I open my eyes and think I’m awakening from a nightmare. But a glance around me shows that the crying and moaning are real. I’m in hospital, in a huge room with beds packed together. On my left is an old, emaciated Samburu woman and on my right a pink child’s cot with a railing. Something inside it keeps hitting the woodwork and crying out. Everywhere I look there’s nothing but misery. What am I doing in hospital? I don’t know how I got here. Where is Lketinga? I start to panic. How long have I been here? Outside the sun is shining. My bed is made of iron with a thin mattress and a dirty grey sheet.
Two young doctors in white coats pass by. ‘Hello!’ I wave to them, but my voice isn’t loud enough to compete with the groaning, and I can’t sit up. My head is too heavy. Tears gather in my eyes. What’s going on? Where’s Lketinga?
The Samburu woman says something to me, but I don’t understand, and then at last I see Lketinga coming towards me. The sight of him calms me down and almost makes me happy. ‘Hello, Corinne, how you feel now?’ I try to smile and say ‘not bad’. He tells me that as soon as we arrived I fell unconscious. Our landlady called the ambulance immediately, and I’ve been here since yesterday evening. He was by my side all night, but I didn’t come to. I can hardly believe that I didn’t know what was going on. The doctor had given me a sedative.
After a while the two medics come over to the bed. I have acute malaria, but there’s not much they can do because they don’t have the drugs. All they can do is give me pills. I should eat and sleep as much as possible, but just the word ‘eat’ makes me feel ill, and I can hardly imagine sleeping amidst all this crying and groaning. Lketinga sits on the edge of the bed and looks at me helplessly.
Suddenly I detect the strong smell of cabbage, and my stomach turns over. I need a container of some sort. In despair I grab the water jug and throw up into it. Lketinga holds the jug and supports me; I could hardly manage on my own. Immediately a dark nurse appears, grabs the jug and replaces it with a bucket. ‘Why you make this? This is for drinking water,’ she snaps at me. I feel miserable. The smell is coming from the food trolley. There are tin bowls on it filled with a mound of rice and cabbage; one is delivered to each bed.
Totally exhausted from the effort of vomiting, I lie on the bed and hold my arm in front of my nose. There’s no way I can eat. It’s an hour since I swallowed the first tablets, and my whole body is starting to itch. I start scratching like mad all over. Lketinga notices spots and pimples on my face. I lift up my skirt, and we find my legs are also covered with little lumps. He calls the doctor. It seems I have an allergic reaction to the medicine, but there’s nothing else he can give me because everything else has been used and they’ve been waiting for days for supplies from Nairobi.
In the evening Lketinga leaves: he wants to get something to eat and see if he can find someone from home to tell him when the big festival is due. I’m dead tired and just want to sleep. My whole body is bathed in sweat, and the thermometer says I have a temperature of 105.8. After drinking so much water I need the toilet, but how am I to get there? The toilet cubicles are some ninety feet from the ward entrance. How can I get that far? I slowly lower my feet to the floor and step into my plastic sandals. Then, holding on to the bed frame, I stand up, but my legs are trembling and I can hardly stand. I pull myself together. The last thing I want to do is collapse. Feeling my way from bed to bed, I get as far as the door. But the ninety feet seems an impossible distance, and I end up crawling the last few with nothing to hold on to for support. I grind my teeth together and with the last of my strength reach the toilet. But there’s nowhere to sit down: I have to squat. Holding on to the stone walls, I do the best I can.
Just how bad this malaria is comes home to me as I realize that, despite never having been really sick in my life, I am incredibly weak. There’s a heavily pregnant Masai woman outside the door, but when she notices that I can’t let go of it without falling backwards, she helps me silently back to the ward entrance. I’m so thankful that I cry tears of gratitude. With enormous effort I drag myself back into bed and sob. The sister comes to ask if I’m in pain, but I shake my head and feel even more miserable. At some stage I fall asleep.
I wake up in the middle of the night. The child in the cot is screaming appallingly and banging its head against the railing. Nobody comes, and it’s driving me mad. I’ve been here for four days now and am feeling really sorry for myself. Lketinga comes often, but he doesn’t look well either; he wants to go home but not without me because he’s afraid I’ll die. The nurses curse me because every time I eat something I throw up. My stomach aches terribly. One time Lketinga brings me a whole leg of kid, already roasted, and pleads with me to eat it and it’ll make me better. But I can’t, and he leaves disappointed.
On the fifth day Jutta comes. She’d heard there is a white woman in the hospital. She’s horrified when she sees me. She says I have to get out of here straight away and get into the missionary hospital in Wamba. But I don’t understand why I should move to another hospital; they’re all the same. And in any case I wouldn’t survive a four-and-a-half-hour trip in a car. ‘If you could see yourself, you’d understand that you have to get out of here. Five days and they haven’t given you anything? You’re worth less than a goat out there. Maybe they don’t want to help you,’ she says. ‘Jutta,’ I say, ‘please take me to the boarding house. I don’t want to die here, and on these roads I wouldn’t make it to Wamba. I can’t even sit up!’ Jutta talks to the doctors. They don’t want to let me leave and only prepare my discharge papers when I sign a form absolving them of all responsibility.
In the meantime Jutta fetches Lketinga to help bring me to the boarding house. They take me between them, and we make it slowly into the village. Everywhere people stand and stare at us. I’m ashamed to have to be dragged so helplessly through the village.
But I want to fight and survive. So I ask the pair of them to take me to the Somali restaurant, where I’ll try to eat a piece of liver. The restaurant is at least two hundred yards away, and my legs are folding under me. I keep telling myself: ‘Corinne, you can do it! You have to get there!’ Exhausted but proud, I sit down at the table. The Somali is horrified too when he sees me. We order the liver. My stomach rebels as soon as I see the plate, and I summon up all my strength and slowly begin eating. By the end of two hours I’ve nearly cleaned my plate and convince myself I feel fantastic. The three of us go to the boarding house where Jutta leaves us. She’ll drop by again tomorrow or the day after. I spend the rest of the afternoon sitting in front of the boarding house in the sun. It’s wonderful to feel the warmth.
That evening I lie in bed, slowly eating a carrot and proud of my achievements. My stomach has calmed down, and I can keep it all down. ‘Corinne, onwards and upwards,’ I think to myself as I fall asleep.
Early next morning Lketinga finds out that his ceremony has already begun. He’s very worked up and wants to go home immediately, or rather to the site of the ceremony. But there’s no way I can go that far, and if he goes on foot it’ll take him more than a day.
He’s worried about his Mama, who’ll be waiting there in despair, not knowing what’s going on. I promise him we’ll go tomorrow, my darling. That way I have a whole day to build up at least enough strength to hold on to the steering wheel. When we get out of Maralal Lketinga can drive, but it’s too dangerous here with the police.
We go back to the Somali’s, and I order the same thing. Today I managed to get halfway there without assistance and find eating easier. I’m slowly beginning to feel life returning to my body. My stomach is flat, no longer concave. In the boarding house I take a look at myself in the mirror for the first time: my face has changed enormously. My eyes seem enormous, and my cheekbones protrude. Before we set off Lketinga buys a few pounds of chewing tobacco and sugar, and I get some fruit and rice. The first few miles exhaust me because I have to keep changing from first to second gear and need strength to work the clutch. Lketinga, sitting next to me, helps by using his arm to reinforce mine. Once again I’m driving as if in a dream, but after several hours we reach the ceremony site.