|
|
|
ALL THAT GAS (Gambia 2001) |
| Written by stephen west | |
| Thursday, 07 August 2008 | |
There is enough said about the quality (or rather lack of it) of goods imported into West Africa. A frequent comment in hardware shops is "It is Chinese, not guaranteed!" or "Nigerian Copy". I heard one particular disgruntled consumer claiming, and I have no reason to doubt him, that some unscrupulous traders take a gas bottle for their own use for (say) one week, and then sell it to an unsuspecting customer. The biggest frustration I experience is to turn up at a branch of a certain supermarket chain outside which there is a cage containing at least twenty bottles only to be told that the gas is "finis". - Don't these people know about stock rotation? Anyway, on one particular day in January in the year 2001 I went to change a gas bottle, and all the usual outlets declared "is finis!" In desperation I turned in to Kololi Village. Deeper and deeper I went among the shanties to a point where I began to imagine that subsequent emergence from this maze might be difficult. I drove for half an hour without repeating any part of my route and without seeing even one familiar landmark. On a deserted street where, unusually, flowers bloomed and birds sang, I spied a little shop. No. Let me be accurate. What I saw was a rather old, dirty and badly treated gas bottle standing beside a dark doorway which I bent double to enter. When my eyes became accustomed to the gloom I found myself face to face with a bald and wizened man, estimated age nine years older than God, no teeth, dark brown skin like a turtle, eyes, blue/white and rheumy. Behind the little bench on which he sat gathered a group of young children, all smiling, and behind them a couple of shelves of tea-bags, matches, candles, cigarettes and tinned sardines He stood suddenly, tottering, grabbing my arm to keep his balance, his talons, (no ordinary hands these!), sinking in to my flesh. "You came", he said, (I think. Fulla is one of the local languages that is Greek to me), and turned to the staring, smiling children. "I told you he would come" I believe he declared. I asked if the gas bottle was full. The old man looked at me quizzically, then limped over to the bottle, grabbed it by the neck, lifted it, dropped it again, and said "Yes!" And so I parted with some cash and exchanged my empty gas bottle. The old man, despite my protestations, insisted that he take the empty bottle from my car, then lifted in the full bottle. Just before the door was closed he reached in and tenderly patted and stroked the bottle for a moment and murmured something under his breath. As I drove off I glanced in my rear-view mirror, and I saw the children arranged in a horseshoe around the door, and the aged sage dancing, waving and gesturing to them. I guessed a left turn and, to my complete and utter amazement, found myself on the Senegambia Highway.. I arrived home and, with a damp cloth, I cleaned up the bottle as best I could, then I connected it to our stove. And, as is my habit, I chalked the date on it. Our stove is one of those six-ring efforts with a cavernous oven. It is in constant daily use. A gas bottle usually lasts between three and four weeks. And so I believed that, by the middle of February, my chalked legend, "120101" should be telling me something. I checked the flame - bright and hot - No problem. By the twentieth of March it was all becoming rather harrowing. The worry was a simple one based on Sod's Law. We would have a sponge cake or a meringue in the oven one day and the gas would fizzle out and spoil the contents. Should we change the bottle or no? April came and went, and the gas flame remained strong and bright and hot as ever - and through May. I started making little detours, sorties into Kololi village in vain attempts to find my supplier again. To no avail. By June the First I was expecting, every morning, to find it impossible to make my seven o'clock cup of tea. But June passed without incident. Then it happened. I walked in the door on the afternoon of July 13th and was greeted with the catastrophic news of the bottle's demise, which sad event had occurred at 1400 hours while the housekeeper was boiling an egg. I felt that I had lost an old and very dear friend. With tears in my eyes I took the gas-bottle-spanner, (which had become rusty and stiff from months of neglect), and uncoupled the piping. Then I wiped off the chalked date. I changed into black, shirt, shoes and trousers, wrapped the bottle in white linen and slowly, ceremoniously, with due dignity and respect and a lump in my throat, I bore the metal corpse through the house and placed it in the back of the car. At a reverential and respectful speed I drove out of the compound lowly whistling something appropriate from Mahler. I wanted to find the old man again. I wanted another of his wonderful bottles, but I told myself, still fighting back the tears, that you only ever get to know just one gas bottle like that in your whole life. I exchanged bottles at the local supermarket and my constant companion of six months was bunged in to the cage. I turned for one last look before making my way, but my darling favourite had vanished, camouflaged by twenty other, identical bottles. I blew a kiss in its general direction and went home..
Our new bottle was bright, shiny red and bore the legend "140701" and the flame on the cooker burned bright and hot. But it was a dull, boring, ordinary, normal, uninteresting bottle with no personality. And I knew that it would let me down before the middle of next month. My special bottle, my friend, my brother, has gone to the great gas company in the sky, where the good bottles go, no more to serve calorific requirements. But if gas bottles have a heaven, then there is one thing I know....... that particular bottle now has a wonderful home. Perhaps I should have buried it in the garden and put up a memorial stone bearing the legend, "Free at last. No more pressure!.............".
Copyright 2008 stephen west |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
via Email