LIFESTYLE I BOOK REVIEW
Glimpses of another world Local author Guy Hallowes has written five books, together with a collection of short stories. Guy has lived in Kenya, UK, South Africa, Botswana and Canada before settling in Lane Cove. Here Guy writes an anecdote of time spent in Africa. YUSUF AND THE SACRIFICE In 1978, I and two others were sent to Botswana to rescue a brewery business, started by a German company, which had run into all sorts of trouble. I had no idea of some of the issues I would have to deal with. Yusuf, our very competent Jordanian engineer, had dedicated every possible moment of his last few years to the success of the operation. He often spent eighteen hours a day underneath some rotten piece of equipment. From the very early days of our involvement, he used to pop into my office, often just for a chat, usually with some cotton waste and an offending and often broken piece of equipment in his hand. Thin, not very tall, wiry Yusuf, with his short greying locks, usually dressed in a greasy overall and always with a smile on his face. Initially the business had used returnable bottles, because much of the market in neighbouring South Africa used returnables. To save money, and not understanding the environment, the German management had installed cheap and wholly unsuitable bottle washers, which were quite incapable of washing the bottles properly once they had been returned to the brewery to be used again. Inevitably, a variety of foreign objects mice, cockroaches, spiders to name but a few, found refuge in the bottles from the
dry dusty country that is Botswana. The result was that many unhappy customers found that included in their beer or soft drink was some ghastly, unwanted foreign object. Within weeks of the brewery marketing its first beers on the market, articles started to appear in the Botswana Daily News, including a photograph of a Mr Molefe, who resided in a shanty town situated in the capital city of Botswana. Mr Molefe was gazing unhappily at a Prinz-Brau beer with a small, obviously dead mouse stuck in the throat of the bottle he was holding. Soon there were similar complaints from all over the country. Inevitably, as we had warned them, the Botswana Government asked us to ‘come and rescue’ the project. Two offending bottle washers were removed, but were still standing forlornly in the outer part of the brewery premises waiting to be collected by a scrap dealer. In the middle of helping to supervise the installation of a much larger and more robust washer, Yusuf popped over to see me saying: “Mr Guy (he always called me Mr Guy, despite my entreaties asking him to just refer to me as Guy), these old washers still have very bad evil spirits inside.” “Yusuf, what do you have in mind?” “We must make sacrifice.” “OK,” I said, wondering what I was
Lane Cove author Guy Hallowes latest book (his 6th). 26 I THE VILLAGE OBSERVER I NO. 271 I MARCH 2018
Local author Guy Hallowes
letting myself in for; sacrifices were way out of my league. “What do you suggest?” “I will buy a big male goat.” He said. “We will then sacrifice goat on the top of washer, with all brewery people watching - they must all know the bad spirits have been chased away.” He then added, “We can all then eat goat at my house,” (he was referring to the new management team). “Your wife and all the wives of management people can come and eat as well.” So that is what we did. On a Friday afternoon, Yusuf himself, with a firm grip on the unfortunate goat, stood on top of one of the old bottle washing machines, muttering incantations which none of us understood. He expertly slaughtered said goat, with me and most of the workforce surrounding the offending bottle washer looking on in amazement. The next evening, being Saturday, my wife and some of the other wives sat in the kitchen with Yusuf’s wife, while we men were served goat meat in Yusuf’s small lounge. There was never ever again any hint of the presence of evil spirits in the business. I suppose the lesson for all of us is to accept other people’s beliefs, whatever we might think of them.
www.guyhallowes.com
