First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria

by Eve Brown-Waite

  “Terry,” Pauline said as he walked into the house with John and Stan. “Why don't you put on some dinner music?”

  Terry thumbed through a collection of record albums next to the stereo on the sideboard in the dining room. “How about the Carpenters?” he suggested. Thus answering the age-old question of who still listens to the Carpenters? Apparently, people who've been, quite literally, living in a jungle for a long while. I wondered if I should break it to them that Karen was dead.

  Dear Jean,

  Before I can give you my first impressions of Arua, I have to fill you in on the adventure of just getting here.

  So, let's see, first I wake up with a case of … how shall we say it … Idi Amin's revenge? Development workers' tummy? The tourist trots? Well, you get the picture. But Stan, the CARE country director, who's driving us up to our new home says, “Hakuna matata, we can stop whenever you need to go to the bathroom.” I'm a bit relieved, thinking, “Thank God this country has public restrooms.” And as we're driving I'm keeping my eyes peeled for one of those universally recognized restroom signs or maybe a discreet pit latrine somewhere. But pretty soon, I get it. He meant we can literally stop whenever you need to go, and, well, you just go. It's like the whole country is one big latrine. I don't know … is that a good or a bad thing? (Note to self: when traveling in Uganda, always wear a skirt. It makes going to the bathroom by the side of the road much more discreet.)

  So we drove for eight hours, getting tossed around on these dirt roads, dipping and bouncing around on these unavoidable crater-sized potholes and getting completely coated in thick red dirt. The whole route is lined with mud-and-thatch villages, barefoot women carrying loads of wood on their heads and babies on their backs, and dust-covered children who wave to us ceaselessly. (John and I both have sore arms from waving back the entire time. Stan doesn't bother to wave back. I don't know if that's because he's been here so long or because his arm still hurts from being shot in it the last time he drove up to Arua.)

  We drove through bombed-out shells of villages and battered army tanks rusting by the side of the road. Then we drove through nothing and I mean great, long stretches of NOTHING. Then we came to the monkeys and the baboons—which dragged around their bright blue bottoms like they owned the road, and let's face it, they do. Then we came to the Nile River, which we crossed on a “ferry.” A rather flimsy-looking metal raft, which was all there was between our Land Rover and all those hippos and crocodiles.

  Then we got to the other side of the Nile and we drove some more. We drove until just about a minute before I was sure we were going to fall off the edge of the earth. Then we came upon a green, flowering oasis. Ahhh … Arua, our new home.

  I'll keep you posted,

  Eve

  P.S. A note about tampons. You can find Tampax in Kampala but not in Arua, and no sign of my preferred o.b.'s anywhere. So I've got it all figured out, and based on what I brought with me, I have rationed myself to fourteen tampons a month. One cycle down: fourteen tampons exactly! So far, so good.

  Two Kinds of AIDS

  “Are you ready for your first what?” Adam asked, smiling and laughing, as he always seemed to be. He was staying next door in the CARE guesthouse until his wife and children joined him in Arua. “Are you ready for your first safari?”

  “I thought safari is when you go to see wild animals,” I said.

  “Well, we are going on safari to see what? To see banks and economic development projects in the south.”

  Oh, I thought. This is so what? This is so backward. “They have banks here? Real actual banks with windows and tellers?” I was amazed.

  “Yes, of course,” Adam said.

  “And lights?” Based on what Id seen so far in Arua, I found that very hard to believe.

  “Yes, Eve, real banks with lights and everything.” Adam laughed. “Remember all of Uganda is not like Arua.”

  “Well, it sounds like a backward kind of safari. You know, instead of leaving the comforts of the modern world for a glimpse of the wild, wed be leaving the wild for a glimpse of modern life.”

  “You don't have to go, Eve,” John chimed in. “It'll just be for a week, and you've hardly had a chance to get settled in Arua. We haven't even finished unpacking yet.”

  “Stay all alone up here while you two go traipsing off to parts of the country with paved roads and electricity? I don't think so.”

  So we went on our first “safari,” which I soon figured out is the exotic word for driving on roads so bad that you piss blood for a week afterward. And while the goal was seeing modern life rather than wildlife, we saw both. To get to Kampala, or the rest of developed Uganda, you had to cross the Nile River in Murchison Falls National Park. With so many animals in the park you could barely cross the road without hitting a blue-assed baboon, or cross the Nile River without hitting a hippopotamus.

  Our first stop was in Kampala, where the staff at CARE headquarters had planned our itinerary and supplied us with a driver. While there, I put in a call to Elizabeth Marum, the contact I was counting on to get me a job.

  “I'd love to meet you,” she said in a singsong voice, in which I detected a mild Midwestern accent. “But I'm heading out of town for a few days to visit some of our projects. Can I call you when I get back?”

  “Um, I'll be back in Arua by then.”

  “Arua? You're going to Arua?”

  “Yeah, I was hoping you might know of some AIDS projects up there.”

  “Arua? Well, USAID doesn't have any projects in Arua. In fact, I can't even travel north of Murchison Falls. It's against embassy regulations for official Americans to travel there. It's considered too unstable. What are you doing in Arua?”

  “That's where we're posted. My husband works for CARE.”

  “Arua?” she asked again, and the long pause that followed was not particularly reassuring. “Well, why don't you call me before you come down to Kampala next time? We can meet then.”

  “Um, yeah, there are no phones in Arua.” This was going to be trickier than I'd anticipated.

  “Listen, just send a radio message down to the CARE office before your next trip and have them call my office to let me know you are coming.” Clearly, Dr. Marum knew how things worked around here. “If we're around, we'll have you and your husband over for dinner.” She then proceeded to tell me which hill in Kampala they lived on.

  Once on safari, we were greeted with glee wherever we went. This may have been simply because John and I were mzungus, the African term for Caucasians. Being white in Uganda had a certain similarity to being a celebrity in America. People seemed to fawn over us—and expect things from us—wherever we went. Of course, part of this might simply have been that in a country with little public transport and few privately owned vehicles, seeing our CARE-emblazoned Land Rover meant the possibility of a ride. Whatever it was, we were invariably fussed over, given tea and peanuts, or groundnuts as they are called in Uganda, and asked to sign the ubiquitous Visitors Book.

  But after three days I grew bored by these meetings. John and Adam could—and did—talk happily for days about microlending and marginal economies. But much as I tried to look interested, after a half dozen of these meetings, even the thrill of electric lights was wearing off and I was bored. So while the boys were at yet another meeting at yet another bank, I decided to take a walk around the lovely town of Kyotera.

  Kyotera, a small dusty town famous for absolutely nothing, is located in the Rakai district, famous for … well, AIDS. Uganda has the dubious distinction of being the epicenter of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s and ′90s. Within Uganda, the Rakai district led the nation in all things AIDS-related. The first known case of HIV in Uganda was identified there, and the district was still first in HIV prevalence and number of AIDS orphans.

  But regardless of its unpleasant fame, it seemed no different from any of the other backwater Ugandan towns we'd visited. The dusty main road housed a hodgepodge of shops. I walked past one with dozens o
f tinny black bicycles, each one a carbon copy of the next, overflowing onto the red dirt outside. Inside the bicycle shop there were, of course, rows and rows of toilet paper. Maybe it was just me, but I still thought bicycles and toilet paper made strange bedfellows. But apparently in Uganda they go together like tires and tuna fish. It was all very entertaining, but frustrating as hell if you needed, say, car parts and didn't know to look in the shop that sells soda.

  Further up the road was a long row of tiny “lockup” shops. These were literally holes in the wall that were stacked floor to ceiling with goods. Browsing was impossible in these cramped spaces, and this sucked all the joy out of shopping for me. But there was no need to browse since my tour of Uganda had already taught me that all lockup shops carried pretty much the same items: huge cans of cooking oil donated by USAID, gritty toilet paper, and a few canned goods from Kenya. You asked for what you needed and made your purchase through a window carved into the outside wall. A corrugated tin sheet of metal was hinged to the top of this window and would be propped up by a stick if the store was open or hanging down if the store was “locked up.”

  As I approached the row of shops, I could hear the already familiar hawking and bartering sounds of the open-air market, which I knew would be just behind the row of lockup shops. Ugandan towns are pretty standard this way. And I knew too what they would be selling: starchy, tasteless matoke—the basis of all Ugandan meals—as well as sweet potatoes, papaya, pineapple, and bananas. So far I had managed to avoid shopping in these chaotic markets. We ate out while we were on the road, and because I hadn't fully set up house yet in Arua, we'd been frequent guests of Pauline and Terry's. But I knew I'd have to master the market sooner or later.

  It quickly became apparent that Kyotera did not enjoy its fair share of mzungus, and I felt glaringly obvious as I walked up the road. No one was yelling “Ife mani sende!” (Give me money!) like they did all the time in Arua, but at least a dozen pairs of sleepy eyes were glued to me. I wished that I had wrapped a kitenge over my skirt to blend in more with the women around me. But who was I kidding? Nothing could make me blend in with the women around me. Glad to have an excuse to stop somewhere, I entered the open doorway below a sign proclaiming “Dr. Rashid's Center on AIDS Research.”

  I strained my eyes looking for evidence of a scientific establishment, or at least someone in a white coat. Instead, what I saw was a shop identical to the others that snugly surrounded it: a narrow cement room, its cracked floor swept impossibly clean, its whitewashed walls tired and peeling. A young woman unbent herself from the plastic pail in which she was washing her clothes.

  “You are welcome,” she said in that most characteristically polite Ugandan manner. “How can I help you?”

  “I'm looking for Dr. Rashid's Center on AIDS Research,” I told her. “I saw the sign from the road.”

  “You have come to Dr. Rashid's Center on AIDS Research,” she answered in a voice brimming with officiousness. “And I am a staff member.” I tried to mask my surprise. She ushered me inside and offered me a seat on a wooden bench. “Excuse me, please, while I get the Visitors Book.”

  I sat and waited, enjoying the coolness of the concrete wall on my back as I leaned against it. Taped to the opposite wall was a display that I assumed was meant to impress visitors with its officialness. It contained one unframed certificate testifying that Dr. Rashid was a member in good standing of the Ugandan Society of Traditional Healers, and two letters from the Ministry of Health. One letter stated that while Dr. Rashid was not a trained medical doctor, he could perform certain “basic, noninvasive medical procedures.” The other letter stated that Dr. Rashid's experimental treatments on AIDS patients were highly questionable and that he should be closely monitored by the local medical authorities.

  My hostess returned and I signed the Visitors Book, stating the obligatory date, name, address, and reason for my visit. While she took far too long to read the few words that I had written, she gladly allowed me to browse among the wooden shelves holding clear bottles of liquids in vivid shades of reds and greens, and muddy browns and yellows. I read their labels: “Red Liquid—for malaria, anemia, and cancer” and “Green Liquid—for fatigue, loss of appetite, tuberculosis, and AIDS.”

  I must have laughed out loud because the woman rushed over to give testimony that these liquids did indeed do as their labels proclaimed. “I myself am an AIDS victim,” she declared. “My husband and child died of AIDS eight years ago and I had been near death myself from the disease. But now I am completely healthy!” Her bouncy enthusiasm underscored her renewed health.

  I asked her about her miraculous recovery.

  “Well, I have been taking treatment from Dr. Rashid's Center on AIDS Research and now I am very nearly healed!”

  “Really?” I asked incredulously.

  “Oh, yes,” she assured me.

  “And have you had an HIV antibody test recently?” I asked, trying to steer her toward reality.

  “Well, yes,” she answered sadly. “And, of course, I am still positive.” I was relieved that she seemed to recognize that Dr. Rashid's magic liquids did not cure her AIDS.

  “But,” she continued brightly, “that is only because I am still having sex with my boyfriend, and he is positive, too. But Dr. Rashid says that if we could just stop having sex for two years, then we would surely both be HIV-negative again.”

  “Do you really believe that?” I asked. “Because in all the years I've been working with people with AIDS, and in all the articles I've read, and from all the medical professionals I've spoken to, I've never—” I stopped myself. As an educator, I thought she needed to know the facts, but I also wondered whether I had a right to stanch her hope.

  “Well,” she said with a smile, “we know what you Europeans think. But that is because you do not believe in our traditional cures, and you have to believe in them or they will not work. Dr. Rashid has cured hundreds of people. I am one of them.”

  “Is Dr. Rashid here?” I inquired. “I'd love to talk to him and learn more about his cures.”

  “Dr. Rashid cannot be here. He spends too much of his time traveling to other parts and teaching people about his cures.”

  “Too bad. I'd really love to meet him. I'm hoping to do some AIDS education work in Arua. Maybe I will have a chance to meet him up there someday.”

  “Arua?!” I was already getting used to the alarm I got from most Ugandans when they learned we would be living in the West Nile. “Black people live up there!”

  “Er, yes, that seems to be so. Black people live all over Uganda,” I informed her, although I had assumed this was common knowledge.

  “No, down here, we are brown-black. Up in the West Nile, they are black-black. And they are not civilized up there. You should be very careful that you yourself do not get AIDS.”

  I had an African American friend in New York who loved to tell me that only whites could be racist, insisting that black people couldn't be. I couldn't wait to tell her about this.

  “Well, since I won't be having sex with anyone but my husband and he won't be having sex with anyone but me, and neither one of us is HIV-positive, I don't see how I can get AIDS even by living in Arua.” I'll admit I needn't have given the details of my sex life to this rather questionable stranger. But I was a little shaken from the unexpected racism. Or was it shadism?

  “Here in Uganda we have two kinds of AIDS. There is the one you can get from sex. This is the kind that Dr. Rashid can cure. But there is also the kind that you get from being cursed. They have much of that kind of AIDS in the West Nile. And that kind can never be cured!”

  I really couldn't think of anything to say. So I thanked her, wished her continued good health, and said good-bye. And on the slow walk back, I felt a creeping sense of uneasiness take hold. What if everything I know about AIDS prevention is useless here? Suddenly, two years in Arua began to look like a very, very long time.

  Dear Susan,

  Just want to get a lett
er off in the mail before we head back to Arua. I spent the day in Kampala shopping while John was at more meetings. Good news about Kampala: Decaf is available … as is Baileys Irish Cream and Lindt chocolates and wine from France, Germany, Australia, and occasionally California, and beer from Germany and America, and canned tuna and all kinds of things. So while we are a bit deprived in Arua, one trip to Kampala—where we buy everything we can fit in our Pajero (that's our huge, jeeplike SUV)—and we're set.

  Did some meeting and greeting at Save the Children. They are hoping to set up some projects in Arua eventually, but have nothing there now. I also met with some folks at UNICEF again. They're talking about having me consult on one of their projects. And maybe next time I'm in Kampala I'll finally get to meet with the woman from USAID. Keep your fingers crossed that something will pan out for me.

  I was chatting with Alex, the CARE driver who was toting me around this morning. I asked him if he has any children. Seventeen children, he tells me, by six different wives! This is all going to seem normal to me one day, isn't it?

  So these days Kampala feels downright luxurious to me. And it is, really. There's a Sheraton Hotel with two bars, four restaurants, and an amazing health club. There's a fancy “golf club” and several membersonly social/recreational facilities that have tennis, squash, swimming, etc. Soon Alex is coming back to take me to the American Club, where I'll swim, eat, and sunbathe! I know, rough life, right?

  Don't get me wrong—you know I love being spoiled. But it is a weird mix of deprivation and luxury here. And all this subservience, politeness, and deference to white people, well, it's making my skin crawl. I wonder, is this going to seem normal to me one day, too?

  Okay, gotta shop.

  I'll keep you posted,

  Eve

  The Birth of a Domestic Bush Goddess

  As soon as we returned from safari, Terry got John oriented in his new job, and Pauline attempted to make a respectable bush wife out of me. This was no easy task considering the nondomestic raw material she had been given to work with. I had always lacked whatever it was that enables people to separate egg whites or iron a shirt without burning the coffee table. Even under the best of circumstances—and we are talking electricity and running water here—I had yet to grasp that sorting laundry meant by color not by thickness. In New York I had learned to accommodate my domestic disabilities, by eating out a lot and buying clothes that didn't need ironing. But that strategy was going to require some rethinking in the bush.