Father Michael’s Lottery
by Johan Steyn
(University of KwaZulu-Natal Press)
In this small-town setting, the rundown hospital is staffed with overworked and disillusioned (mostly expat) doctors and local nurses. Seriously demoralised by a depressing cocktail of few resources and rampant Aids, a small group — a rebellious doctor, a shebeen queen and the local Catholic priest — devise a scheme to raise money to send a patient for a kidney transplant.
That is the essence of Johan Steyn’s first novel, a simultaneously sad and funny story set in an unnamed Southern African country — possibly Botswana — that could be pretty much anywhere in Africa today. The central character is Morgan, a tough-minded medic who has been in too many poor country hospitals, seen too much conflict, battled too many bureaucrats and watched too many people die of Aids for his own good. But he simply cannot stomach the world of private hospitals and diseases of the rich. Rather, he struggles on, disregarding the rules and regulations of the administrators who, to balance the books, want him to send his patients home to die. Admired by his colleagues when he doesn’t infuriate them, he tries in his rather blunt way to make his patients as comfortable as possible as they prepare for death.
When a patient arrives at the hospital in need of a kidney transplant, he is told by the administration that such care is beyond the already stretched budget. Not being one to take his bosses seriously, he hatches a plan to raise the necessary funds with Dorcas, the shebeen owner, and Father Michael, a missionary. Together they cajole Mr B, the wealthiest man in the district and reputedly a smuggler, to sponsor a beerfest, which is a major success.
Simple in outline, the novel is a powerful evocation and perceptive character study of a familiar situation. Scenes of the bush intercut with a portrait of a poor town off the map and out of the minds of the powerful. It’s a place where people survive on a combination of fatalism, denial and optimism between the cycles of dry and rainy seasons.
Although the subject matter is grim and a sense of outrage at the neglect of sick people frequently surfaces, this is not an angry novel. It is a compassionate, finely drawn study of ordinary people in dire situations. The humour in the novel is mostly gentle and filled with irony. Though not optimistic, it’s a novel of hope.
Most remarkable of all, this is a first novel that does not have a “first-novel feel” to it.
Johan Steyn is a doctor and the product of a graduate programme in creative writing