hic etiam . . . sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentum mortalia tangunt

dry season
Originally uploaded by jlovegren.

in the orange jumpsuit he wears to his job of freelance-transportation-consultant / black-market-bus-stop-hustler E comes through the dust and holds my hand telling me 'o bre me ko?' (you've been lost, right?), that being the common greeting for someone you haven't seen for a long time. he has been struggling, "managing," his wife gave birth, he has enough money for the plane ticket to leave, just needs an invitation letter and then a visa.

now he's my consultant for locating a woman who is dying of aids. after a series of yes/no questions he learns from me that she is a woman and she did not give birth to a baby in the past week, so she will be in the female ward. she is in the farthest bed in the corner. all the patients in good spirits are on the other side of the room. i have never heard of lonely patients in local hospitals. visiting time has to be very limited because every one has many relations and friends and doctors could never get any healing done with family members coming here and there with a flask of fufu and eru and crying relatively healthy babies.

she is asleep and she is also a stick figure. she used to be very pretty. Ondi found me when i came. her eyelashes are grey. she probably hadn't planned on burying her children. she wakes her up and she looks up at me with an ashen hopeless face that coughs and says "I am very ill. When is my brother coming?" i say that her brother is coming soon, probably the same day, and that the hospital is a very good one. don't be worried. i put a hand on her leg to add pathos to my reassurances, but my voice falters and her thigh is a pencil and her clothes and braids hang on her like misshapen ornaments on a melting snow man.

ndem a kwita go, i say to ondi and have to leave.
"massa, how fo yo own patient," E asks one of his friends or relations sitting to a smiling woman with a bandaged arm.
"no, better small."
we climb up the hill in the dust and i explain the various complications in obtaining an american visa.

back in the village her healthy baby is watching her brother, in an imitation leopard-skin cowboy hat, drink a beer and he looses cheerful shrieks and giggles at shiny objects.