Jumping Monkey Hill

At first, Ujunwa tried not to notice that Edward often stared at her breasts. The workshop days had taken on a routine of breakfast at eight and lunch at one and dinner at six in the grand dining room. On the sixth day, Edward handed out copies of the first story to be discussed, written by the Zimbabwean. The participants were all seated on the terrace and after he handed out the papers, Ujunwa noticed that all the seats under the umbrellas were occupied. It was hot and sunny.

'I don't mind sitting in the sun,' she said. 'Would you like me to stand up for you, Edward?'

'I'd rather like you to lie down for me,' he said. The moment was humid, thick, a bird cawed from far away. Edward was grinning. The others down the table had not heard him. Then the Ugandan laughed. And Ujunwa laughed because it was funny and witty, she told herself, when you really thought about it. After lunch, she took a walk with the Zimbabwean and as they stopped to pick shells by the sea, Ujunwa wanted to tell her what Edward said. But the Zimbabwean seemed distracted, less chatty than usual; she was probably anxious about her story. Ujunwa read it that evening. She thought the writing had too many flourishes, but she liked the story and wrote appreciations and careful suggestions in the margins. It was familiar and funny, about a Harare secondary school teacher whose Pentecostal minister tells him that he and his wife will not have a child until they get a confession from the witches who have tied up his wife's womb. They become convinced that the witches are their next-door neighbours and every morning they pray loudly, throwing verbal Holy-Ghost bombs across the fence.

There was a short silence around the dining table after the Zimbabwean read an excerpt the next day. The Ugandan spoke finally and said there was much energy in the prose. The white South African nodded enthusiastically. The Kenyan disagreed. Some of the sentences tried so hard to be literary that they didn't make sense, he said, and read one such sentence. The Tanzanian man said a story had to be looked at as a whole and not parts. Yes, the Kenyan agreed, but each part had to make sense in order to form a whole that made sense. Then Edward spoke. The writing was certainly ambitious but the story itself begged the question 'So what?' There was something terribly passé about it when one considered all the other things happening in Zimbabwe under the horrible Mugabe. Ujunwa stared at Edward. What did he mean by passé? How could a story so familiar be passé? But she did not ask what Edward meant and the Kenyan did not ask and the Ugandan did not ask and all the Zimbabwean did was shove her dreadlocks away from her face, cowries clinking. Everyone else remained silent. Soon, they all began to yawn and say goodnight and walk to their cabins.

The next day, they did not talk about the previous evening. Edward sat at the middle of the table. They talked about how fluffy the scrambled eggs were and how eerie the jacaranda leaves that rustled against their windows at night were. After dinner, the Senegalese read from her story. It was a windy night and they shut the windows to keep out the sound of the whirling trees. The smoke from Edward's pipe hung over the room. The Senegalese read two pages of a funeral scene, stopping often to sip some water, her accent thickening as she became more emotional, each t sounding like a z. Afterwards, everyone turned to Edward, even the Ugandan, who seemed to have forgotten that he was workshop leader. Edward chewed at his pipe thoughtfully before he said that homosexual stories of this sort weren't reflective of Africa, really.

'Which Africa?' Ujunwa blurted out.

The black South African shifted on his seat. Edward chewed further at his pipe. Then he looked at Ujunwa in the way one would look at a child who refused to keep still in church and said that he wasn't speaking as an Oxford-trained Africanist, but as one who was keen on the real Africa and not the imposing of Western ideas on African venues. The Zimbabwean and Tanzanian and white South African began to shake their heads as Edward was speaking.

'How African is it for a person to tell her family that she is homosexual?' Edward asked.

The Senegalese burst out in incomprehensible French and then, a minute of fluid speech later, said, 'I am Senegalese! I am Senegalese!' Edward responded in equally swift French and then said in English, with a soft smile, 'I think she had too much of that excellent Bordeaux,' and the Ugandan laughed too loudly.

Ujunwa was first to leave. She was close to her cabin when she heard somebody call her and she stopped. It was the Kenyan and the Zimbabwean and the white South African. 'Let's go to the bar,' they said. She wondered where the Senegalese was. She drank a glass of wine and listened to them talk about how the other guests at Jumping Monkey Hill—all of whom were white—looked at the participants suspiciously. The Kenyan said a youngish couple had stopped and stepped back a little as he approached them on the path the day before. The white South African said they were suspicious of her, too, perhaps because she wore only kente-print caftans. Sitting there, staring into the black night, listening to drink-softened voices around her, Ujunwa felt a self-loathing burst open in the bottom of her stomach. She should not have laughed when Edward said, 'I'd rather like you to lie down for me.' It had not been funny. It had not been funny at all. She had hated it, hated the grin on his face and the glimpse of greenish teeth and the way he always looked at her chest rather than at her face and yet she had made herself laugh like a deranged hyena. She placed down her half-finished glass of wine and said, 'Edward is always looking at my breasts.' The Kenyan and white South African and Zimbabwean stared at her. Ujunwa repeated herself. Edward is always looking at my breasts. The Kenyan said it was clear from the first day that the man would be climbing on top of that flat stick of a wife and wishing it were Ujunwa; the Zimbabwean said Edward's eyes were always leery on Ujunwa; the white South African said he would never look at a white woman like that because what he felt for Ujunwa was a fancy without respect.

'You all noticed?' Ujunwa asked them. 'You all noticed?' She felt strangely betrayed. She got up and went to her cabin. She called her mother but the metallic voice kept saying, 'The number you are calling is not available at the moment, please try later,' and so she hung up. She could not write. She lay in bed and stayed awake for so long that when she finally fell asleep it was dawn.

It was the Tanzanian's turn the following evening. His story was about the killings in Congo, from a militiaman's point of view, a man full of prurient violence. Edward said it would be the lead story in the Oratory, that it was urgent and relevant, that it brought news. Ujunwa thought it read like a piece from The Economist with cartoon characters painted in. But she didn't say that. She went back to her cabin and, although she had a stomach ache, she turned on her laptop.

As Chioma sits and stares at Yinka's smiling face, she feels as if she is acting a play. She wrote plays in secondary school. Her class staged one during the school's anniversary celebration and, at the end, there was a standing ovation and the principal said, 'Chioma is our future star!' Her father was there, sitting next to her mother, clapping and smiling. But when she said she wanted to study literature in university, he told her it was not viable. His word, viable. He said she had to study something else and could always write by the side. The Alhaji is lightly rubbing Yinka's arm and saying, 'But you know Savanna Union Bank has better rates, they sent people to me last week.' Yinka is still smiling and Chioma wonders whether her cheeks are aching. She thinks about the stories in a metal box under her bed. Her father read them all and sometimes he wrote things on the margins: Excellent! Substandard English! Very good! No imagination! It was he who had bought her novels; her mother thought all she needed were her textbooks. Yinka says, 'Chioma!' and she looks up. The Alhaji is talking to her. He looks almost shy and his eyes do not meet hers. There is a tentativeness towards her that he does not show towards Yinka. 'I am saying you are too fine. Why is it that a Big Man has not married you?' Chioma smiles and says nothing. The Alhaji says, 'I have agreed that I will do business with Merchant Trust but you will be my personal contact,' he said. Chioma smiles, uncertain what to say. 'Of course,' Yinka says. 'She will be your contact. We will take care of you. Ah, thank you sir!' The Alhaji gets up and says, 'Come, come, I have some nice perfumes from my last trip to London. Let me give you something to take home.' He starts to walk inside and then turns. 'Come, come, you two.' Yinka follows. Chioma gets up. The Alhaji turns again to glance at her, to wait for her to follow. But she does not follow. She turns to the door and opens it and walks out into the sparkling sunlight and past the jeep in which the driver is sitting with the door hanging open, listening to the radio. 'Aunty? Aunty, something happen?' he calls. She does not answer. She walks and walks, past the large high gates and keeps walking.