The Masque of Africa_ Glimpses of African Belief - By V. S. Naipaul Page 0,25

away from Busoga.

PATRICK THOUGHT we should persevere, and try with the more famous and beautiful kingdom of Toro in the west. In the Serena Hotel, where we were staying, there was as it happened a man who, in addition to his hotel duties in the human resources department, was head of protocol for the kingdom of Toro. Patrick made his usual correct approaches to this man, whose name was James, and in due course we heard from James that the Queen Mother of Toro was going to be in the hotel in a couple of days.

On the afternoon of the appointed day we sat in the Bambara lounge on the first floor of the hotel, waiting for the Queen Mother. In a far corner of the lounge were three big women, of brown complexion. They were there when we arrived. They made a distinguished group. One of the three was noticeably handsome and vivacious. She was wearing a shade of powder red that suited her complexion. I suspected that she was the Queen Mother, but we couldn’t presume without an introduction. That was made only when James, the protocol man of the court, came.

The Queen Mother and her companions then left their corner and came to where we were sitting. The women with the Queen Mother were her sisters, and I imagine they were her official chaperones.

The Queen Mother said of one sister, when she introduced her, that she was a born-again Christian. That meant she was part of the Pentecostal crop of Uganda, where there were hundreds of Pentecostal churches, extravagantly named, and matched in their number only by the private junior and secondary schools, whose signboards (“Day and Boarding”) appeared in unlikely places, like the boards of the churches, a kind of private enterprise gone mad: an unlikely, twisted fulfilment of Mutesa’s wish in 1875 for British missionaries.

“Do you want to be saved?” the Queen Mother asked ironically.

But the irony had no effect on her born-again sister who, in an undertone, immediately began to talk to us about the need for Jesus.

With equal irony the Queen Mother said that the other sister was married to an old man, leaving us to work out what that meant.

The Queen Mother told her own story easily. She had clearly done it many times before. Her husband had been in the foreign service of Uganda. He had served in Latin America; and she, in her jolly way, spoke some Spanish phrases she still remembered. “Cómo está? Todo va bien?” (“How are you? Everything all right?”) They were a happy couple, although he was older than she. They had three children, two girls and a boy. One of the girls became very ill with leukaemia. They took this girl to the Royal Marsden Hospital in London. For three years, while the girl was in hospital, the family stayed in London. At some stage her father, the diplomat, had to go back to Uganda to deal with various matters. While he was there he died of a heart attack; shortly after, the girl with leukaemia also died. So, at the age of twenty-seven, the Queen Mother became a widow and regent.

Her son was now sixteen. In two weeks or so he was going to open the parliament at Toro. It was going to be a splendid three-day occasion. Prince Kassim had spoken of this as part of the culture and discipline of the old ways; it was moving in Toro, he said, to see distinguished old men reverencing the boy king. And the Queen Mother now told us a little more about her son. He loved animals. He allowed no one to kick a dog or kill a cat. She was hoping to send him to England to be educated. She invited us all to come to Toro for the opening of the parliament. And Patrick, returning courtesy for courtesy, invited the Queen Mother to come to Trinidad for the carnival in the coming year.

James, the protocol man, seemed delighted that the meeting in the Bambara lounge had gone so well. He was as squashed in appearance, and dry and formal, as the Queen Mother was full of bounce. He said later, in his delight, “The royal family of Toro are big and handsome and light-skinned.”

It was strange hearing this from him. He himself was very dark.

I HAD BEGUN to feel that I had done what I could do in Uganda, and I was planning to move on. But now, after the Queen Mother’s