Married But Available. B. Nyamnjoh

not wake up until about noon. The unpleasant experiences of Sawang had given her nightmares, pushing sweet dreams of the beautiful moments of Puttkamerstown towards dawn. She lay in bed an extra while, listening to the welcoming sound of music by birds perched on trees just outside the window of her room. This is a real paradise for tropical desires – a place where dreams, reality and fantasies converge, she told herself, getting out of bed with reluctance.

      She hurriedly took a shower. Normally, she would dwell in the shower for longer, getting to know and relate to her body, but that must wait for later. She pulled on a pair of white trainers and put on over her head a brown short sleeve shirt, which she decided was best left hanging loose. Then she rushed out of the room and down the stairs to the reception, with her rucksack over one shoulder.

      A smiling young man with a sweet face had taken over from the girl of the night before.

      Lilly Loveless could see she had missed breakfast. She had also missed an appointment with a possible landlady. Dr Wiseman Lovemore had put her in touch with a colleague of his they met at Mountain Valley last night, who had a Boy’s Quarters to rent, and they had agreed she would pass at 10:30am to see the accommodation.

      “Any message for me?” she asked the smiling receptionist.

      “Yes, two in fact,” he replied, fetching the messages.

      “I suppose I’m too late for breakfast.”

      “Breakfast is not part of the room,” the young man explained, “but we can make you breakfast anytime, and charge you accordingly, the same way we do lunch and dinner.”

      “Just a cup of strong black coffee will do,” she replied, and made her way to the restaurant, situated by a disused swimming pool.

      There she sat and read her messages to the sweet music of the birds.

      The first message was by the landlady who, not wanting to interrupt Lilly Loveless’ sleep, chose to leave her cell phone number for her to call and make a new appointment. The second message was a missed call from Dr Wiseman Lovemore. He said he was waiting for the shops to open to pick up a SIM card and prepaid airtime for her before coming. He also wanted her to call him, if possible, to specify how much airtime to buy.

      He’ll sort something out, she thought. Any amount of airtime should suffice for a start. She just wanted to be able to call her mom to let her know her daughter arrived safely in Mimboland. The rest could be sorted out later. She decided to just enjoy her coffee and wait for him to come. And, changing her mind about breakfast, Lilly Loveless ordered a Spanish omelette and some toast.

      Her mind went back to last night at Mountain Valley, a truly social place which she would like to visit again and again just to watch the comings and goings of men and women, young and old, for drinks and dinner, and for lots more, as was repeatedly whispered in her ear, in a mischievous sort of way, by Dr Wiseman Lovemore. That “lots more,” was what she was here to uncover, understand and perhaps explain, and she would leave no stone unturned to do just that. She remembered asking Dr Wiseman Lovemore where some of the customers who flocked in disappeared to, once they had ordered their drinks and roasted meat or chicken, grilled fish or something else to eat.

      Enjoying the way the conversation was going, he expounded: “Like I said before, Mountain Valley is more than just a restaurant or a drinking place. It is also a resting place. The restaurant and bar are a front for the real business of the place, which takes place in the rooms behind – 20 or so in all – for between 3000 and 5000 Mim dollars an hour. The rooms all have fancy names like Bijou, Aroma, Begonia, Blissful, Pure Delight, New Dimensions, Fantasy Space, Passions, Tia Maria, and Simply Gorgeous. And there is always a long waiting list,” he laughed. “Clients who want little more than a quickie can go for half an hour, and pay much less. But that depends on the mood of the guy behind the counter.”

      The culture of resting at Mountain Valley, like everywhere else in Mimboland, Lilly Loveless was told, demands that the couple arrive like perfect strangers, and leave like perfect strangers. First, they walk or drive in separately, preferably to a pre-booked room under their aliases if they are regulars or really big guns protective of their identities. Everything is served them in the room, and when they are through, they take side doors, or walk out through the front door, not as a couple, but separately, and at long intervals. If you are not a regular or a big person, and if you have little to fear, then you go through normal registration at the front desk where a key is given to you.

      These were early days, but it was her hunch that Dr Wiseman Lovemore was not an easy character to pigeonhole. One thing about him of which she was convinced was his very calculating nature, even when most helpful and friendly.

      She recalled how, as soon as they were seated, Dr Wiseman Lovemore opened his bag and handed her a paper that she could almost swear he had brought along to the airport to welcome her with.

      “What is it?” she inquired with her eyes, taking the paper.

      “Mbomas and Girls in Mimboland: Why Married Men Date University Girls,” he pointed to the title.

      She started flipping through the paper, but stopped abruptly. A golden rule in fieldwork: one must not allow the ideas of an insider analyst to influence one’s outlook as an objective observer. She would start her research first, test her own hunches, and then, read the paper with a more critical eye.

      Dr Wiseman Lovemore beckoned at the waiter to serve them.

      “What do you take?” the waiter asked Lilly Loveless.

      “A Baobab for me, hot,” Dr Wiseman Lovemore said, and started an annotated tour of the various beers for Lilly Loveless but was interrupted with: “A Mimbo-Wanda please, well chilled.”

      Impressed, he asked her where she knew the beer from.

      “Air Mimbo,” she said, flipping through the paper to please her host, but avoiding the contents. “Good title,” she commented. “What did you write this for?”

      “Initially for an ‘African Social Problems’ conference in Johannesburg, three years ago.”

      “Three years ago?” Lilly Loveless was dumbfounded.

      Why was this guy presenting her a paper three years old, in this day and age when old knowledge is no knowledge?

      “Do you have the published version?”

      “Published what?” Dr Wiseman Lovemore couldn’t believe his ears. “There is no published version,” he added with a sudden laugh. “As a matter of fact, the paper was never presented. It has never been presented. I could say there is a history of misfortune to this paper.”

      “How is that?” she asked, perplexed.

      “I never made it to the conference in the end, no visa, no sponsorship, no … a catalogue of problems,” he cleared his throat and took a sip from his beer. He resisted the urge to tell her how discriminatory the administration of the university was. He even did not tell her what he loved telling every visiting scholar he met, how unqualified the Vice Chancellor and Registrar (known more as VC and Reg respectively) were to run the university, as, according to him, they owed their positions more to politics than to scholarship, and were determinedly against research and independence of thought. She will have to find out for herself, eventually, that research was most under-funded here at the University of Mimbo, and that the little money that was made available by the reluctant government in Nyamandem, was used by the VC and the Reg to service their appetites, to build a following amongst sons and daughters of the soil, and also to divide and rule amongst ethnic others. In this way, the little crumbs of funding that came through were more a source of conflict and tension, than of any real service to the university and its mission.

      He continued with the story of his paper: “Since then, this same paper has been accepted for presentation at three other conferences, but each time, something happens that stops me from going,” he sounded miserable. “The last time, it was the VC – an excruciatingly ordinary-looking vindictive little creature with overbearing breasts the size of Frankenstein pawpaws hanging over the campus like a thunderstorm, as you