Monday 4 July

I spent the day packing up for my move tomorrow to Kuti, and preparing to skype in to the funeral of my very good friend Jim Stewart, from Dundee University. I heard Jim was ill about 2 weeks ago, and considered flying back to Scotland to spend some time with him.  The news was so bad though that it seemed unlikely I would be in time to see him before he became incapacitated.  Jim visited Arie on Ward 32 at Ninewells Hospital about a week before he died.  And by the time I heard what had happened to Jim - his sudden collapse, the catastrophic diagnosis - it was too late. By then Jim was already on Ward 32 himself.   He was transferred to a hospice in Dundee, and died last week.

This is a piece I wrote the morning I woke up feeling sure he had just died:

Dear Jim, I am in Malawi.  It is 7.30 a.m. and I have just woken up. I suspect you died last night. 

Unable to get through to Eddie – the African bush is not known for rapid internet services – I can’t know for sure.  And I have to leave my computer now to go and monitor a lion – my task for this morning.  I pick up the lion’s paperwork then reach for some note paper so I can write you this letter, which you will never read.  Then hesitate.  Paper is very scarce around here, so I can’t just take a notepad.  How many sheets of paper should I take?  One piece? No, I won’t be able to say much on one piece. Three pieces? After fourteen years of friendship and so much more, can three pieces of notepaper be enough to tell you how much you have meant to me?  Five pieces?  Fifty? But this is not possible, more than three and the office staff would go into meltdown.  I guiltily snatch up three pieces and hurry up the red dust road.

Within minutes I am approaching the large forest enclosure that is the home of our lion, whose journey in life has never been easy, and whose arrival at this Sanctuary signalled the start of true freedom and happiness.   The sun is beating down steadily so that, within seconds, my skin starts to prickle, and a bead of sweat forms and runs down my back. There is the smell of smoke in the air, some dry grasses having been burnt earlier.

Chachikulu (Cha-Chi-Ku-Lu, meaning great), our amazing male lion, with his highly intelligent and penetrating eyes, terrifying roar, marvellous main, and rippling muscles, is lying on his back in the sun like a kitten, three paws waving occasionally in the air while he chews intermittently on the fourth. He flicks his tail lazily at the odd fly.   You can almost hear him purr. Monkeys chatter. Cicadas chirp. Baboons peer coyly through the leaves.   All around us are the sounds of the wild. And here, it’s just one more stunningly beautiful day in Malawi.

I begin to monitor Chachikulu and complete the paperwork.  Then I pull out my three blank pieces of paper, and look at them doubtfully.  I try to think about you being dead, but my mind, ever inclined to side step anything unpleasant, refuses to cooperate.  Suddenly I’m thinking about Brexit.  I heard this morning that England has voted to leave the EU. That the English pound has immediately fallen to pre 2008 levels. That in the last six hours we have lost trillions of pounds on critical financial markets. That the housing market is expected to plummet.  It sounds as if the UK been thrown into total disarray.  I don’t seem able to care.  My mind is fully occupied with another untimely exit that seems much more real and important to me.

My gaze returns to the scene in front of me. How rich and colourful the forest is, the red dust framing an abundance of multi coloured bushes and grasses, ferns and trees. While I have been preoccupied, Chachikulu’s doze has descended into a profound sleep, so that he is now utterly still.  He dreams of his beloved homeland, no doubt, as tens of thousands of lions have done before him, soothed by the sun and breezes, and the calls of the wild.

I tell myself that you will soon lie in earth as rich as this, covered by colours as delightful as these.  Trees and bushes will in time take their strength from you, just as those of us who have been fortunate enough to know you have taken strength from you for many years past.  And will continue to do so, drawing on our memories of you, for many years to come.  Not just the knowledge that you have imparted - not ‘just’ Shakespeare and Aristotle, Woolf and Woolstonecroft. I was anxious, worried when I met you. You showed me how to be calm, how to listen, how to think, how to be.  

As you undergo your own personal exit, my heart and spirit instinctively reaches out to stop you leaving – and I know in this, I am not alone. There are many of us dedicated to the idea of you continuing to be in our lives.  Forever! No Jexits allowed!

But knowing your journey is already under way, and that there was never any stopping it, we come   instead to offer you our small, insufficient thanks, gratitude, and love. You have heard the call of the wild, and you have gone.  And though we cannot follow you there at this time, our love will always be with you.

Sorry if these seems a bit morose and so on, but Jim was such a lovely man and an extraordinarily good friend.  I keep telling myself the same as I keep telling myself about Arie - I was so lucky to have him in my life, I'm an infinitely better person for his company, his companionship, his loving acceptance.  So much to be grateful for.

So which one of you lucky beggers is gonna be next?