Rain

by Leigh K. Cunningham

  Simeon Baptista is another doctor with MSF, but he lives in his own place. He called in early this morning and took me and Ala to the famous Roque Santeiro market, one of the biggest markets in Africa. The drive to Roque Santeiro was an experience in itself. Miles upon miles of squalor I could not have imagined even though I had read plenty about Luanda before I came here. It sounds clichéd to say nothing can prepare you for it, but that is probably because it is impossible to conjure up an image of the desperation of the people who have no choice but to live like this, their huts indistinguishable from the vast rubbish dump they surround. The smell is Hell. It is distressing enough to pass by in our air-conditioned, fly-free Cruiser, but to live this life, from day to night and then back to another day. I wonder if the people who live here have any hope that their lives will ever change, or do they wish for it to end as I have done, but for a reason that fades somewhat by comparison. It is hard to envision them as world owners as they will be one day, blessed by God to inherit the Earth when it is free of war, famine, and poverty. They will be deserving owners. I hope they forgive me for passing them by today.

  You can buy anything at the market from bananas to spare parts for armored personnel carriers. I bought fruit and food to give to the children when they come to our door with their tiny hands stretched up above their heads, pushing each other for prime position. We were told not to give them food from our door because hundreds or thousands would come each day. It was good advice and Ala and I soon regretted our actions—we have been under siege ever since, and we spend endless hours at markets buying food and clothes.

  I was even able to buy bananas today with only a few quiet tears behind my sunglasses. I gave up on bananas after Ethan died—unable to escape the memory of him crouched down by the fire cooking his chocolate-stuffed treat. I still see how he looked up at me and smiled so proud of his cooking—it is clear in my mind as if it happened moments ago. I can see the blue of his eyes and the colors in his shirt. I don’t want to lose the memory, but I wish it didn’t come with so much pain. Contrary to Sister Mary Catherine’s advice, it is also painful to write about it. When I stood there today, at the market in front of the mountain of bananas, I had an epiphany—they say you can run but you can never hide, and it is true—there is no place you can go to escape what is inside of you.

  Jan and Thomas cry a lot too, but they cry because newborn babies die in their hands, and they cry when they mend broken bodies torn apart by a mine. They cry because they see the faces of the walking dead and know, as the last bastions of hope, that there is nothing they can do to honor the trust in the eyes of a mother. They cry because of what others have lost and what they must suffer. There’ll be no more banana tears from me.

  Journal Entry: 14 May 2004

  Today I joined a convoy of MSF volunteers, mainly doctors and nurses, headed back to Camabatela in the Kuanza Norte province to treat more patients for sleeping sickness.

  Sleeping sickness is spread by the tsetse fly, which bites. Without treatment you die, but only after suffering excruciating pain. Most people only seek treatment when the disease has already advanced to the second stage. I guess because the first stage symptoms, fever and weakness, are so like their ‘normal’ day-to-day sufferings that they don’t realize they’re sick. The second stage is easier to diagnose when the parasite has invaded the brain—confusion, convulsions, and they find it difficult to eat, speak or walk. Some become violent or show signs of insanity. At night, they cannot sleep, but during the day, they do. That makes for a lonely existence. It is yet another curse of the war—they fled into the bush away from the bullets, only to discover swarms of flesh-biting tsetse flies and a certain death. You have to wonder what was worse: a quick death by a bullet or this insufferable suffering. They shoot horses don’t they?

  The treatment used to be as cruel as the sickness, Jan said. And it is the only treatment he has administered in his entire career as a doctor that filled him with dread and shame. The drug they used for the sleeping sickness contained arsenic and killed some patients outright. He said it was so strong they had to keep it in glass vials because the plastic ones would melt. He said that whenever he placed the syringe on his patients’ arms he would picture the melted vials, and he could almost smell burning flesh as he injected the drug. Injecting the children was the worst, Simeon says—when the arsenic entered the bloodstream, the children would squirm in pain, and clench their eyes shut like vices, but no one ever complained. Simeon said there is a safer drug—the resurrection drug, so called because it brings people back to life from a coma. It was not a profitable drug and the people who need it, those who are susceptible to sleeping sickness, are poor, so the drug company stopped producing it, but resumed after pressure from the World Health Organization. Jan said they still needed to buy intravenous solutions, catheters and syringes, and treatment of those infected required two weeks of hospitalization. Jan fears they might one day have to revert to the arsenic concoction unless another solution presents itself, one that could be administered orally. The disease will never end, he says, unless they find a way to kill every single tsetse fly and that would cost too much money.

  The way to Camabatela was littered with bullet-ridden dwellings. I wondered what had happened to the occupants when the bullets struck—were they killed inside their homes or did they escape to the bush with the tsetse flies and nothing else, no food, no shelter, no clothes. What did they trade? Eternal life (the bullet) for a living death (the flies)? I wondered what choice I would have made without hindsight as a guide.

  We had to make a detour on the way because a Land Cruiser, not one of ours, was billowing with smoke and flames from a land mine that was detonated by the stream of passing vehicles. No one was injured, this time, but another metal carcass was added to the landscape left to rust in the vegetation. I once read that a truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour. I think we disproved that philosophy—no one amongst us was even remotely happy, not even the effervescent Ala.

  We went to a local hospital in Camabatela. It was a derelict hall with no running water, no electricity, and no ventilation. The walls were as sick as the people who lay expressionless on the scant bedding that lacked the antiseptic quality ordinarily found in a hospital. There were more people than beds so some lay on the floor on mats. Imagine what the cost of thirty years of guns and ammunition could have done for this place—it could have been the Taj Mahal of all hospitals.

  It dawned on me, pun intended, that millions of dollars are spent each year on New Year’s Eve. Maybe we could ditch the fireworks, pool the money and do something positive with it instead of blowing it into the air and watching it disintegrate. That would be a good way to start any year. It would bring new meaning to city pride, and there would be no losers other than the firework companies.

  We went to dinner to “really experience the local food” so it seems I had not been adventurous after all with the corn funge. There were no menus when we sat down at rickety tables in a permanent makeshift construction, although ‘construction’ implies some sort of structure, which is not accurate. Simeon and a couple of other local doctors did the ordering, which was a relief and a concern.

  The food did nothing to appeal to my senses, not by look or smell, but at least there were no sounds coming from it. I did not eat the calulu, which is a dish made with fresh and dried fish, and I could not even contemplate the cabidela—chicken’s blood eaten with rice and cassava dough (made from the leaves of the cassava shrub—which looked somewhat illegal to me). I had to endure a lot of pressure to try the cabidela. Everyone said “You have to try it” and I said “Why?” I don’t understand why you would eat something that you know you are not going to like and certainly not for “the experience,” which was the popular answer to my question. I don’t need to experience chicken blood, not now, not ever.

  I hope the bed bugs leave me alone tonight. Ala and I are covered in red dots. Jan has taken to drawing lines between A
la’s dots to make animal shapes. He thinks he is quite clever, but I think he just wants to be closer to Ala and to touch her pale skin.

  Journal Entry: 12 June 2004

  I have been in bed for the past week sick with a stomach virus. Perhaps I swallowed a bed bug in my sleep. At least I can’t blame the chicken blood. Simeon has been very caring, calling in regularly to check on me even though I live in a house with two doctors and two nurses. He came by this evening declaring me fit to eat and to take me for a “real meal”—fruit, bottled water, and dry bread do not count as real food according to Simeon.

  From the street, the restaurant looked like any other house in Luanda with planks crisscrossing the exterior defensively. The approach was like an episode from Get Smart—we entered via a metal doorway then passed through a long, narrow hallway through to a small room with a brick oven and finally, we arrived in the dining area.

  The owner himself, a Portuguese man, waited on us and I had thought Simeon was receiving special treatment, but he assured me that, even though he was a regular, the owner or his wife waits on everyone. I kept it simple, not wanting to end up back in bed. I would like to return to that restaurant another time, but would never be able to find it without Simeon or a compass.

  Simeon is an interesting man. He has seen and done a lot in his thirty plus years. I had assumed that he had always lived here—he was born in Luanda—but he has only been back these past five years. His parents sent him to England when he was eighteen for an education. He stayed on after his internship and worked in a London hospital in a casualty ward. He came back, he said, driven by guilt—there is only one doctor for every fifty thousand people in Luanda, and the ratio is far worse outside the capital. The needs of the people didn’t end with the war since sickness is a correlation of poverty and poverty reigns supreme in this country.

  Simeon said he was working in Kuito when the war ended two years ago. He said there were thousands of people walking in a single line, coming out of nowhere—old people, sick people, malnourished children, and disabled people—all walking with everything they owned strapped to their heads or to their backs. They had lived on leaves and raw manioc for decades. They came from nowhere and they were on the road to nowhere else.

  Thousands of villages were destroyed during the war, and along the way ‘home’ many more of them would die one way or another. To this day, there are one and a half land mines for every Angolan, just waiting for that foot or hand, or passing vehicle, to set them off. That, he said, was how so many children lost their faces—picking up a mine. Seventy thousand have been maimed by land mines—that is twice the entire population of Maine. I pictured the main street of Maine on a busy Saturday morning filled with stumps and prosthetic limbs and missing faces. It was even harder to imagine that no one would be complaining. The image was surreal like a horror movie, but it is very real here.

  Simeon said the worst smell in the world is the smell of a rotting bandage with maggots in a pus-filled wound. It is not uncommon, even now, and he said he would never get used to it.

  He asked me about the scar on my cheek and I told him it was from a childhood accident. He pried further and I said I had fallen off my bike. I didn’t want to lie, but I also didn’t want to explain my life to him. I could tell he didn’t believe me, and it was a stupid answer considering his experience with a scalpel—he knows what sort of scar is made by the infliction of a sharp object or a blunt pair of scissors, but it is not the sort of issue you share with people, other than the person closest to you.

  We had not spent any real time alone together until then, and it was very comfortable until the realization struck me that we were on our own then I felt decidedly uncomfortable. I looked up at one point and noticed how intently he was watching me. I wonder what was in his mind or perhaps he was contemplating the scar and my story—when someone suspects a lie, their mind will pursue another truth that is often worse than the reality. That’s the risk of being secretive.

  When I arrived home, Jan and Ala were having a quiet dinner together. They make a nice couple even though Ala constantly says they are just friends. Me thinks she doth protest too much. I went to bed and wrote a letter to mum. I hope above all hope, that she is OK on her own. What a failure I am as a daughter, to leave her that way.

  Journal Entry: 23 June 2004

  A new volunteer joined us in the office today. She will help us with HR. We have eighty or so volunteers at the moment, and about a thousand locals working with us throughout Angola in various capacities: helping in the nutrition centers, digging latrines, uploading supplies, or housekeeping—cleaning, washing and ironing for our volunteers—not an easy task with just a scrub board and hot charcoals to heat up the antique irons.

  Thomas is leaving tomorrow, and as is the custom, we sponsored his farewell party. Parties are a common occurrence—someone is always coming or going. It seems like a lot of socializing, but it is necessary for the equilibrium of the heart, mind, and soul.

  Thomas is quite fond of the semba, a sensuous belly dance popular in Luanda, even though he has no rhythm. For the rest of us, watching Thomas on the dance floor is entertainment at its best, and doesn’t cost a cent. Whenever I am feeling sad, I will picture him dancing the semba with the locals.

  It’s late. More tomorrow.

  Journal Entry: 10 July 2004

  It has been a month since my last entry (that sounds like a confession—it is not meant to be). I just have not had anything to say. Life goes on—what seemed extraordinary then is ordinary now. I’m not sure if that is good or bad—probably both.

  I processed a number of reports this morning from MSF teams in southern and eastern Angola. Children treated for malnutrition months ago have been readmitted with acute malnutrition. It’s like winning a case then losing it on appeal, but worse because there are lives at stake, not riches, profits, or assets. Forty-five percent of children under the age of five are chronically malnourished, a condition that can irreversibly impair learning ability if they survive long enough to learn anything. Like I said—it is an ordinary life.

  A group of us took a Saturday afternoon boat ride up the Kuanza River to a restaurant, Varanda dos Mangais (Restaurant of the Mangroves). It stands alone in the middle of nowhere surrounded by lawns sprouting immature palms and dotted with white umbrellas. The restaurant veranda hangs over the water’s edge. The décor inside is distinctly African, but done tastefully in muted colors of white, creams, and brown. It was perfect for a celebratory afternoon in honor of Gisele’s birthday. Unfortunately, the atmosphere was conducive to the consumption of crisp, chilled, white South African wine and platters of fresh seafood. Even Gisele was a little rowdy, which is really saying something—she is the yardstick of reserve and maturity upon which we all try to base ourselves, unsuccessfully most of the time.

  My guard was disarmed by the wine and I found myself ensconced in a D&M (deep and meaningful) with Simeon. I don’t talk about Ethan, not even with Ala. It does not mean he is forgotten—I love him still, more than life itself, and there will never be anyone else. It wouldn’t be fair to subject any man to Ethan’s flame.

  Simeon asked me why I wear my wedding ring and I said because I am married. He gave me one of those knowing looks and then, without realizing it, I told him everything about Ethan, the sailing trip, how he died, the monastery, and everything up to this moment in time. It all came out like a torrential storm, and just like a storm, a beautiful calm followed. The calm may have been alcohol-induced—I will know tomorrow, if it is replaced with regret.

  Our conversation was not all one-sided—I learned a lot about Simeon as well. I had wondered how a man like him could still be single, and now I know. He was living with an English woman in London for eight years when his conscience pricked, forcing him home. He said the woman did not want to leave London for Luanda, understandably, or to leave her high-paying surgical position at one of the most prestigious hospitals in the United Kingdom to enter a war zone, not even
with the man she supposedly loved. I would have—if that is what Ethan had asked of me, I would have gone in a second. She must not have loved him for if love is true you can make such a sacrifice because it doesn’t even feel like a sacrifice. It’s a Catch 22.

  So Simeon lives alone and says he is happy enough, which left me thinking about my own state of mind—I think I can safely say that I am no longer completely miserable, which is another small step forward.

  Journal Entry: 11 July 2004

  I went to the markets this morning with Ala, Jan, and Gisele. We stocked up on food for our own private feeding center that we have set up as a stall along the roadside—it lasts mere minutes before the food runs away, but at least we have found a way to relocate the masses from our front door. It was causing problems with the neighbors.

  Afterwards we met up with Emelie who is volunteering for the Red Cross. Gisele has been working with her to find the family of one of her patients. Emelie works with the Tracing Program and her stories are as bad as ours—orphanages filled with children separated from their families, and children kidnapped by rebels during the war and forced to work as slaves for soldiers and their families.

  She told us about the schools she has been to with no roof, no desks, and no equipment. When it rains for the six months of the wet season, the children ‘study’ under plastic sheets that pool with water. However, she also had happy stories of reunions like one little girl who was separated from her parents when she was three and reunited after eleven years. I must write to Matthew—I haven’t heard from him in months.