Tefuga by Peter Dickinson

couldn’t have done it without me, using only his left hand. He really did need me. That was nice. There are so many ways Africa can be horrible, but men like Ted still love it!
    Wed Jan 16
    I wrote all that yesterday morning when I still felt that doing the pictures in the harem was the most important thing I’d ever have happen to me. Well, almost. Like saying “Yes” to Ted. ’Cos of the guinea worm I’d been too busy to try and tell Ted—and, you know, it’s funny but I don’t think I quite understood how important it was myself till I’d written it down. Anyway, yesterday lunch-time I showed him the pictures and tried to tell him. He pretended to understand how good they were (dear man), but he couldn’t help showing that he was only pretending to be interested because my painting is something that stops me being bored, so it doesn’t matter whether what I do is any good or not. I might just as well be playing patience! So I gave up after a bit and just chatted, but I was rather disappointed. Silly of me. I can’t expect him to understand.
    Then he rode down river in the afternoon to try and settle some kind of dispute about fishing rights which KB was supposed to have dealt with months ago, so I sent for Elongo for a Kiti lesson. I told him I thought I might have seen his sister in the harem and I tried to describe the girl and told him she’d smiled when I’d talked to her and so on, but do you know he wasn’t very interested either! After all that! I could have wept. The trouble is we don’t both know enough of any of our languages to have a proper conversation. We can say “The monkey is in the tree,” or “Bring me fresh tea,” but nothing like “I’m feeling a bit low because I had a terribly important and exciting experience two days ago and now it’s beginning to fade away as tho’ it was only a dream.” Real talk doesn’t start till you can say things like that. E. did say “My sister is happy,” but I don’t know whether he meant someone else had told him or that he was just guessing ’cos I’d seen her smiling (if it was her).
    By supper I was in a proper dump. I’d made it worse by starting to copy my pictures for horrible KB, and even the real ones started looking like just coloured water on paper—nothing in them. Ted thought I must have another fever coming on ’cos I do my best in the evenings to be cheerful and chatty and interested ’cos that’s what I’m here for. I couldn’t stop thinking about those women. And me. I mean, how different am I? Really different? In the end I thought I’d do best to get it off my chest—not about me, of course—that’d be hopeless with Ted—but them.
    Ted wasn’t very sympathetic.
    â€œYou’re looking at it with white eyes,” he said. “If you could get inside their minds you’d probably find they thought of themselves as extremely fortunate. They are fed and clothed and protected and they have a minimum of work to do. That’s the African’s idea of paradise.”
    â€œThey’re hardly alive, darling. The women I saw on the market stalls down river were having a better time selling a couple of yams. Twenty times better!”
    â€œThat’s another white illusion, judging Africa by the river life. You’ll see when we go on tour how most Africans live.”
    â€œBut these ones aren’t even living, darling. That’s what I’m trying to tell you!”
    â€œWell, accepting that, which I don’t, but for the sake of argument. What are you going to do about it? Or rather, what do you propose I and Kaduna and Lagos and London should do about it? It’s a central element in a whole way of life.”
    â€œOh, nonsense, darling. What earthly difference would it make if Kama Boi had one wife and treated her like a human