Monday
The China visit is on again: Essop found the invitation in my other pants, along with my Exclusive Books voucher, which is brilliant because now I can buy the Calland book for the upstairs loo. Note: remember to ask Pallo Jordan about Spud. If it really is about a kung-fu ninja ubuntu-potato, give it to Manto for Christmas. If it’s not, commission Pallo to write a novel about a kung-fu ninja ubuntu-potato. For the kids. ‘You’ve had your chips!” That sort of thing. Nation-building and a strong moral core, laced with cruelty, sexualised violence and carbohydrates.
Later
Just learned that pilot of presidential jet has been head-hunted by a crop-spraying company in Bethlehem. Asked Essop to organise a replacement, has managed to get former crop-sprayer who insists it’s 1985 and that I should call him Baas. I struck him in the chops with Zanele’s porcelain Flemish milkmaid, and now he thinks it’s 1698 and is asking that I call him Mijn Heer.
Progress on the flight plan. Pallo has consulted the ancient Chinese map on the wall downstairs, and is reasonably sure that we’ll be heading north towards the Kingdom of Prester John, then east towards Babylon and Persepolis, then on through Bactria until we spy the war elephants of the Yuezhi, at which point Pallo is fairly certain that we’ll be in China.
Tuesday
China brilliant. Got free Hello Kitty stationery on arrival, and Essop got mistaken for Indian megastar cricketer Kapil Dev. Pallo’s map turned out to be rubbish: the war elephants never pitched, and it says on Wikipedia that Persepolis declined into a sand-blasted ruin a thousand years ago, much like Elton John. China still brilliant though. Going to hotel to watch telly and write to Zanele on Hello Kitty paper. Oh! It smells like watermelon! This place is BRILLIANT!
Wednesday
Very awkward morning. Mugabe has just finished the Rupert Everett autobiography and keeps thrusting it at me in the corridor, urging me to use it as a founding charter for future social reforms. Also very tricky exchange with Chinese hosts, after it was discovered by our interpreters that they are referring to us by our exports rather than our names: apparently Nigeria’s Obasanjo is ‘Honourable Diamonds and Shit Movies”, while I am known as ‘Honourable Gold and Afrikaans Engineers”. Mugabe is known simply as ‘Mr Refugees”. All seems to be sorted now, though: found a Hello Kitty memo on my pillow, next to a White Rabbit sweet, that said ‘Sorry Mr Mbeki”. This place is so brilliant.
Thursday
Bloody Chinese with their bloody history. Spent appalling evening listening to list of Chinese achievements. Apparently they went to the moon in 1500, in a wicker basket pulled by suicide-geese, and Admiral He Zhu not only discovered Africa twice, but once sailed his fleet of triremes into the Jurassic and shot a diplodocus. I asked to see its head, which they claim sits in a vat of formaldehyde in the Forbidden City, but they said that Damien Hirst had borrowed it for the weekend. I find it deeply worrying that they would lie like this: everybody knows that the only person to shoot and behead a Jurassic diplodocus was Albert Luthuli.
I told him we made a rhinoceros out of gold at Mapungubwe, and showed him the picture I keep in my wallet. He asked whether the craftsman had been blinded before or after he completed the mould. I found it very difficult to remain inscrutable. God, to have Madiba’s little eyes that you can close while looking awake and engaged.
Friday
And what’s up with all this goddamn wisdom they keep dispensing? Approached by Hu Jintao this morning, who bowed and said, ‘Confucius he say, ‘Six and seven and eight and bunch!’ Confucius he say, ‘Daylight come and me wanna go home!’” I was really into it by the time he got to the part about counting the bananas and hiding the deadly black tarantula, but then he just stopped and walked away. How do you know if they’re taking the piss? This is a puzzlement.
Mugabe insufferable, still insisting that Look East is a song by the Village People. Have told him that it’s Go West, and played him the Pet Shop Boys cover on my iPod, but he’ll have none of it.
Going home tomorrow, about bloody time. Have used up all Hello Kitty notepaper, and Hu’s wisdom is starting to sound sinister.
Today when I asked him if there were any strings attached to Chinese investment in Africa, he said, ‘Confucius he say, ‘When tiger prawn angered, thrash ripple into foam with fury of tiny prawn-tail. When silkworm slighted, tears mulberry leaf to shreds with avenging mandible. When African leader questions human rights record, is like moth beating wings against typhoon of Chinese development.’” Then he offered me a White Rabbit and made some joke about the Kruger National strip-mine.
At least I think it was a joke.