sicky

I have to say, it’s no fun being sick here. At home if I wanted to rest up from an illness, I’d take a day off of work, stretch out in my PJs on the couch, adjust the air to a healthy and comfortable temperature, play music, watch TV, eat food that comforts me, whine to my indulgent mother and generally just convalesce. Here, I can take off a day of work, but can’t really convalesce. My house is sweat-inducing even for the healthy, and it’s not easy finding a comfortable position on my makeshift bed. There’s little in the way of comfort food and my mother’s soothing words are an impossibility. I do get plenty of visitors and sympathy, but there’s only so much people can do. I am a lot better off than most, and I simply can’t imagine the kind of suffering I’ve seen people endure on this camp.

A few weeks ago, several of my neighbor’s kids, were extremely ill. Mary and Lester have 7 kids all under the age of 12. The oldest, Baby G, came to my door and in his typically shy voice and told me that his brother, Bakayoko was sick and that I should come see him. The kids almost never invite us into their house, and so the request alone alarmed me. Bakayoko is 6 years old and you usually have to look up to see him because he’s almost always climbing a tree. He would certainly be diagnosed with hyperactivity in the U.S. Like I mentioned, not everyone here is equally poor and some people have luxuries like televisions in their homes. This family has virtually nothing. A few mattresses, a piles of clothes and some pots to cook with. When I came into the house, Bakayoko was lying on a mattress in the center of the room. He looked like another child. His eyes were half closed and the only movements he seemed to be able to manage were to react to whatever bone-wrenching pain his body was delivering. He had been throwing up and “toileting” (Liberian for diarrhea) for over a day. He had already been in the clinic and received two drips for rehydration, but the family could not afford a third so the clinic sent him home. This child is already pretty wiry, but unanimated he just looked scrawny, weak and utterly helpless. I and another volunteer told Mary we’d pay for medicine and took him back to the clinic. We carried him on our backs to the clinic. You can do that for a child, but for an adult, people will end up using a “wee” (two wheeled wheel-barrel), normally used to carry wood or bricks, to take a loved one to the clinic. This is one of the hardest things to watch. It just seems so unsympathetic and inhumane, but there’s no other way to move someone unable to walk through the camp.

Having one child in that state is enough to break any mother’s heart, but Mary had another child – Myfriend – and a husband who were waiting for us at the clinic suffering from the same ailment! And some of the other children we left at home were starting to feel lousy. When we arrived at the clinic with Bakayoko, Lester and Myfriend were already there each receiving a drip.

Myfriend, 10 years old, is one of my favorites. He’s named after Lester’s best friend who would always greet Lester with “Hello, my friend” and who died while Mary was pregnant with little Myfriend. We’ve all agreed that there’s just something about him that makes him seem wise beyond his years. He has a joyful and almost Zen-like spirit. Myfriend is even skinnier than Bakayoko to begin with and seeing him in a similar condition to his brother on a plastic gurney with a drip in his vein was one of the most heart-wrenching scenes I’ve seen, and I can’t imagine what Mary was feeling. The ward in the clinic was a hot room with several gurneys, no partitions and only one apathetic-looking and inattentive nurse. The patients have visitors bring them food but are basically left there to let time, medicine and rehydration hopefully do their work. I did not know quite how to act, or how to provide comfort to anyone. Lester was feeling a bit better so that gave us some hope that they others would bounce back with time. I found the overworked clinic doctor who assured me that it was not cholera (there had been a mini-outbreak resulting in 10 deaths at the camp that week), but some parasite from the water they were drinking.

In the end, they all pulled through. But they were lucky. Those kids are malnurished and have compromised immune systems. If it were cholera, and they did not get rehydrated in time, Mary could have lost one or more of her children. As I walked with her to the clinic she stopped to talk to the people she knew and said "my husband and children are sick-o, they are at the clinic" People responded gravely and with a deep sympathy that comes from knowing what can happen when someone's children are "at the clinic" They don't always come back.

So far, someone I know has lost someone every single week I've been here. Sometimes, it is a cousin in Liberia or step-chid in America. The program officer at CBW (the NGO I'm working with) just tragically lost his 2 year old cousin in a fire at their house on camp. Another CBW soccer player (around 30 years old) dropped dead one morning on the soccer field. I wonder if it's just because everyone's lives here are connected to so many others and everyone has so much kin that the universe of possible deaths is larger here. But I have to face the fact that death is just more a part of life here than it is back home where cholera and malaria are unknown and emergency assistance is just a 3 digit phone call away. In the back of my mind - pushed away from my heart - I fear that a tragedy could befall someone I know, and I don't think I'm emotionally prepared for that.

I'd like to end this post on a more optimistic note, but I'm not sure how.