I’ve been in Tanzania for one day
and I’m already losing it. Maybe it’s the
anti-malarial medication? I’ve been taking it for three weeks now. According to
Tom, a volunteer headed to Mwanza, that’s plenty of time for the side effects
to set in.
“She had this crazed look on her
face,” said Tom, earlier tonight after dinner about someone who had taken the
same brand I’m taking. “Half the time she couldn’t even remember her name. Then
one day she tried to slit her wrists with a panga. They had to strap her to a gurney and airlift
her to Europe . I wouldn’t take that crap if
you paid me a million dollars. It’s tooootally poison.” Tom had spent time
working with refugees in Mozambique
a few years ago. The poor woman he was referring to was one the development
workers at his camp.
Tom held court from a woven mat on the living
room floor with his arm around his wife Katrina. They looked like two al dente strands of
spaghetti curled up together cross-legged on the floor. The two of them
together couldn’t weigh more than one of my thighs. From the looks of it,
they’d each suffered more than a few bouts of tropical disease.
“But surely that has to be an isolated
incident,” I said, thinking that I hadn’t heard the words “side” or “effect”
and certainly not the word “poison” come out of my doctor’s mouth when she’d
prescribed a year’s worth of anti-malarial medication to the tune of $400.
“Then there was Charlie in Zimbabwe ,”
Tom continued, ignoring my question. “It started with nightmares, and then he
turned paranoid. Started hearing voices.
After a while all he could do was lay in his cot, balled up under his mosquito
net, and blubber like a baby.”
Tom explained to everyone that he
and Katrina thought of this as their life—“this” being development work. For
them it was not just a career, but a lifestyle. They’d been in Zanzibar for the last
month taking intensive Swahili lessons.
At the Dar es Salaam airport, they sauntered up to us, having just
gotten off the ferry from Zanzibar. In
the coastal breeze their jeans lapped fluidly over their thin hips. Despite only
a month in the country, they'd already assumed the air of bored ex-pats. They
were so relaxed and laid back it was as if they had never had a worry or
responsibility to speak of in their lives. At first, I attributed their utter
mellowness to their tropical island stay, but as I got to know them over the
next few weeks, I discovered this was how they always were.
“But what if you get malaria?” I
asked Tom.
“I’ve already had it a couple
times,” he said with a hint of pride in his voice. “First time was the worst. Mozambique, 1998.
Three weeks of night sweats and puking my guts out. I lost twenty-five pounds.
But the severity of the symptoms lessens each time you get it. It won’t be bad at all the next time around,”
he said smiling. He was positively gleeful.
The next time? If he lost another five pounds he’d no longer
be visible to the naked eye.
“Well I’m taking it, I’m not
worried,” said Kim. Kim, a twenty-five-year old with freckled Irish looks, is a
chemical engineer from Toronto. I’d never met any actual chemists before
Kim. I’ve always put scientists on an
Olympian pedestal since chemistry in my life has only meant an abysmal
four-credit C-, bringing my G.P.A. down to the atomic weight of zero. Kim seems
far from the stereotypical pocket-protector nerd that can pas de deux her way around the periodic table, but can’t manage a
conversation with the mailman about the weather. If cool Madame Curie was taking
anti-malarial medicine, that was good enough for me.
