First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria

by Eve Brown-Waite

  “Oh, you've got a good case of bacterial dysentery,” the doctor pronounced while peering through a microscope. “A bloody good case. Excuse the pun. You'll need a strong dose of antibiotics.” He handed me a vial of pills. “And even these may not get at it. Come round in a few days if it's still hanging on.”

  “Is it safe to take these during pregnancy?” I whimpered. The baby wasn't even born yet and I was already worried about it.

  “Looking at you, I don't think it'd be safe for you not to take it.”

  Antibiotics or not, the dysentery hung on through another three days and another round of antibiotics. I celebrated New Year's Eve by limping out of bed at midnight long enough to stand on the balcony to watch as gunfire rained down on Kampala.

  “What are they shooting at?” I asked John, glad that we were staying far from the center of the city.

  “I think they all just shoot up into the air. For some reason, shooting up into the air is celebratory in some countries,” he explained.

  “Not so celebratory when the bullets come back down, I bet.” I hobbled back to bed.

  When the dysentery finally subsided, it was replaced by increasing nausea.

  “It's morning sickness. It'll pass,” Dr. Stockley said when I called to tell him I was now wracked by nausea and hadn't eaten much of anything since Christmas.

  “Morning sickness? Hah! That's a misnomer! More like twenty-four-hour-a-day sickness. Isn't there something I can take for this?”

  “You can't take anything. You're pregnant. Well, except of course for those antibiotics—but let's try to avoid that again. And then, of course, your daily dose of Paludrine—do take those. And don't forget the prenatal vitamins I gave you. And the folic acid. But aside from that you shouldn't be taking drugs,” he said.

  “I don't know how I am going to get through this,” I wailed as I hung up the phone.

  “Why don't we call Larry Marum?” John suggested. “Maybe he can give you some advice.”

  “The first time we socialized with them, I told them my whole sob story. Now I'm gonna call them again and whine about how nauseous I am?” But I called him. That's how desperate I was.

  “Dr. Stockley says it's just morning sickness. But this just can't be normal. If every pregnant woman felt this bad, the human race would end. I'm afraid I'm starving the baby,” I sobbed. “I'm sorry, I'm crying. I feel like an idiot. I just feel so sick.”

  “It sounds like it. Want me to come over and take a look at you?” he asked.

  “No. I've seen Dr. Stockley. He says I'm fine. I just wondered if you had any advice?” I sniffed. “I'm sorry I'm being such a baby.”

  “Oh, Eve, you feel awful. It's hard. You don't have to be sorry. You know, there is an antihistamine that's okay to take in pregnancy,” he offered.

  “Yeah, but I don't have allergies.” Although my nose had been continuously stuffed up since I got pregnant. But breathing was the least of my worries.

  “Yeah, but the antihistamine might take the edge off your nausea. But it might also make you drowsy.”

  “Well, if I'm sleeping, then I won't care that I'm so nauseous.”

  “Elizabeth says come by for more saltines—and anything else you'd like—before you head back to Arua.”

  By the second week of January, we were back in Arua. I wasn't quite through my first trimester and had already lost eight pounds, which wasn't surprising considering my diet consisted mainly of drugs. But now I was so dopey from the antihistamines that I didn't care.

  And I was glad to be home. I didn't do much besides lie around and moan. But I preferred lying around my own house where at least I had Beijing and Berlin to keep me company. Since they didn't smell, they were allowed inside the house. Armstrong and his pukey puppy smell were banished to the outside, where he'd bark at the goats that always seemed to be hanging around just outside my gate. With the near-constant nagging noise they made, on some days I'd wish he'd catch one.

  “Yoo-hoo. I brought you some bread,” Pauline called in through the screen door. “Just out of the oven.”

  “Haven't you heard? I'm off all food,” I told her.

  “Well, I'll leave it in the kitchen for John. And whenever you're feeling up to eating, come on by and I'll feed you.” I couldn't imagine ever feeling up to eating again.

  A few days later, I woke up in the morning feeling like my head was full of cotton. Then the wrist I broke when I was twelve started to ache. Then my hips hurt whenever I lay down, but I got dizzy whenever I stood up. Then my ears started buzzing and I ran a slight fever. John took me over to see David Morton at Kuluva Hospital.

  “Hmmm … it's hard to see. There's not a lot of parasites in your blood,” David said, looking through a microscope at a slide smeared with my blood. “But there it is. You definitely have malaria.”

  “I can't have malaria. I take those damn awful Paludrine pills every night.”

  “Yeah, I know you do. We all do. But they don't come with a guarantee. You can still get malaria even if you take all the precautions. It's just endemic here. And pregnant women are more susceptible to malaria. It doesn't seem to be a terrible case. But you'll have to take the chloroquine anyway.”

  “Is it safe to take chloroquine while I'm pregnant?”

  “All the pregnant women here take it. And you really have no choice. Malaria doesn't clear up by itself. It tends to get worse. And we can't have you walking around with malaria for another six or seven months. That definitely would not be good for you or the baby.”

  So I added chloroquine to my daily diet of drugs.

  “Well, halloo there, Eve. I heard you were feeling under what? I heard you were feeling under the weather.” Adam's wife and children had finally joined him in Arua and the whole family had moved to a house about half a mile from ours. We didn't see him as often outside of work. “I've come to check up on you.”

  “Hi, Adam,” I said. I was embarrassed at how sick I was.

  “Not feeling so what? Not feeling so good, I hear.”

  “Oh, just a little bit pregnant. And a bit of dysentery. And a touch of malaria. I have no idea how I'm going to do this,” I moaned.

  “Oh, Eve.” Adam was smiling as usual. “You will just have to get on with it! And when you are feeling better, Sarah says to invite you over for supper. She says you have fed me enough, now it is her turn to feed you. We will have matoke. Yum!”

  “Yay!” I tried to sound excited. But it was hard to imagine ever being excited about eating matoke—or anything—again.

  No, I was definitely not a pretty little pregnant gal. And it wasn't only my body that seemed to be conspiring to make me as miserable as humanly possible. Even the damn weather had turned on me. I assumed that because Uganda was subtropical and on the equator, the weather would always be the same: beautiful. So wasn't I surprised to learn that Uganda actually has four seasons: wet, wetter, dry, and drought.

  We had arrived in August, during the wet season. The “short rains,” as they were called, came every day, arriving usually late at night or early in the morning and lasting just a few hours each time. Then came the wetter season of the “long rains.” What had previously politely confined itself to late at night now poured down in sheets all day, every day. This was quite handy, a national bonanza of sorts, providing a perfectly acceptable excuse for everything that was late, canceled, or went wrong during the long rainy season. And in Uganda, an excuse was as good as actually doing whatever it was you were supposed to do in the first place.

  On the first morning of the long rains, I was confused when Rose, due at 8:30 a.m., didn't show up until 10:00 a.m. “The rain delayed me,” she said, shrugging her shoulders and shaking fat drops of water off of her umbrella.

  Maybe the rain bathed you, too, I thought. But no such luck.

  But by December the rain had stopped completely and everything changed. At first I enjoyed the continuously sunny days that soaked up the mud we had been living in for months. But that was before I
learned that the absence of the rain can be just as fierce as the rain itself.

  In a few hot weeks, the lush tropical landscape turned hard and brown. Grass burned. Flowers blew away in the hot winds. Rich jacaranda and flamboyant trees that had been covered with purple and pink flowers now stood stark naked. Thirsty elephants left the game parks and wandered onto the roads with the baboons and monkeys in search of water. The roads that had been rutted and muddy turned to beach sand.

  But it wasn't only the land and animals that suffered. The drought was an equal opportunity dilemma. We privileged mzungu in our fancy cement houses suffered along with our Ugandan neighbors in their mud and thatch huts. We all watched as the last precious drops of water disappeared from our tanks.

  Most people in Arua collected rainwater in big barrels or tanks. In addition, fancier houses, like ours, were hooked up to the town's water supply. The town sent water to us, via a rudimentary system of water mains, which we could collect and store in our water tank. But the town's source of water was the same as ours: the rain. This meant that they sent us water during the rainy season, when we needed it least, but not in the dry season when we needed it most. When we finally ran out of water, I was forced, like everyone else, to pump water from the nearest borehole—now that I learned what a borehole actually was—and carry it home in a brigade of bright yellow jerry cans. Okay, I didn't have to pump the water and carry it home. Rose and our askaris did. But still, those were tough times.

  In the dry season, we used our water sparingly, aware that our tanks would not be replenished until the next time it rained. Well, we were supposed to use it sparingly, because we were supposed to be aware that it wouldn't be replenished. But I swear, I missed that page in the handbook. So it took me a while—and a few admonitions from Pauline—before I caught on to the whole plan. That, and it was hot and dusty. I mean, those winds blowing down from the Sahara really make a mess. I'll admit it: During that first dry season I took more than my fair share of showers.

  But bathing was one of the few things I had left to enjoy at that point. And of all the hardships I had to endure, the hardest by far was … How to put this delicately? People stunk. It wasn't only Rose. Some days it seemed to me that the whole damn country was funky. I know I should be politically correct here and say that there was a world of disparity between what was comfortable for my American nose and what was normal for Ugandans. I could explain that the lack of water and indoor plumbing, combined with the effort it took just to stay alive, understandably pushed bathing way down onto the bottom of people's priority list. And I could tell you what I was told again and again—that Ugandans have very active sex lives (three times a night was a very common boast). But to put it plainly, I was surrounded by people who smelled like sweat and old sex.

  How unfortunate for me, then, that I am possessed of an exceptionally sensitive sense of smell. Even with a cold, I can smell someone in need of a bath at ten paces. And practically everyone in Uganda was in need of a bath! Pregnancy only enhanced my strong sense of smell, and now, as far as I was concerned, everyone needed to bathe, wash their clothes, and put on a little deodorant. I guess it was my own illogical attempt to ward off the body odor of others that caused me to bathe as often as I could.

  But even I had to relent on my personal hygiene campaign when the dry season got even drier. John and I stopped showering altogether and started taking “bird baths,” using just four cups of water each. It became nearly impossible for me to wash my body and my thick, curly hair with that amount of water. John had studied up before we left Brooklyn and had been trimming his own hair since we'd arrived. Thus far I had declined his haircutting offers and I now had a mop of heavy curls.

  “It's a hundred degrees in my head,” I said one day when the heat, the drought, and another case of malaria had all converged on me. “I am begging you to cut my hair.”

  “Oh, I knew you'd come around,” John said and ran to get the scissors.

  He seemed quite pleased with his handiwork when it was all over. I felt better and thought it looked surprisingly good from what I could see in the back of a spoon, since we had no mirror in the house and I wasn't quite up to going to the bank to look in theirs. But on a trip to Kampala a few weeks later, Stan's wife took one look at me and said, “Let's get you to someone who can fix that!” Which effectively ended John's tenure as my hairstylist.

  Meanwhile, the drought went on. We saved the dirty rinse water from mopping, laundry, and dishes and used it to flush the toilet once a day. Rose reluctantly cut back on her daily floor-mopping but not before she abdicated all responsibility for what might move in. We washed our clothes less and less often and found ourselves smelling more and more … well, African.

  Speaking of that African smell, I found it harder to be around Rose at all. I also found it harder to stay out of the house since I needed to be horizontal most of the time. I wondered if body odor constituted legitimate grounds for firing someone. But Rose herself provided me with the solution to this problem.

  “Madam Eve,” she said one day. “I have always wanted to finish my schooling. I am still not too old to go back.” She was standing clear across the dining room and I could still smell her.

  “No, you are not too old at all,” I said, backing up till I was leaning against the opposite wall. “I think it would be a great idea to finish your schooling. What would it take to get you back into school?” I walked into the kitchen as if maybe I could find what she needed there. Way over on the far side of the kitchen.

  “I would need two thousand shillings for my school fees. And a bit more for my uniform and building fees,” she said, following me into the kitchen. “That is why I left school and started working in the first place. My parents could no longer afford to pay my school fees.”

  “Well, Rose, a dream deferred is a dream denied,” I said. “Wait here a minute.” I held my breath and walked past her toward the back of the house. I got five thousand shillings from John's dresser drawer.

  “Here you go, Rose. Go back to school with our best wishes,” I said, handing her the money.

  “Shall I still come and work for you on the weekends?” she asked.

  “Oh, no. You concentrate on your studies. Don't worry about us. We'll find someone else. You just concentrate on your schooling.”

  “Oh, thank you, Madam Eve. Thank you.” She came in close to shake my hand.

  “Oh, my pleasure,” I said, not inhaling until she left for good.

  I was relieved to be rid of Rose but knew I'd need to hire someone soon. I was far too food averse to set foot in the market or near the stove. John had been doing the shopping and cooking since I got pregnant. But I knew we'd need someone to sweep and dust, even if we had called a moratorium on mopping. Six months in Uganda seemed to have cured my earlier reluctance to hire a (or even say) house girl. Now I couldn't imagine how I'd ever survive without one. And as Pauline had said, women were lining up for what was a good job.

  “Hello, Madam Eve,” Regina said when she showed up at my door two days later. “I am Embati Regina. My husband's sister knows Mr. Waite John of CARE. I understand you need a house girl.”

  The first thing I noticed about Regina was that she didn't smell. And trust me, I did the whiff test. Another thing I noticed about Regina was that her breasts were enormously lopsided.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I said after I'd interviewed her once, had John meet her, and had her come back again to make sure she still didn't smell. “Why are your breasts so uneven?” It was an unusual question, but not particularly awkward in Uganda. Legs were supposed to be covered, but breasts, which were on display everywhere, were not considered particularly private. At four months pregnant, I had no belly to speak of but several of my Ugandan women friends would pat my enlarged boobs and say, “Oh, you are beginning to look pregnant!” Regina looked down at her uneven cleavage and shrugged. “I do not know, madam. But they become this way whenever I have a baby. My youngest is now three months.
”

  I had come to accept the fact that maybe I was not going to play a part in reducing the scourge of AIDS in Uganda. But here, at last, was a health mystery I just might be able to solve. I hired Regina, vowing to get to the bottom of her mysterious breast imbalance. I had a cause. And the house immediately began to smell better.

  Now one very real risk of living in the developing world is that your feces may become a major preoccupation, as well as a perfectly acceptable topic of dinner conversation. In fact, back in Peace Corps training, a nurse gave us an entire lecture about shit. She warned us about all the creatures that could take up residence in our intestines. There were amoebas, parasites, bacteria, dysentery, cholera—an entire itsy-bitsy parallel universe waiting to get into our guts. She warned us to pay attention to our poops, to check them regularly for blood, worms, strange colors, or extra pungency. And this was a warning I took to heart.

  One morning—late in the dry season and early in my pregnancy—I went to the bathroom and, as I was wont to do, looked down to check it out. I thought it was damn funny at first when I imagined I saw a creature with a tiny black nose staring up at me. On closer inspection, I noticed little whiskers beneath the tiny nose and the whole thing seemed to be trying to claw its way out of the toilet bowl.

  “Oh my God!” I screamed to John. This was definitely not something the Peace Corps nurse had warned us about. “John! Get in here! Now!”

  John came racing into the bathroom.

  “Look! In the toilet. Oh my God. Look!” I screamed. “Is it the baby? Did I shit the baby?” Okay, I knew under normal circumstances it would be impossible to pass a baby out of my anus, and besides, if I did, it probably wouldn't have whiskers. But these were not normal circumstances. John, good man that he is, peered into the toilet.

  “No. I think it's a rat.”

  “Oh my God! I shit a rat!” I screamed and ran back to bed.