I have it. While I am not going to die or have permanent brain damage or anything like that, I can say that the reports of how bad it is were not exaggerated.
A few days ago I got a high fever, and that night I had my first malaria attacks. This was an unparalleled experience. The attack starts with a severe feeling of being cold, naturally followed by violent shivering. I have no blankets in my house, only a couple thin cotton bedsheets, and this complicated the situation. You are also thirsty, but drinking more than a sip of water is nauseating. When I attempted to get a cup of water I had to crawl because the shivering had ruled out walking. Then you have an overwhelming desire to have things stacked on top of you. This seems silly when I think about it between attacks, but during an attack it makes perfect sense that I should have a lot of weight crushing down on me. Do not ask me why.
I have no idea how long the first attack lasted because time lost all meaning to me. But after it had worn off, I regained my sanity enough to recognize what it had been. There were two more attacks during the night and at dawn a friend from my village drove me the few miles to the highway, waited with me for a bus to Cotonou to pass by, and physically put me on the bus.
And so here I am. I think it’s easing off now—the attacks are farther apart, and last night I ate a meal without throwing it up afterward.
—————
Not about malaria
A few kilometres outside Kêmon we passed a cow calf standing in a ditch by the roadside. Jacob stopped the moto and we walked back to the calf.
“It’s lost,” he said.
“Yes.”
“And sick.”
“Yes.”
He lifted it out of the ditch. It couldn’t stand back up. It lay on its side, wheezing, mucous streaming out of its nostrils.
“We have to find the shepherds,” Jacob said.
I listened and heard some faint mooing in the distance. “Do you hear that?”
“What?”
“The herd.”
“No.”
“I think I can find them.”
I walked off into the bush, following the mooing. After ten or so minutes I pushed through some tall grass and found myself face-to-face with several white bulls. They glanced at me and then continued grazing.
“Hello!” I called, looking around the herd for a shepherd.
“DID YOU FIND THEM YET!” came Jacob’s voice from off in the distance.
“ALMOST!” I shouted. The bulls looked back up at me. They were getting irritated. I was disturbing their Sunday brunch.
I walked around the herd and saw a few men about fifty yards away. I walked toward them and they walked in the opposite direction. I stopped and they stopped. Eventually two of them approached me.
“Bonjour,” one said cautiously.
“We found a sick calf from your herd by the side of the road.”
They stared at me. Bonjour was apparently the extent of their French.
“A sick cow. One of those things,” I pointed at a cow. “Over there,” I pointed toward the road.
One of them cocked his head, a clueless expression on his face.
I tried walking away and telling them in Nagot to come with me. They understood but were disinclined to do it. At length they began following me, keeping a good distance.
“DID YOU FIND THEM YET!”
“COMING!”
They kept far back. Each time I lost sight of them I stopped, and then they stopped too. I hoped I was going in the right direction; the grass and bushes were too high to see anything.
“Welcome,” said Jacob. I had almost run in to him in the thick brush. “Where are they?”
“Back there somewhere.”
He yelled at them in Nagot. They came up to us. I pointed at the calf wheezing on the ground.
“Ah-HUH,” they all said.
They talked amongst themselves for a minute. A boy—he can’t have been more than twelve—approached the calf and drew his sword.
“What’s going on?”
“They say it’ll never heal,” Jacob said.
The boy sawed into the calf’s neck. He nearly decapitated it and you heard the sucking from the open white windpipe and saw the blood pulsing from its arteries and spreading over the ground. It lay still for a minute and the sucking continued, and then it started flailing violently and nearly stood up. Its head flopped back and forth.
“Should we finish cutting its head off?” I said.
“No, it’s finished. This always happens.”
A minute later it was dead. Jacob started talking tensely with them in Nagot and I had an idea what he wanted.
“They say ten thousand francs for it. I offered seven thousand and they refused.”
I shrugged.
“Do you want to pay part of it?”
“No.” I knew he would never listen to me if I told him to not eat a sick animal. This was like winning the lottery.
They negotiated some more.
“They say eight thousand francs,” Jacob said.
“Can you pay it?”
“Yes, but I don’t have the money on me.”
I handed them the money. Jacob cut some vines and we bent the calf in half, tying its neck to its hindquarters, its spine popping as it broke. We got back on the moto, the calf balanced in front of Jacob, and drove back to Kêmon. We left it in my backyard because Jacob thought that someone would steal it from his house. And then we went to Ouèssè.
