First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria

by Eve Brown-Waite

  Jane and Matt went back to the States a few days later. And soon it was time for me to head back to the States as well.

  Dear Patti,

  I can't thank you enough for sending me my very own copy of What to Expect While You're Expecting. It's come in very handy (although I won't tell you for what). I am thinking of writing my own book someday: Things You'd Never Expect When You're Expecting in Africa.

  Well, according to the book, I should be nesting. But so far it's John that's doing the nesting. He's decided to build a crib for the baby—completely by hand, out of local mahogany. This ought to keep him busy for the rest of my pregnancy—at least!

  So how's motherhood going? And when I get home can I borrow some of your maternity clothes? So far my entire wardrobe consists of drawstring pants and dresses with no waistlines that I picked up at the dead mzungu clothing market. I'm not showing, but it makes me feel better to wear something loose. Of course, I recently caught myself going to the market in hot-pink pants. But I guess one of the nice things about this place is that no one even noticed. Certainly not the ten-year-old boy wearing the bright yellow sweatshirt that said “Sexy Grandma!”

  I'll keep you posted,

  Eve

  Return to the Land of Plenty

  “But I don't want to go home,” I whined from the floor of Entebbe Airport, where I was lying in the fetal position in an effort to stave off a fainting spell. “I want to stay here with you.” I was now nearly seven months pregnant and the fainting had recently started.

  “You have to go, Eve. My parents will be waiting for you at the airport.” John knelt beside me and spoke soothingly. “And Jean is counting on you. Besides, you'll have to leave soon anyway. They won't let you fly in another few weeks. So go and have a good time.”

  “But I'll miss you!” I wailed. The crying jags had come along with the fainting.

  “I'll miss you and Mowgli Hyphen, too. But I'll be there before you know it.”

  “But it will be awful without you!” I sobbed.

  “You'll finally get to eat anything you want.” John dangled this statement like a sugar-coated carrot.

  “Well, I am hungry,” I sniffed as John lifted me off the floor and gently guided me to the departure gate. So with tears in my eyes and visions of dairy products dancing in my head, I got on the plane.

  The trip to America required a short flight to Nairobi followed by an eight-hour flight to London followed by a seven-hour flight to Boston.

  “Are you Eve Brown?” a surprised-looking flight attendant asked me as I prepared to disembark in London.

  “Yes, I'm Eve Brown. Is something wrong?”

  “Oh, no, it's just that I had a note here that says you are a pregnant woman traveling alone, so we wanted to assist you. I kept looking for a pregnant woman. But you're not pregnant,” she said, eyeing my nondescript midsection.

  “Yeah, I am pregnant,” I said. I rubbed the little bulge that only I could detect. “Almost seven months.”

  “Wow! Sorry I didn't find you sooner. Is there anything I can help you with now?”

  “You wouldn't happen to have any cottage cheese, would you?”

  “No, I'm afraid I don't. But I can request an extra meal for you during the flight to Boston, if you'd like. And I'll get you through customs and maybe you can find some cottage cheese around Heathrow. You have a long layover.”

  “Well, there you go,” the flight attendant said after she expertly swept me through customs and into the waiting area of the airport. “I'm sure you'll find whatever you're looking for here.” She pointed in the direction of a dizzying array of shops and kiosks.

  I was overwhelmed. After ten months of living in a place where there was never that much going on, it was like the unfortunate supermarket incident all over again. Only Heathrow Airport, with its cacophony of sights, sounds, and unbelievable amount of stuff, was worse than the soup aisle any day. It was ironic that for the past ten months I had dreamed of just these types of bright, shiny things. And now, with the bright, shiny things all around me, I found myself unable to move. It was, as my mother would have said, as if I had been afflicted by the worst case of “mall glaze” ever.

  I fought the urge to grab the flight attendant's hand and follow her back onto the plane. Instead, I shuffled over to a row of chairs, sat down, and gaped. It wasn't just the stuff. I had never seen so many white people. As I stared openmouthed, I kept expecting to see someone I recognized. After all, I knew just about every mzungu in Uganda. It seemed inconceivable that I could be surrounded by thousands of them now and not know a single one. But absolutely no one looked familiar.

  I sat, stuck to the black vinyl chair, feeling alone and small. Then I looked across to the row of stores with stuff in them; stores where you could touch things; stores that might actually have something I wanted to buy. And then it hit me: Reverse culture shock or not, I had an opportunity to shop and time was a-wasting! I took a deep breath and steeled myself by focusing on a single task. I would search for the one thing I had craved more than anything else for the past few months.

  “Do you have cottage cheese?” I asked in the first store I entered.

  “Cottage cheese?” The salesclerk looked amazed. “This is a Body Shop.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I was not in Uganda anymore. I had to remind myself that in the rest of the world, stores that had tires in the window probably sold tires.

  “Then ChapStick,” I said, running my tongue over my cracked lips. “You must have ChapStick!”

  “We have lip gloss. All sorts of flavors.” She pointed me toward the display of small containers of lip products.

  I bought six containers of lip gloss. Pleased that I had done so well on my first purchase in the new world, I powered on in search of what I really wanted.

  I soon discovered that while Heathrow Airport sold Belgian chocolate, Irish butter, Italian wines, and French cheeses of every kind, they did not sell cottage cheese. I remembered from our flight to Uganda that we had laid over in a hotel that was attached to the airport. I also remembered this hotel had a restaurant. Feeling slightly cocky with my fancy new British lip gloss, and with plenty of time to kill, I headed to that hotel. After all, I told myself, I had survived a hostage situation and tracked gorillas through the Impenetrable Forest. Surely I could make my way around a British airport.

  “Do you have cottage cheese?” I asked when the waitress sat me down and handed me a menu.

  “Cottage cheese? I don't know. Is it on the menu?” The waitress and I perused the menu together. “Nah, I don't see it here,” she said.

  “Listen, I've got to have some cottage cheese. Please.”

  “Is this some sort of weird American diet?”

  “No, I'm pregnant,” I said, doing my best to stick out my tiny belly. “And I've been in Uganda for the past ten months. And I'm craving cottage cheese like mad. Please, can you help me?”

  The waitress looked at me. “You're pregnant? And living in Uganda? Ah, poor dear. Just wait right here.” She disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Here you are, dear.” She placed a bowl of cottage cheese topped with a cherry in front of me. “Is that enough for you? I can bring you more if you'd like.”

  “Oh, this is beautiful. Thank you.”

  “Is there anything else you want?”

  “No. This is all I need. Thank you. Thank you.” I dug my spoon into the bowl while tears of joy ran down my face.

  When I arrived in Boston the next day, my in-laws were waiting. They ushered me into their car and, bless their souls, took me immediately to a medium-sized convenience store.

  “John called after your plane took off,” my mother-in-law said. “He said you'd be hungry, and that you'd want to pick out your own food. But he warned us not to take you to a big supermarket.”

  “Oh, isn't he sweet? He doesn't want you to have to pick me up from the floor of the soup aisle.”

  “Uh-huh,” my mother-in-law murmured.

  “Oh
, this is wonderful. Just wonderful,” I sang as I picked up two large containers of cottage cheese and six bottles of Snapple iced tea. “America really is a great and glorious country,” I gushed.

  “That's what you want to eat?” She looked at me. “No wonder you haven't gained any weight.”

  I went to Jean's house a few days later, cottage cheese in hand, to assume my responsibilities as her maid of honor.

  “You're the pregnant bridesmaid?” the seamstress looked at me in disbelief as she draped me in raw silk the color of emeralds. I was so grateful that Jean and her sisters had good taste and that I was not going to look like a bowling ball covered in pastel frills. “Honey, looks like we're going to have to take this skirt in, not let it out!”

  “Well, leave a little extra room,” Jean said. “This little pregnant lady has been eating up a storm since she arrived. And we've still got five days until the wedding!”

  “Yeah, can we go to Friendly's right after this fitting?” I begged. “Last night I dreamt of chicken fingers in sweet-and-sour dipping sauce.”

  “So! Where's your belly?” I was getting a little tired of that question. But I wasn't too worried, since David Morton had heard the baby's heartbeat and had assured me that all was going well. “Where's my grandchild?” my mother said when she saw me for the first time at Jean's rehearsal dinner. She looked disappointedly at my little tummy.

  “Just watch her eat,” Jean said to my mother. “She seems to be making up for lost time.” Jean had invited my mother to the wedding and all the prewedding festivities, which was a good thing. I had flown into Massachusetts—where my in-laws lived and the wedding was taking place—and wouldn't get down to New York—where my mother was—until after the wedding. If Jean hadn't invited my mother, she probably would have crashed.

  “That's my daughter. The preggo from Africa!” My mother announced this to everyone, as if I, not the bride, were the star of the show. After the wedding, I went to New York with my mother and had my first real prenatal doctor's visit.

  “So,” said my obstetrician as she read my chart. “You had malaria and dysentery in your first trimester. And you've had antibiotics, antihistamines, and antimalarials.” She stared at my flat belly. “You're sure you're still pregnant?”

  “Oh, yeah!” my mother declared. “She's pregnant all right. I felt the baby kicking.”

  I put my hand on my active little belly. “Yeah, Mowgli here is kicking up a storm.”

  “Well, climb up on the examining table,” the obstetrician said, looking at me with some disbelief, “and let's have a look.”

  “Well, you and the baby do seem to be doing fine,” she declared after a thorough examination. “You need to put on some weight, though. Eat! Have ice cream and whole milk and whatever you're craving. You really have got to gain some weight. But other than that, you're doing fine. And I want you to start taking a childbirth preparation class. They teach them here at the hospital.”

  “But John won't be back for another month. Don't you need to have someone with you for that?”

  “You won't have time if you wait for John. Why don't you start by bringing your mother or a friend with you? And John can join you when he gets here.”

  “Ooh, can I come? Evie, I'll come with you.” My mother was practically jumping up and down.

  I stared at her.

  “Oh, I'll be good. I'll sit quietly in the corner. Just like I'm gonna do when you give birth. You won't even know I'm in the room.”

  It was impossible not to know when my mother was in the room.

  “Let's tell everyone we're a couple,” Susan said when I took her with me to my first childbirth class.

  “Yeah, but what will we do when John shows up in a few weeks?” I asked.

  “We'll tell them he's our sperm donor!” But as it turned out, the truth of our situation was far more interesting. There were two other lesbian couples in the class, but I was the only mother-to-be living in the African bush.

  Before I left Uganda, John reminded me of what he had advised me when I first came home from the Peace Corps. “Everyone will ask about it,” he warned. “But most people really only want to hear about the weather and what you ate. More than that and their eyes will start to glaze over.”

  So I did as John advised and I tried not to bore people too much with all the details of my life for the past ten months. I sublet an apartment near our old neighborhood in Brooklyn and marveled at how easy life seemed with round-the-clock electricity and all the water and television I could want. Even though New York City was hot and steamy, no one seemed to smell. I made a daily pilgrimage to the corner supermarket, the Italian deli, and the ice-cream shop, and did as the doctor ordered.

  “You can lay off the Ben and Jerry's now” is what I believe she said when I waddled in for my second prenatal visit.

  When John arrived at the beginning of my ninth month, life was perfect. Well, until that incredibly painful day in August when I had to pass an eight-pound human being through my vagina.

  But that's another story.

  It Takes a Village

  Sierra Rose Waite, who had once been an indecipherable blob on a sonogram, was born perfect and healthy, on August 12, 1994. Three days later, she took her first road trip from Brooklyn to Cape Cod, where John's parents had rented us a house on the beach for a month of R & R and visits from family and friends.

  “I think I'll go take a look at the ocean,” my father-in-law said a few days later, as I plopped down on a bench in the middle of Hyannisport and gingerly put a fussy Sierra on my exposed breast. There was never any question of whether or not I would breastfeed. The only question was whether I would nurse discreetly, like an American, or boobies flashing in the wind, like a Ugandan.

  With everyone around—and my boobs flashing in the wind—it really did feel a bit like the proverbial African village. There was always a grandparent, godparent, aunt, or uncle around with a willing hand to hold the baby. But unlike our African village, this one had electricity and television twenty-four hours a day, a beach, supermarkets, pizza parlors, ice-cream shops, and restaurants. It was heaven. And it was also the countdown to our returning to Uganda. I had mixed feelings about going back. Having quickly gotten over my mall glaze, I was now thoroughly enjoying life in the “Land of Plenty.” But Arua was home and I was anxious to get back to our life there.

  “What did you decide to do about diapers? Cloth or disposable?” Susan asked as we scoured department stores and supermarkets trying to load up on stuff to take back.

  “That whole debate is a nonstarter for me. There are no Pampers in Uganda. And if there were, I'd have to bury them in my backyard!” I imagined the neighborhood kids rummaging through piles of dirty diapers.

  “Ma!” I yelled as I watched my mother put a case of Desitin in my shopping cart. “How much diaper rash do you think this kid is gonna have?”

  “I don't know. But better to be safe than sorry. And here,” she said, putting a case of Anbesol into the cart. “She's bound to start teething eventually.”

  “And take a snot sucker,” my friend Patti said, handing me one of those bulb-shaped suction things. “Every new mother needs a snot sucker. You probably won't be able to get one there.”

  “Y'know, Evie, maybe you shouldn't go back there.” My mom and I were ogling Sierra's passport. Her eyes weren't even open in the photo. “You guys have to think of Sierra now.”

  “Mom, Arua is the perfect place for Sierra. Fresh air, sunshine, a big house, loads of help, lots of kids. Don't worry. She'll be fine.”

  “Well, maybe you should just stay home. I'm sure John could get a job here.”

  “Ma. Arua is home now. And if we stayed here, I'd have to get a job, too.”

  Despite my mother's threats to lie down on the runway in front of our plane, we went back to Uganda when Sierra was five weeks old. I did feel bad about taking Sierra away from her grandparents, and I also wondered if we were doing the right thing by bringing her up in th
e Ugandan bush. Would she be forever scarred by missing out on the Mommy & Me and Gymboree classes that Patti had talked about? But I also watched as she and others juggled motherhood and work because almost no one could afford to live on one salary. I figured having a mommy who wasn't stressed out by the demands of life in America would more than make up for Sierra's lack of extracurricular activities. Of course, I had completely forgotten about how stressful it can be when hand grenades are blowing up while you're eating supper or when you're being held hostage in your own home. But those things were ancient history in Arua. Or so I thought.

  “Ah, thank you for coming back,” the customs official said to John and me as he stamped the new visas in our passports next to the old ones.

  “Thank you for coming back,” Alex said when we saw him at the airport. He immediately took Sierra from my arms; with eighteen kids of his own now, I trusted that he knew how to hold a baby.

  Everyone at CARE headquarters thanked us for coming back and immediately began passing Sierra around. We spent that first night at Stan's house, Sierra sleeping in a suitcase, since they didn't have a crib. It seemed to suit her just fine.

  “And don't forget, you've got the big house now,” Stan reminded us before we got on the road the next day. Somewhere between giving birth and nonstop breastfeeding I had forgotten that Terry and Pauline had been transferred down to Kampala and we had been given their old house.

  “No! I don't think I can survive in Arua without Pauline. Give them their house back and tell them to stay.” I wasn't really worried about surviving in Arua now. Besides, I had Regina to help me. But we had grown quite attached to Pauline and Terry. I had kind of envisioned them as surrogate grandparents for Sierra. But people were always coming and going in the development world.

  Somehow, Sierra slept through the long, bumpy ride to Arua. I wondered if it felt familiar to her from all the times she'd made the drive in utero. And just like I did when we'd made that first trip a little more than a year before, I stared out the window and waved at the children, although this time I knew better than to look for a restroom.