Zambia World Wide

What could have caused the insistence to return to HQ so speedily, I pondered? As is usual in my life, there were always good reasons for being disciplined, harangued or just slapped hard. In this instance, I might not have been so very wise to add my name and address to the customs docket we attached to parcels going to nurses at the local hospital. Well, if only innocuous domicile details were appended, that might not have been so bad, but my personal inclination to include lurid descriptions of the sexual adventures that the nurses might enjoy, should they wish to respond, might have been less sensible. (By the way, two nurses’ dormitories had already replied positively, although I had not had a chance to take it any further, so the approach was not necessarily flawed, except, perhaps, in career development terms.) But some sensitive soul might have been offended. Might!

Or the stand-up pushing match I had had with a mouthy Asian jeweller who objected to supplying an import licence for a gold bar that had negligently been sent through the uninsured postal system. Over 45 years, I often have reflected that I should have pocketed that item and sent it back to my Dad as a paperweight. I know the daft bugger would have used it as required for the next three years, at which point, using reverse alchemy, I could have turned it into an Austin-Healey 3000; but such an act was moral anathema to me…………then. Again, the truculence of my reaction to being called a Euromoron by an obnoxious dick, who had learned his English from Spike Milligan, might have been excusable, had I not expressed a sincere desire to invade his internal workings with enthusiasm and a new piece of kit with which we had been issued: the vicious, gleaming Inspectoscope.

I've no clue as to why one of these horrid implements had come to the post office, since it was an invaluable, but deeply invasive, machine that must have been developed in the same medical facility that innovated colonoscopy equipment. It enabled the sadistic user to inspect for hidden jewels or drugs via the insertion of a long, flexible chromed microscope device directly into the fundament of an unfortunate suspect. Great for airport inspections and drunken Xmas parties: less appropriate alongside the string, brown paper and sticky tape of the sorting office. Brandishing this shiny weapon determinedly, however, had successfully persuaded him to back down and disappear, clutching his rear in anticipated discomfort.

Whether the threat of visiting partial disembowelment on a member of the public had been entirely within the service code of Zambia Customs & Excise, was probably going to be another matter for others to consider. So I slowly made my way to HQ turning over acceptable excuses should my recent behaviour be questioned. As I slowly ascended the steps to the office, I knew there were none. At best, I was going to be a passenger home on the VC10 next Thursday: at worst I was going to be apprenticed to the jeweller as a houseboy.

Cautiously putting my head around the Deputy Controller’s door I was amazed to be gestured in with a beam and palpable warmth. With a personality like mine, such a situation is rare and confusing and it took some acting skill to conceal my puzzlement. Turned out that the local Chamber of Commerce had contacted him to express their pleasure at the laxative effect of my first week’s activity and had asked him to pass on their gratitude.

Given the disciplinary problems I was going to cause him over the next three years, I should have asked for a signed ‘Get Out of Jail' card to keep pinned to the inside of my shirt like Maverick’s $1000 bill, but my slowsilver mind let me down, not for the first time, or the last. So I gibbered out my relieved reaction to the compliment and started to leave, but he stopped me in mid-escape, with a request for an additional service.

For a minute I thought I was to be the first victim of the bowel de-flowerer, but, again, his grim smile told me differently. In the end, all he wanted was for me to await the imminent arrival of another short term expat and acquaint him with Livingstone, the HQ and the Post Office, using his personal government-issued Land-Rover as a taxi. With a single bound I was free and sitting in his outer office alongside the surly crone that was his PA. Relief beyond belief.