A Guest of Honour by Nadine Gordimer Page B

phase and must concentrate on problems at home, or because, as some of my ministers have it, she has found influence hard to buy even with dollars. If America wants to withdraw”—he put up his palms— “all right, she’s strong enough to do it. If she says to the hungry, no wheat unless you can pay, right, she does it. And the old scare story about who’s going to fill the vacuum—not interested any more. But
we
can’t do that. The only surplus the African states have got is a surplus of debts and need. We’re struggling. We’re forced to buy maize from South Africa, this from that country,that from the other, we are tied together like a three—legs race with all sorts of people. The economic structure of colonial times trips us up all the time. Of course we have to help each other. —But mind you, that doesn’t mean we always understand each other’s problems. It doesn’t mean I must let myself be told by the OAU how to run this country, eh?” He looked at the dome of pink mousse being offered at his elbow and said to his wife, “I thought we were going to have ordinary food in the middle of the day-wasn’t that decided, from now on?”
    â€œYes, I know—”
    â€œNo fancy things. Just a bit of fruit.”
    â€œYes, Mrs. Harrison says it is fruit—made of fruit.”
    He hesitated and then plunged the spoon with a squelch and put a dollop on his plate. “What am I to Obote? The lime for the cement he’d have to pay a third again as much for if he had to import it from somewhere else. What’s Nyerere’s health to me? The low tariff for our goods at Dar-es-Salaam—”
    â€œThat’s what I wanted to ask you, Adamson—what are the prospects for Kundi Bay?”
    â€œBetter ask Mr. Small about that. He’s just been there water-skiing.” Mweta smiled and shovelled up the last of the pudding.
    â€œWell, I can’t give you an expert opinion on its prospects as a harbour, but I was telling Mr. President it certainly has great possibilities as a resort. The beaches are better than those on the Mombasa stretch, far more beautiful. Marvellous skin-diving and goggling—what you need is to interest Mr. Hilton in putting up one of his hotels.”
    â€œIt’s within a hundred miles of the game park at Talawa—Teme, another tourist attraction,” Asoni announced to Bray. He murmured agreeably in polite English response; he and Olivia and the children had camped there at Kundi, once, when it was nothing more than a fishing village, though it was said to have been used as a harbour for slavers early in the nineteenth century, and there were the remains of a small fort. Just before Independence a team of Italian experts had been out to examine the possibility of building a harbour big enough to handle tankers and large merchant vessels. “When’s the report to be published?” His voice dodged round the starched sleeve of a servant.
    â€˜Oh it’s being studied,” said Mweta, with a smile that closed the subject. Joy Mweta was saying, “I want Adamson to build a little house down there. The children have never seen the sea. Just a small little house, you know?”
    â€œThe only thing was, I got absolutely eaten up by tsetse fly, my arm was like a sausage. No, not the beach—on the road, the road from the game park.”
    â€œâ€”But that will be eliminated,” Asoni said, “they will be eradicated. It has been done in the North. The department has it in hand. Anything can be done, today. We are living in the age of science. The mosquito has gone. The tsetse will go.”
    â€œIt will be paradise.” Mweta gave one of his famous gestures, one hand opening out the prospect over the table, the long room, the country, and laughed. As they rose from their chairs, he squeezed Bray’s arm, hard, a moment.
    After coffee in the sitting—room