The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man

Tanzania, Kenya

Sabine still couldn’t come to grips with what had gone wrong. Olekorinko was a witch doctor. And she had passed herself off as a witch.

‘Well, it’s more complicated than you seem to think, Miss Sabine,’ said Meitkini. ‘Would you like me to explain?’

‘Very much.’

So Meitkini did.

Being a witch was considered a bad thing all over Africa. The best way to deal with witches was to beat them to death. Or, even better, pour petrol all over them and set it alight. Which, incidentally, was what Olekorinko’s men had been about to do to Sabine. Hence their hasty departure.

Sabine shuddered. ‘But I read about the Queen in Nairobi. A witch with a luxury home and fifteen cars. A proud career woman, it seemed.’

Meitkini looked at her appreciatively. Oh, so Miss Sabine had heard of the Queen? But she wasn’t a witch, she was a mganga. The word was mistranslated in some languages. Witches specialize in messing with people. If lightning strikes in a village, as a rule it means a witch is on the move. Then a fortune-telling man would be called in to study mirrors and animal entrails and maybe have a peep into a crystal ball before reporting where the suspected witch lived, the one who had sent down the bolt in question. Then they would set fire to her and her house, to be on the safe side.

‘Without proof?’ said Sabine.

‘No, no. With proof. The fortune-teller.’

Although the witches were pretty crafty. Or, at least, they were if they felt they were in the danger zone for being identified as witches.

‘The danger zone?’

‘Yes. Well-off late-middle-aged ladies. Preferably widows. Someone for the rest of the village to envy.’

‘A successful woman,’ said Allan. ‘They’ve plagued men in every age, on every continent.’

‘You’re awfully enlightened, these days,’ said Julius. He longed for the friend Allan had been before he’d got infected with whatever this was.

Allan nodded thoughtfully. ‘The downside of the black tablet,’ he said. ‘I wholeheartedly apologize.’

Meitkini didn’t know much about how things worked elsewhere, but in Africa it was strikingly often that widows with money turned up in the fortune-teller’s crystal ball.

‘Crafty, you said,’ said Sabine. ‘How do you mean?’

Meitkini enjoyed playing the role of teacher. Miss Sabine and the others knew shockingly little about what life was like in his corner of the world.

‘Sales of lightning rods are higher on this continent than all other continents combined. It doesn’t cost many shillings to install a lightning rod on a hill. And then the lightning will strike there instead. And the suspected witch can continue being suspected for a while longer.’

‘But the Queen in Nairobi doesn’t need lightning rods?’

‘That’s right. Because, as I said, she’s not a witch, she’s a mganga. Let me guess, Miss Sabine, you would like me to explain what a mganga is?’

He didn’t wait for the obvious answer.

Well, for one thing, a mganga believed in God – nothing else would do. But that faith in God was mixed up with a little bit of everything else. Like herbs, rituals and roots with magical powers. A true mganga understands that every affliction humans face has physical or divine causes. An infected appendix is pointless to operate on if the underlying cause is beyond our understanding. The same goes for HIV and AIDS. In those cases, intangible power is much more effective.

‘Intangible power?’

‘Magic. Exorcism. Or why not a cup of Olekorinko’s blessed miracle medicine? Always with the purpose of doing good, otherwise… warning, witchcraft.’

Julius had listened to this conversation without getting involved. But now he was curious about something. ‘Listen, Meitkini. Green asparagus. Could there be something magical in it?’ He was picturing a business opportunity beyond anything he’d ever come up with before. Gustav Svensson’s miracle asparagus! Cures all! Buy some today!

‘It’s possible,’ said Meitkini. ‘But when it comes to my appendix, I’d prefer the operation.’

Sabine needed time to think. Had all her mother Gertrud’s stories been based on a linguistic misunderstanding? Was it time to relegate her mother’s principles and accept that it wasn’t possible to make use of them? Or was there a third way?

It took three hours to get to the border between Tanzania and Kenya. It was marked with a largish rock at the edge of the road, and none of the Swedes would have noticed it if their driver hadn’t slowed down to point.

‘Welcome to my homeland,’ he said, as they passed the rock.

‘Look, that rental car has been behind us ever since we left Olekorinko and his bodyguards,’ said Sabine, who was still bewildered and shaken by what they had experienced.

She had no desire to be set on fire, with or without the petrol.

Allan turned around to glance backwards. He asked to borrow Meitkini’s binoculars.

It was a bit far off, but it looked like there was only a driver. A woman. In a blazer. On the African savannah? The same blazer, even, as…

‘If you stop over there, Meitkini, I’ll talk to the woman behind us. I think she may be an old acquaintance.’

Dusk was starting to fall and the Maasai scanned their surroundings. A calm herd of zebras were walking on a rise to their right. Calm! To the left, a group of baboons were preparing for the night. They were calm too. And there was no bird activity in the air. Thus there were no lions or buffalo nearby. Meitkini said it was safe to stop, but whatever Karlsson was planning to do must not take long. It would be dark within fifteen minutes, and then none of them would be allowed to set foot outside the car.

Stop? Here? What did he mean, ‘acquaintance’? Who could have any acquaintances in the middle of nowhere? Julius had been infected by Sabine’s anxiety. Trusting the hundred-and-one-year-old’s uneven good sense out in the wildest wilds had little to recommend it. Why not just keep going?

‘Take a deep breath, dear asparagus farmer. And back out again. It’s going to be okay, you’ll see,’ said Allan.

When Meitkini parked alongside the road, the rental car did the same, a hundred and fifty metres away. Allan crawled out of the Land Cruiser and down to the ground. He took a few steps towards the car behind them, raised the binoculars again, and realized he had been right. He lowered them and called to the blazer-clad woman, ‘Come here, Madame Real Estate Broker! Don’t be shy!’