Malaria and the hospital at Maga
on Mischa in Cameroon (Cameroon), 09/Jun/2010 15:30, 34 days ago
Maga is famous in the Extreme North for its artificial lake and the things that accompany it: the fish, the rice (irrigated by its waters), the hippos and the unusually large number of mosquitoes. Now the rainy season is approaching there are even more mosquitoes than before, and consequentially more and more people (including me) are getting malaria.My malaria was not very serious (a couple of days of chills then fever then aching limbs, after which I was fine again), but it did mean that I had to go to Maga hospital to get tested and given treatment.Maga hospital is quite a grim place, although the Islamic Development Bank is paying for a new one to be built next door. It’s based around a courtyard where ill people lie on mats and are occasionally nuzzled by passing pigs/goats. I was taken there by the lovely Brahim, who lives in my compound so he can go to the Maga lycée, and is in charge of fixing anything that breaks, whether it be the electricity when it explodes, the walls when they fall down, or white girls when they get sick.I was hopeful that I would be very speedily treated- indeed one of the case studies in the ethics session of VSO’s pre-departure training is on what you would do if you got bumped to the head of the queue at the hospital. Maga hospital seems to be, however, an unracially prejudiced institution and I had to wait patiently and be nice to all the people who wanted to come and look at the novelty of the white girl at the hospital (although, to be fair, I probably waited much less time than in an English hospital).I was shuttled between various nurses and pharmacists and administrators and lab technicians, and worst of all the latrines, where I was sent to give a urine sample. These consist of a doorless shed with a very small hole in the muddy floor which is suspiciously covered in puddles (see picture for the full horror). My visit there had the positive effect of energising me enough to obstinately refuse admittance so they could give me transfusions. It was fortunate that I had Brahim with me, as my GSCE French book’s chapter on‘A l’hôpital’would perhaps serve very well for skiing accidents in the French Alpes (where the Doctors probably speak English anyway) but not for understanding complex drug regimes for blood borne diseases through a malarial haze in the remote backwaters of Francophone Africa. I arrived home with five different kinds of drugs (several of which, being on the African market, came with no helpful leaflets or indeed any of the normal medicine leaflets that describe scary side effects) and I wouldn’t have had a clue what to do with them if Brahim hadn’t remembered.Where I made my real social gaffe in having malaria, it turned out, was in not telling people (although due to the speed and efficiency of Maga gossip a surprising number of people found out anyway). Visiting ill people is a very important social convention in Cameroon, and all the people who found out I’d been ill after I was better told me off for depriving them of the experience, and only cheered up after I’d promised that next time I have malaria I’d keep them better informed. The little girls on my concession said they’d have come and swept my bedroom for me every day, and the Sultan said he’d have even let his four wives leave the palace so they could come and visit. I’m fairly sure that peace and quiet is a very good cure for malaria, so I’m not sure that this is a promise I’ll be keeping!