exact same statement?'
She sighed. 'Hundreds.' She added, 'I had a feeling the next time I stopped by Mathare I would avoid Peter.'
They had reached the car, from which point they could see the whole valley of shanties bathed in a perverse golden light, under which hundreds of handsome adolescent boys cut out
magazine pictures of motor cycles under cardboard with a candle. 'Eleanor,' said Calvin quietly, taking her by the shoulders, 'don't you sometimes just want them to go away ?'
She squirmed from his hands and huddled into the seat. Though the air was stuffy, she did not unroll a window, but sat breathing the smell of new upholstery: soft leather, freshly minted plastic. She buckled the seat belt, tying herself to the motakari , as if the hands of Mathare threatened to drag her out again. She locked the door. 'Yes,' she said at last. 'But there's only one way to manage that. For me to go away.'
'They would follow you. You will always have 661 million black wretches breathing down your neck. By the time you're ninety? Well over two billion .'
'I'm sick of these figures.'
'In a little over a hundred years this continent's population will quadruple—'
'Calvin, please!'
'By 2000 Mexico City will have thirty million people. These are not just numbers, Eleanor. We're talking billions of disgruntled, hungry, filthy Homo sapiens , starting to turn mean. they will all want a Walkman. They will all want you to take them to America.'
'I have been trying my whole adult life—'
'You would be far more generous to launch into Mathare with a machine-gun.'
'I don't think that kind of joke is very funny.'
'It isn't a joke.'
Eleanor folded her arms. 'You have no business undermining my work just because you've fallen by the sidelines.'
'Women tend to interpret any argument as personal attack. There is such a thing as fact outside whatever petty professional bitterness I might still harbour. I will remind you that I singly have raised more funding for population programmes than any man on earth. Family planning ? You are riding, Ms Merritt, with the father of family planning, so that if I tell you it is a waste of time, I at least expect you to listen.'
'Yes…' she drawled, balled up on the other side of the car. 'I remember stories, all right. Of you walking into Julius Nyrere's office and dumping a bag of multi-coloured condoms
on his desk. "How many children do you have?" you asked. 'Oh, that went the rounds, Mr Diplomat.'
'Fine, that was a stunt, and I pulled a lot of them. Some worked, some didn't. That one backfired.'
'I'll say.'
They were driving down the long hill towards Lang'ata, where trailing through the scrub Kenyans filed six abreast and chest to back from town to outlying estates. With so many marching feet skittling into the distance in unbroken lines, it was hard to resist the image of ants streaming to their holes. Or it was now. Eleanor didn't used to look at Africans and think insects.
'Demographically, the future has already occurred. That by 2100 we will have between eleven and fifteen billion people is now a certainty.'
'So the answer,' said Eleanor stiffly, 'is despair.'
'A large bottle of brandy helps. But no. Not despair. Let's see if they have Martell.' He swung into a duka , for Calvin did not suffer the same qualms as Eleanor, shelling out 1,200 shillings for imported liquor when everyone else in the queue was counting out ten for a pint of milk.
After another forty-five minutes behind Volkswagens being pushstarted, hand-drawn carts dropping melons on to the tarmac and a lorry with a broken axle that had spilled its load of reeking fish over both lanes, they retired to Calvin's cottage. Even at his most insufferable, Calvin's company was preferable to another evening of the brown chair. On the way home Calvin had picked up his mail at his Karen post box, and he opened a fat manila envelope of newspaper
She sighed. 'Hundreds.' She added, 'I had a feeling the next time I stopped by Mathare I would avoid Peter.'
They had reached the car, from which point they could see the whole valley of shanties bathed in a perverse golden light, under which hundreds of handsome adolescent boys cut out
magazine pictures of motor cycles under cardboard with a candle. 'Eleanor,' said Calvin quietly, taking her by the shoulders, 'don't you sometimes just want them to go away ?'
She squirmed from his hands and huddled into the seat. Though the air was stuffy, she did not unroll a window, but sat breathing the smell of new upholstery: soft leather, freshly minted plastic. She buckled the seat belt, tying herself to the motakari , as if the hands of Mathare threatened to drag her out again. She locked the door. 'Yes,' she said at last. 'But there's only one way to manage that. For me to go away.'
'They would follow you. You will always have 661 million black wretches breathing down your neck. By the time you're ninety? Well over two billion .'
'I'm sick of these figures.'
'In a little over a hundred years this continent's population will quadruple—'
'Calvin, please!'
'By 2000 Mexico City will have thirty million people. These are not just numbers, Eleanor. We're talking billions of disgruntled, hungry, filthy Homo sapiens , starting to turn mean. they will all want a Walkman. They will all want you to take them to America.'
'I have been trying my whole adult life—'
'You would be far more generous to launch into Mathare with a machine-gun.'
'I don't think that kind of joke is very funny.'
'It isn't a joke.'
Eleanor folded her arms. 'You have no business undermining my work just because you've fallen by the sidelines.'
'Women tend to interpret any argument as personal attack. There is such a thing as fact outside whatever petty professional bitterness I might still harbour. I will remind you that I singly have raised more funding for population programmes than any man on earth. Family planning ? You are riding, Ms Merritt, with the father of family planning, so that if I tell you it is a waste of time, I at least expect you to listen.'
'Yes…' she drawled, balled up on the other side of the car. 'I remember stories, all right. Of you walking into Julius Nyrere's office and dumping a bag of multi-coloured condoms
on his desk. "How many children do you have?" you asked. 'Oh, that went the rounds, Mr Diplomat.'
'Fine, that was a stunt, and I pulled a lot of them. Some worked, some didn't. That one backfired.'
'I'll say.'
They were driving down the long hill towards Lang'ata, where trailing through the scrub Kenyans filed six abreast and chest to back from town to outlying estates. With so many marching feet skittling into the distance in unbroken lines, it was hard to resist the image of ants streaming to their holes. Or it was now. Eleanor didn't used to look at Africans and think insects.
'Demographically, the future has already occurred. That by 2100 we will have between eleven and fifteen billion people is now a certainty.'
'So the answer,' said Eleanor stiffly, 'is despair.'
'A large bottle of brandy helps. But no. Not despair. Let's see if they have Martell.' He swung into a duka , for Calvin did not suffer the same qualms as Eleanor, shelling out 1,200 shillings for imported liquor when everyone else in the queue was counting out ten for a pint of milk.
After another forty-five minutes behind Volkswagens being pushstarted, hand-drawn carts dropping melons on to the tarmac and a lorry with a broken axle that had spilled its load of reeking fish over both lanes, they retired to Calvin's cottage. Even at his most insufferable, Calvin's company was preferable to another evening of the brown chair. On the way home Calvin had picked up his mail at his Karen post box, and he opened a fat manila envelope of newspaper
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