and Reggie exchanged glances and went out into the night. Near the rest house stood a small outbuilding used as a first-aid center. They found a stretcher. The woman’s body was still warm as they silently carried her there.
One message was sent across the river instructing the driver to return to Oturkpo, inform the sanitary superintendent of the death, and to bring a coffin. Another went to the nearby Dutch Mission, requesting someone—anyone—to come and care for the baby.
“Are you sure you wish to leave the body here?”
The voice came out of the darkness. A man approached, holding up a kerosene light; his facial markings identifying him as from the north. Reggie greeted him in Hausa.
“I’m responsible for this center,” the man said. “This is Tiv country. There are secret societies here—the Mbatsav. Some still practice ritual cannibalism. If word spreads that a white woman has died, they will try to steal the body.”
Reggie thanked him, then he and Angus moved the corpse—this time to the trading area. Finding an almost empty storeroom, they laid the corpse across two palm-oil barrels.
Twenty minutes later, the guard came running up the hill.
“Sirs,” he said urgently, “there are many rats in that building. They have already smelled the body.”
Had it not been so tragic, Reggie thought, it might have been a farce: dragging the body of a young woman, scarcely two hours dead, from one unsuitable refuge to another. One option remained. They brought her back to the rest house. The only place safe from rats was on a table at the foot of their beds.
Sleep came in fragments. Throughout the night goats chased one another, farting, bleating, battering the walls. Dogs howled in rotation—one falling silent only for another to begin.
After breakfast, Reggie marked out a grave close to three others in a small plot beside the rest house and went to the marketplace to find diggers.
“I’m required to perform a post-mortem,” Angus said grimly when he returned. “Bloody British regulations. You’ll have to assist me. Why in God’s name do I stay in this fucking country? Here we are in the middle of nowhere having to follow fucking directives written by some boffins in London who have probably never even traveled south of the city.”
Reggie felt an icy knot form in his stomach. This was not something he had anticipated.
“I was right,” the doctor said, his voice matter of fact, his bloody fingers holding a portion of intestine. “It’s typhoid. The ileum has perforated.”
By early afternoon, a senior agent from the trading company arrived with a colleague. They had been upriver purchasing produce when the news reached them. The sanitary superintendent arrived soon after with two boys carrying a coffin on their heads. Two missionaries followed. One—a woman who said she was a midwife—immediately took the baby from the wet nurse. The other prepared a brief burial service. Reggie and Angus went to tell the husband that everything was ready, that if he wished to see his wife one last time, he should come now.
They found him on his bed, hands clasped behind his head, staring at the ceiling.
“Thank you,” he said in a vacant voice. Then added, “I won’t come. I can’t bear to look at her again. Please—leave me.”
As they stepped outside, Angus spoke to Reggie in Hausa. “Ask the houseboy if Larry has a gun. And if so, where is it?”
The question unsettled him, but Reggie did as he was asked. The boy confirmed their fears. There was a revolver. Reggie retrieved it and returned to Larry. “Forgive me for this,” he said gently, showing him the weapon. “But I’m keeping it. One day, you’ll understand,” and slipped the revolver into his pocket. Larry remained silent, his stare fixed and lifeless, as though he were only borrowing the shape of a living man.
The sanitary superintendent, the two traders, the doctor, Reggie, and the missionaries, were the only mourners. The education officer sent word that he was sick again.
After the service, Reggie handed the revolver to the senior trader and, after an explanation, asked him to keep it. The missionary woman had already left, the baby bundled against her chest. Larry went with her without protest, reduced to compliance by exhaustion. The traders started back upriver, eager to put distance between themselves and the grave. The sanitation superintendent went to a native bar serving palm wine. This was Africa, where mortality hung in the air like dust.
Only Angus and Reggie remained. Sitting side by side on an old grave mound, they smoked, watched and listened as each shovel of red earth struck the makeshift coffin.
“What a bloody business,” Angus muttered. “If she’d come to Oturkpo hospital when she first fell ill, she might still be alive. Typhoid.” He shook his head. “Bringing a young woman out here without a typhoid shot. Idiocy! It’s not for nothing they call this fucking place the white man’s grave. And we have the vaccine. For Christ’s sake, it’s 1950—we’re not living in the dark ages.”
Reggie nodded.
“And bringing a baby into an armpit like this?” Angus went on. “They must’ve been out of their sodding minds.”
“Agreed. It’s difficult enough for those of us with decent facilities. You married?”
Angus took a long drag on his cigarette and nudged a large black beetle aside with his boot. “Wife and kids back in Scotland.”
“Do you miss them?”
“The children, especially. See them every two years. I write every month.”
“And your wife?”
“With four kids, a church, and enough money to stay busy. She’s content.”
He paused as if searching for a word.
“This fucking place,” he muttered, “it’ll rot your marriage. Hollow you out. She doesn’t write the way she used to. Short letters now. Practical. Weather. Bills. The garden.” He swallowed. “No more ‘come home safe.’”
Reggie waited. Unsure.
“I used to read them twice,” Angus went on, staring into the distance “Now I leave them unopened a day. Sometimes two. As if that makes them less true.”
“I notice you speak excellent Hausa,” Reggie said wanting to change the topic.
Angus smiled faintly. “Like you, it was required. After fourteen years, I speak it more than English. I’m settled in Oturkpo. Share my house with a young native nurse. Also have a housekeeper—a widow. Life goes on.”
He laughed softly, a sound that startled the gravediggers. “And you?”
“I’ve only been here five years.”
Angus grinned. “A novice!… I’m joking. Gallows humor…You learn to survive in this fucking country, or you leave.”
They fell silent. The only sounds the grunting of the diggers and the chatter of weaver birds in a nearby tree.
“I’m sending my wife home,” Reggie surprised himself with the disclosure.
Angus turned slowly, studying him, then raised an eyebrow.
“What is it?”
Reggie exhaled. “My wife.”
Angus waited.
“Sleeping with the police chief.” The words sounded dull in his own ears, already worn thin from repetition. “The expats are laughing about it—like some long-running joke. Prattling behind my back. As if I don’t hear gossip.”
Angus swore softly. “Christ,” he said.
“I’ve only been in Keffi four months,” Reggie went on. “Seems to be his pattern. Attaches himself to the wife of any new posting. A predator in uniform. I’ll transfer him the moment I get back—dump him somewhere he can do no damage.”
Angus leaned forward and placed a hand on Reggie’s knee. “You can move him,” he said. “But you can’t fix what this bloody place does to people.”
Reggie gave a short, humorless laugh. “Really?”
“It’s not just your marriage,” Angus added. “It’s this fucking country. Strips things down. Makes men careless and women lonely. Turns boredom into appetite and appetite into disaster.”
They continued brooding until the sanitation superintendent, reeking of palm wine, staggered up the hill, approved the work and paid the gravediggers.
****
After dinner Angus and Reggie sat on the verandah, drinking steadily, not quickly, letting time pass. The conversation slipped into Hausa without either of them noticing. They exchanged stories—of postings gone wrong, of outbreaks and riots, of deaths that had followed them from one station to the next. They spoke of England and Scotland, of green fields, daily newspapers, proper roads, four seasons, and the quiet certainty of places where nothing unexpected ever happened.
“And yet, for Christ’ sake,” Angus said at last, staring into his glass, “we keep coming back.”
Reggie nodded. “Why?”
“Duty,” Angus said, “or addiction?”
“Or masochism?” Reggie added.
Angus smiled faintly. “Or all three?” He tipped the bottle, missed the glass, swore, and wiped the spill from the table with his sleeve. “Ever notice,” he said, jabbing the bottle toward the darkness, “how this fucking place doesn’t just make life hard—it makes it mean? Takes whatever weakness you lugged out here and leans on it until something snaps.”
Reggie dragged a chair with his foot and propped his boots on it. “Mean’s one word for it. I’d say it chews you up and spits you out when it’s bored.”
The doctor barked a laugh, then rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “Heat that makes your boots curl-up and crack. Monsoons where paperwork rots before it’s signed. Bugs that sting, bugs that bite, bugs that suck your blood, and diseases waiting like traps.” He flicked ash onto the floor. “And every time something goes wrong, people look at you, the white man, like you failed them personally.”
Reggie pointed his hand toward the night. “Back home, when things go bad, you dissolve into crowds. A pub. A bus. A street. Sound. Noise. Here.” His arm dropped. “Here, it’s just jungle and darkness, and something out there deciding if you’re worth the trouble.”
“You know what I really miss?” Angus said, leaning back, chair creaking, and staring at the sky, “things that bloody work.” He counted them off on his fingers. “Lights. Water that doesn’t poison you. A bed where you don’t wonder what’s feeding on you before dawn.”
Reggie gave a thin smile that didn’t hold. “I miss being ordinary”
Angus glanced at him.
“Walking down a street where no one looks twice. Where you’re not the only pale face for fifty miles. Where you’re not…watched. He rubbed his hands together though the night was warm. “I hate pretending this is some grand adventure,” Reggie added. He picked up his glass, found it empty, and set it down harder than necessary. “Folks back home think we’re brave. Or mad. Truth is, we’re just stranded.”
“Stranded, my arse. We signed up,” Angus shouted, his irritated voice slurred and croaky, his fist thumping the table.
“But did we?” Reggie shot back, spreading his hands, wanting to bring some equanimity back to the conversation. “Or did it happen one letter, one posting, one extension at a time. You tell yourself its only for a year. Then another. And suddenly leaving feels like surrender. Like you’ve failed at something you can’t even name.”
Leaning forward, forearms heavy on his knees, the Scotsman peered into the Stygian gloom, waiting for it to confess what it knew. Sound swelled and settled around them—chirring cicadas, croaking frogs, rustling jungle, screeching fruit bats—each note threading the thick, throbbing obscurity of the African night. “This fucking country doesn’t give a damn if you’re lonely. Or married. Or breaking. It just takes, and when it’s done, it dares you to walk away.”
Reggie nodded, slowly mulling over Angus’ fulmination. “Makes you smaller. Harder. Makes decent people do ugly things just to last another day.”
Angus ground his cigarette under his heel. “And once it’s taken its pound of flesh, it dares you to leave. As if to say—Go on. Prove you’re stronger than me.”
A crushing hush closed in.
Reggie raked a hand across his tired face, leaving the weariness exactly where it was. “You know what frightens me most?”
Angus looked up.
“If they offered me a clean transfer tomorrow, I’d hesitate.”
The doctor exhaled through his nose. “That’s when you know it’s got you. I agree. I don’t know who I’d be without this place. Back home I’d just be another tired fucking doctor. Here…” He gestured vaguely toward the blackness. “Here, I matter. Even when it’s bloody killing me. I keep telling myself I’m staying because they need me.” He paused. “But some nights I think I stay because I’m afraid they don’t.”
Reggie leaned back, eyes still on the darkness. “I used to think leaving would be the hard part,” he said. “Now I think it’s going back… and finding there’s less of you left than you remember.”
He set the glass down carefully. “That’s what keeps us here
Angus’ mouth twisted into something resembling a smile. “To Africa,” he said. “A miserable, fucking, unforgiving bastard,” and raised the bottle in a crooked salute. “That’s when you know it’s got you.”
“No,” Reggie replied. “That’s not it.”
Angus glanced at him.
Reggie rubbed his thumb along the rim of his glass. “It’s not that it’s got us. It’s that we’ve already given something over to it.” He paused. “And we don’t know how to take it back.”
The doctor said nothing.
“To us.” Reggie finally spoke picking up his glass, “The fools who stayed. Fools who can’t help themselves. Fools who just keep coming back.”
*****
Image: Davide Manzini Unsplash cropped