1977/COTE D’IVOIRE
I awakened last night to find The General (Emeka Ojukwu) sitting in his chair, next to my bed, reading. When I awoke, he informed me I’d been lost for several days, but they had kept constant watch to make sure I was still among the living and the doc had been there many times, to check my vitals. I was so weak I couldn’t speak to the dear man…just smiled and returned to Never-Never Land. He whispered, “Now you’re African, Barbara.” I labouriously opened my eyes and saw his smile, beaming across that beautiful face of his. I smirked and whispered, “I don’t want to be African….but, thanks….” He chuckled.
This morning The General’s wife, Stella, helped me up and I stood, awkwardly, on uneasy legs, before taking a step. She had the cook bring me a cup of tea and a piece of dry toast – couldn’t eat the toast, but one bite. Tea was perfect. After an hour or so, I announced I must bathe. The maid stripped my bed and cleaned up, as I slowly head for the walk-in shower – and I do mean walk in: takes up half of the enormous bathroom.
Standing inside the cavernous shower, I allow tepid water to rush over my tired and emaciated body. I barely recognize myself. I’ve lost so much weight, my physical body doesn’t register, at first. I run soapy hands along my skin and realize just how debilitating Africa’s tropical diseases really are – my flesh hangs limp and there’s very little colour to my skin – very little life.
I’m twenty-seven years old – in my prime – and I feel like a ninety-year old must feel (in my imagination, at least). I ache in places I didn’t even know I had. My bones ache…my skin, the muscles, tissues, everything physical feels awful. My hair hurts! I simply want to surrender and go back to bed. Even the “HELP” I attempt to scream, inside my head, comes off sounding wimpy. I can’t find the strength to say the word. I should be unbelievably grateful I’m standing in the shower, with no help – and I am.
Stella must go into town and I’ve dressed myself, but I’m freezing. It’s probably around ninety degrees outside but I feel like I’m in the Arctic, so I pull out every sweatshirt and long-sleeved shirt I brought to Africa and yank out another pair of blue jeans….pull them on and wrestle into all the shirts. No kidding, I put all of it on and I’m still cold, and I’m exhausted. Such a small effort and such a high toll.
I stumble out of the house and down to the dock – I’m the only one here, except for the servants, and there are plenty of them milling around. Jeez, The General had the pool filled for me! I shiver, just thinking of it; walk on and arrive at the dock, where frozen, but not melting, I stop and gaze out to the lagoon.
The President of the Ivory Coast lives across this lagoon from The General and Stella. Last week, when I was not in malaria’s throes, I paddled with the children into this lagoon while wearing a pair of old canvas, rubber soled sneakers so yet another parasite, Bilharzia, could not enter my blood through the soles of my feet. I allow that thought to settle into my brain, shake my head and wonder how the hell did a small-town Indiana farm girl ever land here.
A sudden weariness overwhelms me, and I collapse onto the dock, curl into my favourite sleeping fetal position and the fleeting thought of what I must look like to the house servants (crazy white woman!) flutters through my brain.
Quickly, my brain and body initiate, then co-ordinate the short trek to slumber…sink fast….relax and allow my lethargy and illness to hook me and carry me away. Softly, quietly I walk the road away from reality, into a beautiful dream, where an exquisite voice calls a chant to me: beckons me. My feet each weigh about five hundred pounds, so the going is woefully slow, but at least I move…I think I move….my eyelids quiver and, finally, open to slits: through which I think I see a canoe. Yes! I hear the muted dip of one oar into the water, the pull, rise and drop of each stroke as the paddler faintly sings the lovely chant and as the canoe silently glides through the water and closer to me, curled on the wooden dock.
I realize how rude I’m being, laying there without acknowledging just how marvelous this man’s voice is and how grateful I am to hear it, to see him float by, ever so softly. Is this a dream? I pull myself up – a smile spreads across his magnificent face and I smile right back, clasp hands, bow my head and whisper Namaste: my version of ‘I see God in you’. My waist-long blonde hair is, now, soaking wet and I’m still shivering from the ice crystals raging in my blood, pumping through my half-frozen veins. I collapse back onto the dock and watch him through barely more than slivers of vision.
Next, I recall, I’m in bed still fully clothed and still freezing. Will this never end?
Am I to die, in Afrique?”
TO BE CONTINUED……