The God Botherers

Richard Bean

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781840024159
• eBook ISBN: 9781849431415
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

"The borders don't make any sense, there's no rule of law, no running water, you never know when the electric's on, the last war's fucked everything, and the next war will fuck everything else" A dark and deeply funny tale of foreign aid workers in far-flung Tambia... Truly alternative Christmas entertainment, not for the faint hearted or politically correct. The God Botherers was produced by The Bush Theatre in November 2003.

April

Somewhere in the developing world. The sound of cicadas. The back yard of a Non Governmental Organisation HQ bungalow. It is early evening and the light is beginning to fade. KEITH is listening to The Clash on his headphones and smoking a joint. He is a man of about 45 wearing shorts and a beach shirt. A muazzin calls the faithful to prayer. Enter IBRAHIMA. She is wearing a full black burqa with a netted over-eye slit and no flesh showing. She stops before him. He turns his walkman off.

Pause.

KEITH: You look different.

(Pause.)

The shoes?

(IBRAHIMA lifts the burqa to just above the ankle, revealing tarty, gold, strappy high heels. She circles him sensuously, brushing the burqa against him. Then she walks into the bungalow. He takes a swig of beer, stands, and follows her. Enter LAURA. She is 24 years old, dressed in GAP fatigues and a Moby T-shirt bearing the slogan EVERYTHING IS WRONG. On the back the T-shirt has a list of everything that is wrong – environmental pollution etc. A Gucci hijab covers her head. She is carrying a large travel bag and smaller rucksack bag with a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine sticking out the back.)

LAURA: (Out front.) Dear Pip, I am here! I am fucking here! Everything is just, like, epic. I am in Tambia or is it ‘The’ Tambia. Who cares if I’m in the wrong country, I am definitely, definitely not in Burton Latimer. It feels weird writing a letter. I’m gonna die without email. I need my fix! I was stuck in Lakpat for three weeks. Pukesville! Every NGO in, like, the whole world is hanging out in Lakpat, it’s just like Uni – ‘Shagging sans frontières.’ The place is infested with natural blondes, uuuughhh, bastard Scandinavian girls, with their long legs and their long naturally blonde hair, and they are all so fucking tedious, and naturally blonde. Agh!!! Kill, kill, kill! Met a real cute human rights campaigner from New Zealand, half-Indian guy, really pretty. He’s married. Oh Pip, what is it with me? I’ll tell you all about him when I see you. I’m Mad! PS Can you send me this week’s copy of Heat, the one where Nicole Kidman’s stuck in a portaloo. My name’s Laura and I’m a Heataholic. Please write babe!

(Enter IBRAHIMA. She is walking swiftly but pauses before LAURA.)

(To IBRAHIMA.) Allahu Akhbar

(IBRAHIMA giggles and walks off.)

Fuck!

(Enter KEITH. He stands upstage of her, watching.)

KEITH: You’re late.

LAURA: The bus blew a tyre.

KEITH: You’re three fucking weeks late.

LAURA: Someone attacked a mosque, riots, hundreds dead. It wasn’t my fault.

(Out front.) I live in a really traditional bungalow thing called an ibi. The design is exactly like all the local indigenous people’s houses, except I’ve got air conditioning, carpets and a toilet. I share the ibi with this guy Keith. The bad news is HE IS MY DAD!

KEITH: Burton Latimer eh? Weetabix.

LAURA: Yeah.

KEITH: Ready Brek – that’s a Weetabix product isn’t it?

LAURA: I don’t know.

KEITH: Do they make Alpen in Burton Latimer?

LAURA: I’m not sure.

KEITH: You do come from Burton Latimer don’t you?

LAURA: I worked there. I was born in Sevenoaks.

KEITH: They changed the name of Weetos to Minibix, didn’t they?

(Beat.) Or was it the other way round? Alpen nutty crunch, that’s my favourite, can’t beat it. Bran, nuts AND it’s crunchy.

LAURA: Burton Latimer is fantastically boring, it stinks like a permanent roast dinner, and its population is dedicated to waiting, like, quietly, to die.

KEITH: It’s very handy for Kettering.

LAURA: You’re just like my dad. Do you like Motorhead? Punk?

KEITH: Motorhead were never punk. They started in ’75, which is pre-punk, unless you count the New York Dolls as punk, which I never have. Motorhead were grunge really, but pre-grunge cos grunge was post-punk, obviously.

LAURA: (Laughing.) I came here to get away from blokes like you.

KEITH: Beer? I know a man, who knows a man, who knows a man. There are not many opportunities for women.

LAURA: Not yet. That’s my job!

(Out front.) When we’re not working we’re basically, like lashed. We drink, literally, like, tons of this Sun beer.

KEITH: It’s a wheat based German recipe made under licence in Morocco. Nigerian army deserters driving diesel Peugot 405s smuggle it through as far as Lakpat. It’s got added sugar to suit the Tambian taste for sugar. I find it a bit sweet but it’s better than a kick in the clems.

LAURA: (Out front.) We got drunk the first night, which is kinda risky cos we’re living under, like, Sharia Law, yeah? but because we’re ‘Christians’, in inverted commas, we’re not like, covered by the same laws as the Muslims who live next door, yeah? It’s mad!

KEITH: How the fuck can you expect to run a fucking country when half the fucking laws only apply to half the fucking population!

LAURA: (Out front.) I’m not doing VSO, this is an NGO. I get a proper salary. It’s a job. Keith’s been here three years. He’s really positive about the project and the people.

KEITH: It’s like herding fucking cats!

LAURA: (Out front.) The bus company is run by Christians. It’s called ‘Death is Certain Buses’, and the toilet paper’s called ‘God is in Control’. Mad!

KEITH: Don’t ever say that you don’t believe in God, alright? They’ll think you’re mentally ill. You’re Church of England.

LAURA: Cool.

KEITH: And a virgin.

LAURA: I am a virgin.

KEITH: Don’t go out without a veil.

LAURA: Actually, it’s kinda, liberating –

KEITH: – Crap.

(Beat.) Wash standing up. Catch the water in a bucket so we can flush the loo. When I was in the Philippines, ’86, ’87 we used to shit in the jungle. You had to take a spade with you, not to dig a hole, but to kill the snakes.

LAURA: ‘Luxury.’

KEITH: I watched an NPA platoon kill a Filipino peasant with a spade. They could have shot him but with a spade you can all have a go.

LAURA: Couldn’t you have stopped it?

KEITH: We were there to find alternatives to burning rice straw. Environmentally catastrophic.

(Beat.) Don’t wash out here. The boys poked holes in the fence. Victoria.

LAURA: She came home early, didn’t she. Something about er –

KEITH: – She got pissed at the army barracks and then, watched by fifty soldiers, half the kpelle, and me, she gave a German Aids Awareness Outreach worker a blow job in the car park.

LAURA: I’ll try and remember not to do that then.

KEITH: She’s gone back to live in Goole. She’s training to be a drama therapist.

You’re the only white woman for three hundred square miles so you get a twenty-four hour guard, a mimani.

LAURA: Is it that, like, totally necessary?

KEITH: Completely unnecessary. Unoka is not another Belle Yella.

LAURA: I hope not. Oh God. All the talk in Bracknell is about pulling out of Belle Yella.

(Enter MONDAY. He’s a Tambian of about 25 wearing torn shorts, a blue fez, flip flops and a T-shirt which says DIP ME IN HONEY AND THROW ME TO THE LESBIANS.)

KEITH: You’re late!

MONDAY: I collided with a huge python in the road and nearly got bitten.

KEITH: You’re lying!

MONDAY: The python was hopping mad!

KEITH: You’ve been drinking!

MONDAY: I was thrown off my puk puk and didn’t know what to do! I thought my days of cheese were over! Then I remembered the words of Richard Nixon – ‘Defeat is never fatal unless you give up.’ So I fell to my knees and prayed to that gentleman of Nazareth and BANG!, along comes the money truck from the Central Bank and runs over the python’s head! The rest, as they say, is history.

KEITH: You’re drunk.

MONDAY: I am going to divorce booze and marry Christ!

(To LAURA.) I will be a great mimani, maybe the greatest ever. I have studied the habits of lions. You will not be killed – over my dead body!

LAURA: Hi. Laura.

(LAURA puts her hand out to shake.)

MONDAY: Oh no!

KEITH: In this province a man can’t touch a woman.

MONDAY: Don’t start! Or we might as well have it off and all go back to mini skirts!

LAURA: (Out front.) Monday is, like, a Missionary name, but he’s a Muslim, but, Oh God, it’s, like, really complicated.

MONDAY: I was born a Muslim, but in the orphanage Jesus Christ came to me one night when I was playing Scrabble and made me his lifelong fr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Epigraph page
• Characters
• Contents
• April
• September