I thought I’d never see the day when Sharon would be content to spend a quiet hour with me looking at my holiday snaps on the laptop.
I thought I’d never see the day when Sharon would be content to spend a quiet hour with me looking at my holiday snaps on the laptop. Alcoholic nymphomaniacs, I suppose, must mellow over time like everybody else. Her interest was unflagging, even when we came to 50 pictures of the same three elephants enjoying themselves in the Shire river in Malawi. And when we got on to the ones I took of Madonna at a tree-planting ceremony near Lilongwe, she was avid. I’d completely forgotten I’d watched Madonna plant a tree last October, so I enjoyed seeing them as well.
The snaps had come about like this. I was waiting at Zomba bus station, Blantyre-bound, and reading the famous old Blantyre newspaper the Daily Times (formerly the Nyasaland Times and before that the Central African Planter). A piece on page two said that Madonna was coming to Lilongwe to plant a moringa tree to celebrate the start of construction work on a prestigious girls’ academy, to which she was contributing £11 million. The event would be covered by local media only, it said. So in Blantyre I went to the offices of the Daily Times and said to the hacks I would love to see Madonna plant this moringa tree, unfortunately local media only were invited. And the hacks in the newsroom laughed and said no problem, come with us.
Three days later, beside the road from Lilongwe out to the airport, I paid the cab driver and walked down a slope to where a crowd was awaiting her arrival. A vast area of bush had been stripped from the hillside, exposing a smooth hard clay surface. Roughly in the middle of this bareness was a marquee packed with locals sheltering from the midday sun. Facing the marquee, a flower-banked dais had been prepared for Madonna and her entourage, which had yet to arrive. About 500 schoolchildren with no shade were lined up on the far side. On the near side a dozen local hacks and photographers stood behind a single strand of twine. The pre-dug hole for the young moringa tree was right in front of the press line, not six feet away. The lads from the Daily Times greeted me like one of their own.
Finally, she came. A fleet of new 4x4s swept on to the bare earth and out she stepped with Lourdes, her eldest. They were ushered up the dais stairs and sat down. After some massed dances of welcome, the speeches began. The Minister for Education gushed that ‘in future every girl born in Malawi will be Madonna’s child’. This and other such statements made us cynical local hacks look at each other and blink. Someone near the microphone made a valiant effort to render the stream of platitudes into Chewa, but it took too long and was soon abandoned.
The sweating, patient crowd looked on uncomprehendingly from a distance. On the far side the schoolchildren looked uncomfortably hot and stupefied with boredom. I wished with all my heart that someone, Madonna preferably, would stand up and crack a good and easily translatable joke. Or that she would totter across the bare African earth on her high heels and offer her hands. Or better still grab the mike and sing ‘Like a Virgin’.
And then the village headman was invited to come to the microphone and say a few words. If Mr Binson Chinkhota had been paid for his village’s land, it couldn’t have been nearly enough. He looked shabby and despondent. But here at last was someone with an uncomplicated point of view. This so-called academy should have been for boys, not girls, he complained. For what was the use of educating girls? In the long run it would only cause trouble. But as there was nothing he could do about it now, he said, it would be churlish of him not to add his blessing to the enterprise.
And then Madonna was led by the Minister for Education over to where we Daily Times hacks were standing, and she popped the moringa tree in the hole and covered it with soil with a shiny new spade. And at this point in the narrative, Sharon had about 70 snaps to look at of Madonna’s face taken close-up, with a zoom, so that in most of them her face was too big to fit in the photograph.
I don’t think I have ever before seen Sharon so impressed by anything I’ve done or shown her. In days gone by I would have been elated for a week to have aroused such admiration instead of her customary scorn. But, today, I noted with surprise and relief, I couldn’t have cared less what she thought about anything. Which was marvellous. But, my goodness, it’s taken a long time.
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