She had a small radio with her, and when he had warned her she might have quite a long wait for him at the freezing plant— “Not the most attractive place in the world to hang about in, either”—she had taken something to read out of his bookshelves, more with the air of wanting to be no trouble than anything else. It was pleasant to have company in the car; she lit cigarettes for them both and the dusty road that climbed down through the mountains was quickly covered. So far as he had taken notice of her at all, he had always felt rather sorry for the girl whose life overlapped the lives of others but was without a centre of its own. Now she seemed like one of those hitchhikers who let the world carry them, at home with anybody in having no home, secure in having no luggage, companionable in having no particular attachment. She might have flagged him down on the road, just for the ride. He left the car in what shade he could find at the fish factory; the trees between the buildings and the rough wharf had been hacked down and the dust was full of trampled fish entrails hovered over by wretched dogs and flies. He saw her at once settle down to make herself comfortable, opening the doors of the car for a draught, and hanging the little radio, aerial extended, from the window.
There had been a dispute at the fish factory reported in the papers the week before; some sort of dissatisfaction over the employment of what were termed “occasional” workers — it was not very clear. What he had come for was additional data on the number of families and the extent of the area they were drawn from, as represented in the records of men employed on the company’s trawlers; there was some discrepancy, in his notes, between the educational needs of the population based on the number of workers who, although scattered, could be considered local, and the actual size of this population — which might be much less, if the workers in fact came largely from communities much farther up the lake and left their family units behind. Lake men had a migratory tradition that pre — dated colonial settlement; they had gone where the trade was, where the fish ran. It was sometimes difficult to find out to which community they belonged. For themselves, unlike other groups whose home ground was twice defined, once by tribal tradition and again by the colonial district system, they belonged, as they would say “to the water,” a domain whose farther side, away up in other territories of Africa, they had never seen.
The freezing plant section had the morgue atmosphere of men in rubber aprons hosing down concrete floors, and sudden reminders of blood and guts that no hygiene could do away with entirely. He saw the white manager for a minute, a man seamed, blotched and reddened from a lifetime of jobs like this, dirty, but routine as a city office, in the wilderness, in the sun. He was handed over to a grey — eyed coloured man with uplifting texts in his office. The records were not too satisfactory; Bray asked if he could talk to one of the shop stewards — the union records might make more sense. The clerk became vague and left the room— “Just a minute, ay?” He came back with the composed face of an underling who has passed on responsibility. “The manager says we don’t know if he’s here today, they doesn’t work Saturday, only if it’s overtime.” Bray had seen that some people were working. “Yes, some are working overtime this morning, but I don’t know …” Uneasy again, the clerk took him down to the cleaning and packing floor. He seemed to have the helpless feeling that Bray would single the man out instantly; in fact, one of the section overseers, a big, very black man standing with gumboots awash where the fish were being scaled, looked up alertly and caught the clerk’s eye. He came with the matter — of-factness of one who is accustomed to being summoned. Bray introduced himself and the man said with almost military smartness, “Good morning, sir! Elias Rubadiri,” but couldn’t shake hands because his were wet as the fish themselves. Scales gleamed all over him, caught even in his moustache, like paillettes on a carnival Neptune. They went out into an open passageway to talk; oh yes, there were union records. But the man who kept them wasn’t there, they were locked up. Where? Oh at his house, that man’s house. Could one go to see him, then? — The scales dried quickly out in the open air, he was rubbing them off his hands, shedding them. “He’s not there….” There was that African pause that often precedes a more precise explanation. Bray switched to the intimacy of Gala, and the overseer said, “You know, the other day … he got hurt on the head.”
Then they began to talk. Rubadiri was one of those half — educated men of sharp intelligence, touchy with whites yet self — assured, and capable of a high — handed attitude towards his own people, who appear in authority all over the place after independence is achieved. PIP was kept alive by such people, now that the old brazier — warmth of interdependency that was all there was to huddle round had been replaced by the furnace blast of power. There was no sense in the dispute — that was how he presented it to Bray. The old men and women who were employed by the fish — drying “factory”— “those sticks in the sand with a few fish — you’ll see out there”—were not capable of any other work. They did not keep regular hours of employment, they were sick one day, they started only in the afternoon the next, they had pains in the legs — he laughed tolerantly. “It gives them something to do, the money for tobacco.” Of course, the company did own the fish — drying, it had been there, a small private concession that they had bought up along with some boats and the use of this landing stage when the factory was started. It produced a few thousand bags of dried fish a year, that went to the mines — but that demand was dwindling because even before Independence the mines had almost abandoned migratory labour and workers who lived with their families were not given rations as compound workers had been. For the rest of the market, the company had the fish — drying and fish — meal factory in Gala, as Bray must know, where the whole thing was done by machinery. So these people here — his hand waved them away— “the company just lets them stay.” The union that had been formed when the factory started didn’t recognize them.
When he began to talk about the “trouble” of the previous week he took on a closed — minded look, the look of a man who has stated all this before a gathering, repeated it, perhaps, many times, with a hardening elimination of any doubt or alternative interpretation.
“Now some people come along and say, the fish — dryers work here, they work for the same company, why aren’t they in the union? They say, they are paid too little, it’s bad for us if somebody accepts very low pay. How do we know, if there’s trouble, if one day we strike, they won’t be brought in to do our work?” He lifted his lip derisively and expelled a breath, as if it were not worth a laugh. “Of course they know, the same time, that’s all rubbish. How can women and old men do our work? All they could do is wash the floors! They don’t understand the packing, and the freezing plant machinery.”
“Why do these others bother about them, then?”
“Why? Sir, I’ll tell you. These are people who say they are PIP, but they are not PIP. They want to make trouble in the union for PIP. They want to make strikes here. I know them. They only want trouble.”