piecing together my herstory

september 25 - october 4:  bitten by an anopholes mosquito while visiting kalim's family in the north. the reason i assume this is because there are almost no mosquitos in my village, due to the colder temperatures caused by the higher elevation.

nite, october 14: after feeling fine and working hard all day, malaria symptoms hit me full force. i get a sore throat and then a fever, chills, and dry heaves.  i am hungry, but have no energy to get off my bed and cook. i am thirsty, but have not had time to fetch water during the day.  i am forced to drink unpotable well water. i could ask for help from the neighbors, but of course that's not how i roll.

October 15
morning: i stagger over to my neighbor, marie's house (she's the director of the village clinic), but the kids tell me she has travelled.  i have no cell phone (mine was stolen a couple of weeks back and i haven't wanted to spend money on another one just before leaving the country).  it looks like the only way to get to help is to walk all the way into town (4 miles). i don't have the strength at the moment.  i stagger weakly back to bed.

noon: i rouse myself and walk slowly but steadily for a mile until i arrive at my counterpart francois' house. we had a meeting for 8 am that morning, and i apologize that i couldn't make it because i couldn't get out of bed.  i tell him i think i have malaria.  he covers a bamboo bench with a sheet and gives me a pillow.   he makes a medicinal remedy for me out of plantain leaves.  he gives me fresh water and cooks lunch for us.  he tells me i should not try to go into town, but should rest and recover.  i refuse, saying i have to arrive in dschang tonight so i can get to bangangte the following day to teach the trainees. (this logic, or lack thereof, marks the beginning of my malaria-affected thinking, which ranges from mildly crazy overconfidence to delirium) .  francois walks slowly with me into town until we find a motorcycle that takes me to amber's house where i will stay the night. he tells me to drink the rest of the half liter of plantain leaves that night. 

even though it is an incomplete remedy (i should have taken the plantain leaves twice a day for 5 - 7 days), fthe brief care francois has given me is the most tender i will receive during my bout with malaria.

October 16
6am: feeling amazing, i decide francois' remedy has worked and go to see my french friend alice.  she is a volunteer who works with the hospital doing accounting.  i want to make sure i get there before she heads off to work.  we end up talking for hours, until her friend marion comes.  marion is a new volunteer who will be helping with an agricultural school near my post, so there is a lot of potential for collaboration between her and my replacement. 

2pm: buy a cell phone

3pm: travel to bangangte, the training venue

8pm: we receive a call from the Peace Corps Medical Officer, Ann, in Yaounde.  she says i need to go directly to the hospital in bangangte.  even though i don't have any major malaria symptoms (just fatigue) i comply.  i realize that i am not being hospitalized for malaria when no blood is drawn from me.  because i am in an altered mental state, i am very scared and confused as to what is happening and why. no one elxplains why they are interogating me, or why they are not testing me for malaria when i know that i have it.

they try to no avail to get me to accept an injection of an amber colored fluid in my arm.  i don't know or trust the people at this hospital, and they are not wearing hospital clothes.  i don't know what the injection really is.  they have asked me many questions about kalim and about drug use, so i think maybe they are testing me to see if i will accept the injection of strange drugs into my body.  i refuse the injection, eventually running away to find the director of the hospital to see what he thinks about this thing they are trying to inject into me. i am eventually given an injection in my butt.  i am not told what this substance is or why i am receiving it. it's white and viscous, and looks like glue.  it seems very wrong to me that someone would put such a thing in my body.  i am locked alone in a room all night and experience stress, fever, and dellusions by myself.  the lights are on, and i only realize just before dawn that the switch is in my power to control.  i get perhaps one hour of sleep after this.

the memory of this hospital will scar and haunt me long after my malaria is gone, and make me wary of all doctors and nurses.

October 17 - 28: hospitalization in yaounde. i am very reluctant to let the doctors touch me or draw blood from me after my experience in bangangte.  the blood test shows my blood to be full of malaria, and i am treated accordingly. i am also given valium, several other drugs i don't know the function of, and a very strong and bad drug called haldol without my knowledge. these are given to me for the same reason i was hospitalized in bangangte: because peace corps has observed "crazy" behaviour in me, and they have decided that i am a drug abuser and need treatment for my delusions.  (my delusions, which started during my hospitalization in bangangte were probably induced by malaria. however, delusions are rarely experienced by people with malaria unless its cerebral. this is probably why doctors look elsewhere for an explanation for my psychotic episodes.)

during my hospital stay, i can't sleep at night and often try to get the nurse in my room to sleep on my bed while i sleep on her mat on the floor, thereby reversing the white-black power structure.  i become convinced that one of my nurses is condoleza rice under-cover, and marvel at her pidgin speaking abilities.  this nurse becomes my favorite, and i call her "big mami," which means "grandmother" in pidgin.  my parents receive disturbing phone calls from me on my cell phone in the middle of the night and we have delusional conversations that i don't recall. they don't know what is going on and are very frightened until peace corps finally calls them and fills them in on what's happening.

October 28: i am released from the hospital and made to fly to the united states 5 hours later. there is no chance given to me for mental recovery in-country as peace corps has already decided i am too crazy to be treated anywhere but the u.s., and incapable of working.  i am not told and do not realize i am leaving for good. kalim comes to peace corps headquarters to say goodbye just before i leave for the airport.

October 29 - November 13: in spite of the fact that my mental state is improving every day, i am coerced into a hospitalization in the psych ward of sibley hospital in dc.  i am not permitted to go outside without doctor's permission (and doctors deny permission for the first several days) and an escort by a visitor, or even open a window and breathe fresh air. i am very frightened when i am taken to the psych ward and made to sign a form, because i think that i will be locked in this place forever and driven insane, like in the movies.  once i arrive in the secured section of the ward, my parents are escorted in to see me.  this makes me feel much less scared.

the psychiatrist will not hear about the bangangte hospital, and tells me i'm delusional when i talk about it and need more medication to calm me down.  the one day that i do talk about it, he ups my lithium dose and prolongs my stay in the hospital to two weeks. technically, i could have left but i would be terminating my peace corps service and personally liable for the extravagent hospitalization expenses by leaving.   peace corps finally gives me a blood test and determines that i'm not a user of narcotics.  i am diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, but disagree wholly with that diagnosis, and have never before or since experienced bi-polar symptoms.

while i am in the psych ward, i meet some very interesting people. one of the other patients (although both of us refer to ourselves as "inmates" because we are not here voluntarily) and i conspire to co-author a zine called "the mighty manics."  the art therapist is a very kind sould, and the only staff in the place who i feel i can talk to without being invalidated.  she looks at my pictures from peace corps online with me and encourages me to express my anger and frustration with the psychiatrist, power structures, and western medicine in general - through art.

november 14: appointment with yet another psychologist, in wausau.  his theory is that i am suffering from ptsd, and wants to treat it with rapid eye movement treatment. at first he seems more open to my experience but then i realize he is just putting me in his box like all the other doctors have done.

november 15: my first day of peace - with no doctor looking at me through his microscope - since bangangte. i am resting at my parents' home in the wisconsin countryside near the little black river with their dog, bandit.  finally i feel i am in a place where i can start to heal.