Cameron Duodu
LETTER FROM THE NORTH
The scene: Mid-morning at Stagnant Pool. Many insects are flapping about in the greenish-brown-black water, which smells badly. Some are fanning themselves on blades of grass.
Male Anopheles mosquito:Whnnnnngggggg! [Translation] Hey, Mama, feel like a little fooling around? Nothing like a warm morning like this to make you remember our courtship, what?
Female Anopheles mosquito:Nyyyyyy ngggggggggggg! Wrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnnnggggg! [Translation] Shut your face, you old idiot. When we were courting, you never asked! You just jumped on and knocked the wheeze out of my nostrils. Now you have to ask, and I bet you want me to say yes so that your sick ego can say that I am more in need of it than you?
M: But I am supposed to become more civilised with age? More sensitive?
F: Where did you learn that crap? A woman wants to have no say in this matter, save to lie back and enjoy it. That is, if the partner has been behaving himself lately.
M: Ahah! But how does the partner know he is in favour? If I flap my left wing first, you say it was too close to your right ear, which doesn’t hear so good, and I’ve forgotten this because I no longer love you. If I flap my right wing, you say it is too loud and that lovemaking should be quiet and gentle. If I flap both wings …
F: For crying out loud! Can’t you talk about anything else? Sex, sex, sex! Do you know that our whole species is being threatened with extinction right this moment that you are entertaining lecherous thoughts?
M: Extinction? What are you talking about? Ever since that Noah bloke got fooled into thinking that if he left us off his ark, we would die off, what hasn’t mankind tried to get rid of us?
F: Just like a man, isn’t it? You know that humans are aware that the malaria parasite is carried by us female Anopheles mosquitoes, and that whenever they go into a conclave to try and eliminate malaria, the focus is on us females, not on you. So you don’t care, do you? If they kill us off, what is it to you? Your mood is not our mood; our thoughts are not your thoughts; you desire when we don’t desire. And “when”, in your particular case, turns out to mean “always”.
M: [Fast-scans latest Mosquito Radar bulletin board] Oh, I see! You mean that malaria summit at Abuja? Do you really expect malaria to be conquered from Nigeria? Look, there are enough mangrove swamps in that country, to say nothing of creeks, attempted lakes, gutters, canals, potholes and rubbish heaps with a wet middle, as to repopulate us six trillion times over, even if the rest of the world were to eliminate us. Do you think West Africa was named the “white man’s grave” for nothing? Do not fear, my dear! Daddy is here to take care of your worries, okay? Whnnnnngggggg!
F: Oh, bugger off! Do be serious. Look, they tried DDT, but although it worked for them, it wouldn’t leave their own bodies but stayed there to give them the same cancers that were killing us. So they dropped it. But they are bound to come up with something else more deadly.
M: Look, Mama, you are worrying for nothing. I read on the Internet the other day – while you were out shopping for nail polish …
F: Yes, make fun of me! What’s wrong with nail polish on a woman just because she happens to be 20 weeks old? You think all men are as blind as you, eh? If you only knew!
M: It said on the Internet that because malaria only occurs in the world’s poorest areas, research into curing it is poorly funded. Since the discovery of quinine, only about 10 medicines have been developed out of it. But look at antibiotics, which are also used in the rich countries. Hundreds of them on the market. As do drugs that make people lose weight; drugs that take liver spots from the back of people’s hands; drugs that unwrinkle the face and the neck.But come to anti-malaria or cheap anti-HIV/Aids, many of the best scientists don’t wanna know.
F: Well, research and development costs money.
M: You mean women’s magazines carry articles on research and development these days? Whatever happened to navel- gazing?
F: Hmmm! You’d do well to steal a glance now and then, for they are getting quite brainy. How to reach orgasm, plus the best way to serve genetically modified giant salmon, makes a woman’s reading tick, right? But gee – you’re not asleep already? WhynnnnnnnnGGGGggg?
M: Ah!? Eh!? No, no, I am not asleep! I just dropped off. That man I had at lunch was full of protein and testosterone!
F: The humans are putting the research money into vaccines right? I don’t fear that, for it is aimed at the malaria parasite we carry. But – I mean, look at you and me! We are supposed to love each other but we hate each other. If they could discover how to turn female mosquitoes into man-eaters, we would finish you guys off in no time, and then we wouldn’t need to submit to imbeciles like you to be able to fertilise our eggs and, and, and … Oh! What am I saying? [Whispers] But we too would die out after you guys are all gone!! Oh my God! Do you think this pool is bugged by humans?
M: Don’t worry, my sweet! Humans are too stupid to bug mosquitoes. They bug each other. Have no fear. the technology for genetically modifying creatures occurs only in the north of planet Earth. There, it is money that talks, not lives. So they have modified wheat, maize and rice. Big money. Tomatoes, apples and peaches. Mosquitoes? Tsetse flies? Monsanto hasn’t heard of them. We are safe. So long as those diseases do not ravage the north and create money! Now will you ngwngggggggggg?
F: Oh, you can be so comforting! YWWWWW NGGGGGGG!
(Curtain)