Story 7 from ‘Absurd Tales from Africa’ by Robert Gurney
Three friars were banished from a monastery in Rwanda. They had committed various rule violations, like distilling and illegally selling liquor. The one that had got them into real trouble was their chartreuse noire, which they had been caught exporting to Burundi and the Congo without a licence. They decided to start up a new business altogether, elsewhere.
They travelled around Rwanda looking for opportunities but found nothing. There were no openings in Kigali, nothing in Gisenyi, Butare, Ruhengeri, Kibuye, Gitarama, Cyangugu, Byumba or Gikongoro.
They decided to go to Uganda — one of them spoke English fluently — where they wanted to open up a plant shop. They had an old VW camper van in which they toured around, hoping to spot an opening. They covered the length and breadth of Uganda: Mbarara, Masaka, Fort Portal, Jinja, Soroti, Arua, Mbale and Tororo, eventually deciding that their business could only work in the capital, Kampala.
They rented a shop on Kampala Road. They had opted for selling flowers.
Their business began to prosper. They created a garden centre at Mukono, not far from the capital, where they cultivated roses, carnations, dahlias, marigolds, chrysanthemums, orchids, gingers, heliconias (lobster-claws or false birds of paradise) and asters.
They had suppliers inside Rwanda in Musanze, Nyabihu, Rubavu and Rulindo. Rare plants were brought in surreptitiously by fleeing Tutsis: things were going from bad to worse again inside Rwanda. A trickle was turning into a flood.
They began to specialise in carnivorous plants, especially the Utricularia: the australis, inflexa, livida, raynalii, stellaris, troupini varieties, all found in and imported from Rwanda. Rumours began to circulate that they were conducting experiments in plant gene-splicing in a secret research centre near Entebbe airport, with the aid of a disgraced Makerere academic called Ken.
One day, Mrs Yasmin Bata, from the most exclusive part of Kololo, was shopping at the monks’ store, ‘Les fleurs du mal’, as it was ironically called — one of the monks was a devotee of Charles Baudelaire’s poetry. The Aga Khan was coming to visit Kampala and Mrs Bata wanted her house to look better than anybody else’s. Her one wish in life at that moment was to be able to entertain His Highness in her luxurious home.
While she was strolling down an aisle with her toddler, a large plant reached out, grabbed her child and ate it. Needless to say, Mrs Bata was upset at the loss of her child. However, the Rwandan brothers refused to believe that one of their plants could have done such a thing.
The woman told all of her friends about the incident at the Jamatkhana and at the Aga Khan High School in Old Kampala, where she was a governor and soon everyone in Kampala was in an uproar. They decided to kick the brothers out of town. An immense crowd of citizens, except for an Englishman named Hugh, a lecturer in Post-Mediaeval English Literature at Makerere, gathered outside the friars’ shop, shouting, waving sticks, and demanding that they leave. But the friars said, “No. We’re not leaving”. So the people gave up and went home.
A couple weeks later, another woman, a Miss Milly Makubuya, a secretary at Makerere University College, who lived on the campus and was having an affair with a Senior Fellow in Development Studies, was walking down Kampala Road looking for flowers with which to decorate the vestibule of the new post-graduate Economics Institute building. The Prime Minister was coming to unveil a bas-relief sculpture of himself, created by a famous Mugandan sculptor out of blackened soapstone. The PM was not a handsome man. To Milly, the face resembled a grotesque death mask, intentionally so, perhaps, she feared and she was exploring the idea that red roses might soften, to some extent, its hideousness. She was also aware that they might also exacerbate its repulsiveness.
Next to the black bas-relief plaque stood the statue of the Institute’s founder, Leonard Hull, Len, as everyone on campus affectionately called him. Milly was worried in case the PM took umbrage at the fact his face would be in Len’s shade, so to speak. She had debated with herself about whether to cover it up with a sheet or have it temporarily removed. The latter course of action proved not to be possible as she found that it had been screwed securely to the floor.
Len’s effigy was as life-like as a Madame Tussaud’s waxworks figure. It was life-sized, not very high, about five foot five. Working upwards, one’s eye alighted firstly on the bent, gnarled and excessively protruding toes that jutted out from the straps, in concrete, of flip-flops. Thin legs and knobbly knees led one up the shorts, which had a faintly obscene bagginess about them. Above them the sculptor had successfully reproduced the tight see-through shirt with holes in it that revealed that Len had no “pecs”. His gaunt face was accurately reproduced with deep ruts running down either side that reminded one of those on the mud road between Uganda and Kenya after a cloud burst. On his head sat a Little Miss Muffet type of circular bonnet. Something had to be done. Neither Len nor the mask was a pretty sight.
She was walking through the friar’s shop, looking at plants with her baby, when a plant grabbed her child and ate it. She ran through the streets screaming that a plant had swallowed her baby.
The citizens of Kampala were outraged, and again gathered outside the floral shop (except for Hugh, the post-Mediaevalist), waving torches, and demanding that the friars leave town at once. But the brothers said, “No way” and everyone gave up and went home.
A few days later, yet another woman, a mzungu, Mrs Evangeline Montcroix, the long-serving Secretary of The Kampala Club, who had a fine house on Tank Hill and considered herself to represent the crème de la crème of Kampalan society, dared to take her grandchild into the floral shop. Dame Barbara Cartland had been invited to come and lecture at the club on the theme of ‘The affair in the Romantic Novel’. Mrs Montcroix was looking for something exotic with which to decorate the club.
She held her granddaughter tightly in her arms, but it was no use. A large Ficus wrestled the child from her arms and ate it.
When the townspeople heard of this, they were extremely upset. They again gathered outside the friars’ shop (except for Hugh), yelling and threatening bodily harm to the friars if they didn’t leave town. But the friars said, “We’re staying”. So, the citizens gave up and began to go home.
Just then, Hugh showed up. He was on his way to Makerere to give a lecture on ‘The Relevance of The Canterbury Tales to Post-Colonial East African Society’.
He walked up to the friars, and said, “Get out of town, now!”
The friars immediately packed up all their belongings and fled that very day, never to be heard from again.
Moral: Only Hugh can prevent florist friars.
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Story 8 in this series is ‘The Fiendish Uganda Bookshop Plot’.
….to be continued.
