Waiting for Tiny

Rowlinson Carter

Santa Carolina, Mozambique

Mr Tiny Rowland will be surprised and, one hopes, pleased to learn that among the population of this small island in the Mozambique Channel he has been elevated to a level of godliness denied to

mortals other than Lyndon B. Johnson. The former American President, not wide- ly remembered as a saint in his political dealings, was worshipped along with aero- planes passing high overhead by a tribe in New Guinea who trusted that their devo- tion would bring about a visit by the great man and, with luck, lashings of American consumer goods.

The veneration of Mr Rowland on Santa Carolina, impoverished but isolated from the atrocities of the civil war on the mainland, owes as much to Lonrho's money as the boss's perceived qualities as a human being. The islanders wish him to know that no obstacle prevents him from buying the island and, with certain post- Wilberforce guarantees, themselves. For ten years they have been waiting for Tiny.

Until Mozambique's independence in 1974, when the Portuguese capitulated to the Frelimo guerrillas whose own timetable did not anticipate victory for another 20 years, Santa Carolina was a popular tourist resort for white South Africans and Rhodesians. The attractions were delicious shellfish, cheap wine, excellent beaches and some of the best big-game fishing in the world. On the way over, many tourists found themselves detained by the conge- nial girls in the bars and night clubs of Lourenco Marques, an introduction to black experience that back in South Africa would have earned them six months with- out the option. Santa Carolina, a whole- some spot, was popularly known as 'Para- dise Island'.

The new Frelimo government, aflame with revolutionary fervour, closed Mozam- bique's frontiers to the tourist trade. To the distress of merchant seamen who still called at the capital, renamed Maputo, the government also slapped padlocks on the hospitable waterfront establishments. On Santa Carolina, the Portuguese family who ran the hotel there joined the exodus to Lisbon before ever completing an ambi- tious expansion, designed to offer South Africans another delight denied to them at home, a casino.

While the economy on the mainland nosedived under the government's specta- cularly unsuccessful experiments with socialist reform, helped along subsequently by four years of drought and South Africa's `destabilising' support for the Mozambicluan National Resistance insurrection, tile hotel staff elected to remain on the island. They were self-sufficient on a diet of fish, includ- ing crayfish in quantities seldom associated with straitened circumstances, a few goats and cultivated crops.

The staff, perhaps because there was nothing else to do or hope for, adopted the bizarre ritual of keeping beds made up and dining room tables laid in readiness for guests who never arrived. Their futile routine went on for a decade. The hotel bar opened and closed at the appointed times with nothing to sell to non-existent patrons. Silver floating trophies awarded to fishermen — the last names were en- graved in 1973 — were removed from their display case in the hotel reception for a weekly polish. A contemporary newspaper clipping pinned to the wall records that 15 years ago a Mr Andries Maree of the Western Transvaal set a world record by catching in the space of five days black marlin weighing a total of 875 kilograms.

Waiters arrested the distintegration of their white uniforms under the pressure of regular laundering by sewing on layers of patches made out of any material that came to hand. They replaced broken but- tons with substitutes fashioned out of old bottle tops. Their uniforms survived but around them, corroded by sea spray, the hotel buildings fell apart. The unfinished casino collapsed and was taken over by goats. Cyclones smashed windows and doors and the salt air, once inside, got to work even on the strings of the piano in the ballroom. Had the staff received any pay, which they did not, a government decree stipulated that all members of staff, with- out regard for their theoretical duties, would get the same amount.

Paradise was on its last legs by the time of my unannounced arrival in a light aircraft. The usual bush practice of making a low pass over the hotel brought the staff en masse to the airstrip, dragging behind them an ancient trolley whose wheels had sagged to an angle closer to horizontal than upright. I did not then know that word had reached the island the previous day that Lonrho were negotiating with the Mozam- biquan government to take over the man- agement of defunct state farms and that the concession would be partially offset by the revival of the tourism industry, especially Santa Carolina.

The sight of imposing luggage, which happened to contain television equipment, animated the reception committee on the airstrip. The glimpse of a British passport got their elbows nudging. We set off for the hotel like a religious procession, television equipment stacked high on the trolley to the fore, the faithful in close attendance emitting a rising babble of Portuguese supplication.

Registration at the hotel involved com- pleting in triplicate an immensely inquisi- tive form demanding such details as one's mother's place and date of birth. As I wrote out this information for the third time, the previous two copies were passed excitedly from hand to hand. It took some time for the penny to drop that my name in the eyes of a semi-literate Portuguese speaker bears a superficial resemblance to `Rowland'.

Mr Christopher Munnion, the diminu- tive Southern African correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, is perplexed by the fre-

quency with which total strangers in search of inside information inquire whether he is a professional jockey. He detests horses (his background, before journalism, was vaudeville) and his denial always causes disappointment. He has not experienced, however, the darkness that descended over Santa Carolina as the hotel staff reluctantly accepted that I was neither Tiny Rowland nor a relation and was categorically unable to buy the island, the hotel and its contents on Lonrho's behalf.

In 1974, not long before the North Vietnamese and Vietcong took over Viet- nam, the Saigon tourist board attempted to lure visitors-with the slogan: 'You've heard about Vietnam, now come see it.' Precisely because of what they had heard about Vietnam, the tourists went in an altogether different direction. I hope, for the sake of the staff on Santa Carolina, that Mr Row- land is not as faint-hearted.