They Come at Night
Excerpt from West Africa (Death)
Old-fashioned travel. Old-fashioned simply because the thought of an ATM machine in cotton-mouthed Mauritania is laughable, cryable. Tromping through the urban crush of downtown Nouakchott on one of its biggest business days, David and I search for an ATM machine, because he is in dire need of Ouguiya. We try to find the most cosmopolitan of spots, where all the UN workers are stationed to supervise the months after the election.
Big tinted black SUVs holding vague, blonde outlines inside.
We charge through town, Dave and I, a mission in front of us. The sounds are enormous. From the blowing, thunderous winds of the Sahara to the screeching, rusting, clanking whine of thousands of beaten-down cars, all vying for their spot on the road. We see the glint of a crystal, the glass of a bank catching a ray of the smothering sun and zero in on that direction, cutting through a crowd of people, past shanties, salons, tiny frite/kebab shops, and internet cafes, which are in no shortage. No one owns computers at home, so they must remain public, a trend that started the moment we stepped out of the First World.
In the middle of the crowd, I look up to see one of the only billboards, with a bad computer graphic of a towering glass building near the seaside, which reads, "Notre banques sont notre avenir." Our banks are our future. A pillar of hope and worship. We come out of the other side of the throng and arrive at the bank. No ATM. Inside, they tell us we'll have to wait for days for Dave to withdraw anything.
Back out into the swarming mass and across the street and around the corner to find Wes in Puta, sitting patiently. Dave pats his back pocket to find nothing. We had just emerged from Wallet Snatch Alley. Some lucky Mauritanian is walking around with a new leather wallet and a Texas driver's license.
There is a Mexican in our hostel that night who keeps going on about wanting to fly to South Africa and trek up, by foot, to fucking Somalia. "I hear people are very nice there," he tells us. "After that, I plan to go back again to Johannesburg, by foot." Ah, the thrill of living fancy-free and having no clue about the anarchic war zone you are about to step into. Just because you can track with your finger across the map, doesn't mean it won't get blown off in reality.
I am feeling nervous because I am off any medication. Ditching the Mefloquine was the best thing I could do for myself, but now I am in a fast river without a paddle.
"I think you're silly," says Wes, who has never taken any medication for malaria in his life, has suffered through it three times, and still claims that, if it's good enough for the hundreds of millions of Africans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, Bolivians, Costa Ricans, Puerto Ricans, Columbians, Indians, Pakistanis, Indonesians, Laotians, Cambodians, Vietnamese, That, etc etc etc, that can't afford it and still manage to live their lives, it is good enough for him.
"If you get it, which you will if you're not on anything, buy Artemisia for eight bucks, which is more than anyone here can afford anyway. When I got malaria last time, I was fine. I laid for three days in a hostel in Burkina Faso, eating mangos and reading The Life of Pi."
For the cost of a sandwich and french fries in the States, one can potentially save a life here, and that it still remains out of most people's reach.
Okay, so I can put one foot in front of the other and not worry so much. I'll consider Wes my North Star in this matter. After all, I have what it takes to combat this thing if it enters my bloodstream. I have money. I'm a priority. Front of the line, Nate, let's get you taken care of. The moment I feel it coming on, some tingle, some headache, some burning, I'll rush to a nearby clinic. Simple. But still I worry.
"Here's what I'd do," advises Wes, as if about to reveal a groundbreaking medical secret, "I just wouldn't think about it."
Another time, as I think aloud about my impending options, he says, "Wow, you really want malaria, don't you?"
No, no, no, no. Don't break my concentration! I'm trying to figure this out:
What does the timeframe look like, again? I've been in the malarial zone for about half a week now. If an infected mosquito bites you, you have roughly two weeks before you start feeling the effects, before the world supposedly bleaches out before you. So, if I have it already, that will put me right…about…smack dab in the middle of the desert piste… Here's what I'll do. I'll just put on loads of mosquito repellent, just bathe in the shit, the industrial kind, with the DEET chemicals. I'll create a force field between myself and the winged killers.
Maybe Wes is right, though. Just don't think about it. I mean, if I spent every day telling myself that, when age fifty rolls around, I'm going to get cancer, I mean, if I really focused my time on it, spent a good hour each day researching the history of all types of cancer, noting each and every symptom, visualizing them in myself, in every cough, and sustained and nurtured the thought that cancer has pretty much dominated my mom's side of the family for a couple of generations, I'll probably get it. Wes is right, mind over matter. If I give the deadly disease a hole to jump through, it'll take it.
So I shut off my mind to it for a couple of days, thinking about everything else that Africa is. It has other features aside from its widespread sickness.
Tonight, as Dave meditates on the roof, Wes and I chat in the hostel room. The corrupt officials, roadblocks, and endless stretches of driving are starting to turn him off. He begins to weigh the whole journey on a scale with Carly, who is missing him dearly. Though she is being patient, he seems to sense in her a distant yearning for him. This sets the mind of a young man reeling.
The sleep that night is stop-start, unfulfilling and grumpy. My mosquito net droops over me. I am getting tangled up in it. My feet are coiled at the bottom and my head is pushed at the top so my newly-sprouted hair pokes out. At 3am, a beautiful girl in my dream holds a blade of grass up to her mouth and blows on it while looking at me in the sunlight. Then, like pulling the cord of a light bulb, the sun turns off and my eyes are open and I am in the darkened room in Nouakchott, with just enough time to feel a single mosquito sink its sharp snout into my neck to feast. I smash it to hell and wipe off its body on the bed. Too dreary to notice what this potentially means, I fall back asleep.
The next morning, I awake with a start. The first thing I see is a small, quarter-sized hole in the net. I eyeball Dave's fancy malaria meds as he rolls over and pops one. He gulps them down and sees me hovering.
"So you prolly won't use all those?"
"No, I guess not."
"Can I have some?"
"Well, I don't know exactly when I'm leaving. Could be the end of April. Could be later. Could be sooner. Depends where we go from here."
I'm awake now in the same room in the middle of the night, wrapped in blankets, sweating foolishly. It's too hot to continue on like this. I've relocated to another bed with no visible holes, though it's not very reassuring. Wes has a gene I don't have, one that allows him to crumple up in a ball and fall soundly asleep in the back of cargo trucks as they wind up treacherous mountain roads. He seems to really embody it when he tells me there's nothing I can do in the end. I'm sure he's fast asleep without a care in the world.
The next morning, sensing my anguish, Dave agrees to share his meds. I'm a med-hopper now. If I stay another month, I can hang on Dave's pills and be safe. Safe. Safe. Safe. Just like that, Nate. Problem solved. I shake the hands of the workers at the hostel with a tinge of shame.
It's time to leave Mauritania. As we pull out of Nouakchott, we see a crossroads. Dakar, Senegal. A few hours away. A straight shot, paved driving. A brush with Dakar, home of mind-blowing jazz music and Youssou N'Dour. A city that's remained mythic in my mind, with its arts, film, music, and the resounding claim that it puts the thickest chaos of New York or Paris to shame. We'd get eaten alive and spit out black.
I hear it's expensive to stay there and our pocketbooks are suffering as it is. Last time, Wes stayed in the slums with a Sierra Leonean refugee who spent all his time trying to sell him shampoo. There's no middle ground. Either a top-notch hotel or a dive that rents its rooms by the hour for cheap trick banging. Our only real choice is to head for Mali. I recently received an e-mail from a girl there named Eva from Holland who mysteriously got a hold of my blog writings and said we could stay with her in the capital for as long as we liked.
So we decide leave the city and enter a land of piste and famine.