While their departure was sad and we appreciated the moments we had to share with them, we were also quite relieved to be moving out of our hut. As the gate slowly closed behind them I hugged my wife and laughed with my kids as we ran into what was now our house. In retrospect perhaps the watchman thought we were celebrating their departure. One family moves away and the other rejoices in their exodus. White people are weird. The reality was we were celebrating having a toilet that flushed, a shower we could stop wearing shoes in, personal space, bedrooms, a kitchen, everything that we had come to long for in our two months of living in the small outbuilding.
We began carrying the 16 boxes and suitcases that we had carried over from America and setting them in the living room of the house. They had been sitting in storage in another of the huts since our arrival and we were anxious to finally be able to unpack after two months. Already, after only a short time, there were spider webs on top and bugs nesting in between them. As I lifted up the bottom box from one row I paused to examine the five caterpillar-like creatures that had been hiding underneath. When I bent down for a closer look I saw that they weren’t caterpillars but large fat worms. Each was translucent; a thin glaze film covered their exteriors and offered glimpses of the cloudy white intestines housed underneath. Solid black faces completed each four-inch long bug. I made a mental note of their placement and lugged the box into the house. By the time I had helped Deanna remove some of the contents inside I had forgotten about the worms.
It should be noted that during each of these trips back and forth from the huts to the house I was not wearing shoes. The walkway from our new veranda to the small outbuilding was comprised mostly of large stone tiles, making shoes entirely optional. Plus, my two year old was sprinting across the hard gravel in his bare feet, by gesture alone inviting me into a makeshift competition of lower extremity toughness.
I left the front porch of the house and walked back down the path to retrieve more boxes. I entered the hut and lifted the top box off of another remaining row of Tupperware bins and suitcases. The box had considerable girth, and I was unable to see the area around my feet. I spun around towards the door and took a single step before freezing. Apparently in the time it had taken me to return from the house the worms had made a miniature exodus across the floor. My foot struck something cold as it descended before an explosion of white worm intestine shot across the bottom of my sole. I’ve not the faintest idea what makes up the inner anatomy of a four-inch translucent worm, but the entire contents now soaked the underside of my foot. I scraped my heel along the floor as I walked out, the remains of two now deceased bugs trailing behind me as a silent warning to the other slow crawling beasts in their wake. Later we would find these bugs in the open laundry basket of clothes we had been using in the hut, obviously in the midst of some singular plan of retribution for their fallen comrades.
That evening the kids went to bed in our son's new room. Our daughter had picked out paint colors for her room and I had already gone about transforming the once blue walls to vibrant shades of pink and purple. The smell was too strong for her to sleep in there, and thusly they were bunking together for the evening. I heard them laughing and giggling for several hours after we had put them to bed, excited about having a place of their own. For our part Deanna and I crashed in our new bedroom, having changed the sheets and blankets on the existing bed. I fell asleep looking at a dead cockroach that lay in eternal slumber just atop my side of the mosquito net. Much like my message to the worms, I left him there for two months as a warning to his kin.
I woke up the next morning covered in perspiration. The night had been brutally hot and sweat soaked through the thin t-shirt I had worn to bed. Later, after a week of rising temperatures, I’d ask several Tanzanian men how they could possibly sleep when the temperature was so high? They responded in unison, “naked.” I canceled any plans for a future sleepover.
But this was only day one in the house and boiling evenings weren’t going to dampen the mood. I’d discover shortly thereafter that something entirely different would. As I walked towards the bathroom my chest and my arms began to itch feverishly. I scraped and clawed away at my shirt as I flicked aside the mosquito net and stepped across the tiled floor. In the bathroom I stood in front of the mirror and peeled away the fabric. Beginning at the base of my left elbow and continuing upward across my chest and down the opposite arm lay a series of miniature red dots. They were so densely located it appeared someone had painted a red swatch across my upper half.
I walked down the hallway to find Deanna and to ask if she would be interested in playing connect-the-dots. She was in the kitchen with the kids preparing breakfast. The children grabbed their bowls and sat down at a small wooden table set along the wall of the main room. I showed Deanna my polka dotted chest and she made wildly hypothesized about its origin. Meanwhile, the kids had begun complaining to themselves. They were reaching and scratching at their pajamas as they began whining about “itchies.” Slowly they pulled up their shirts to reveal quite different red dots running along the surface of their skin. Theirs were not thickly populated but randomly appeared in small patches around their bellies and on their arms and legs. We stripped them of their pajamas and threw them in the shower. While Deanna washed them I combed through their sheets, blankets, and mattresses. Inside each bed, tucked into the tiny crevices of thin foam that formed the mattress, I watched as tiny insects crawled back and forth. They weren’t bedbugs, but some smaller form of biting nemesis.
When I told Deanna about my discovery she began removing as much as she could from the bedrooms. She spent the rest of the day washing and drying anything that might have come in contact with the pests. We took the pieces of foam that served as each mattress outside and lit them on fire, taking only a small bit of satisfaction in the demise of the infestation. The foam was ancient and it was just easier to spend a few dollars buying new ones in town. I sent one of the watchmen into the village below to return with more. Once we procured them we shoved each in a garbage bag, sprayed the entire contents with insect killer, and left them to bake in the midday sun. The kids retired to their new beds that evening and by the next day their rashes had abated.
For my part, we concluded that my ailment was of a different variety. After checking our bed there were no bugs to be found. I spent several days rubbing prehistoric creams across my body that had been left by generations of missionaries past. None were effective. Deanna brought up my ailment to her mother one evening as they spoke on the computer and I listened in the distance. “Make sure he uses dial soap, that should help,” I overheard my mother-in-law say. “I only have one bar, I don’t really want to waste it,” was my wife’s response.
The little shop sat back from the street and a crowd waiting anxiously in the doorway for it to reopen after lunch on the afternoon I arrived. A heavyset older gentleman sauntered through the crowd and opened the door after an hour. One by one people were shown into the small room. I stood in the shade of a tree outside as the line stretched along its base. I used the time to silently try and diagnose the ailments of those around me. I could see inside the shop, and I scanned the walls for some sign of a medical certificate. Old newspapers were the only documents pasted to the walls, but I did notice the man was wearing glasses. For some reason I believed this offered some proof of his experience and knowledge.
When it was my turn I walked nervously into the darkened shop and stood at a tiny counter filled with dusty and antique medical supplies. I could see cobwebs stretching across the rubber gloves, antiseptic, and medicines tucked beneath its surface. The only thing that looked freshly used was a small scalpel and giant needle that sat on the ledge in front of us. I tried explaining my situation in Swahili and went so far as to include information and gross speculation about the rabid slug. My limited vocabulary necessitated frequent elaborate hand gestures on my part to supplement my narrative. I even brought up the translucent worms from several days prior. When I had finished he silently motioned for me to remove my shirt. A crowd had gathered in the doorway, far more than the number of individuals who had been waiting their turn outside earlier.
He looked at me for a moment before glancing down at the scalpel, perhaps surmising that the best option might be to slice off a sample. My nipples were erect in fear. He chuckled to himself before responding in perfect English. “You’re right. It was a dangerous and poisonous slug. You’re lucky to be alive. It’s good you came when you did. We’ll have to begin a serious of injections.”
I sunk and acquiesced to my fate. Seeing my face he laughed again. “You have a heat rash. Take this cream. You’ll be fine in a couple of days. It’s hot, this is normal. You’ve got to relax,” he said, still chuckling. He handed me a small bottle of anti-biotic cream. For the equivalent of two dollars I paid for the medicine and his services. I thanked him and apologized for my embarrassing show of charades earlier. I had been foolish to make assumptions upon my initial arrival. I listened as he told me of his wealth of experience working in hospitals around the country. And I stood in silent appreciation as he explained that now in his retirement, he had given up the money that comes with a cushy job in a government hospital, just because he wanted to help people.
I walked outside and thought about the preceding days. I had run the gamut of fear, beginning with wild speculation about sleep disturbing caterpillars and continuing through to knife wielding doctors. In contrast to my rampant conjecture was the reality that I had a heat rash and access to competent medical services. You know part of what makes moving across the world difficult is a fear of the unknown. It’s not that the unknown is necessarily bad or scary, it’s just that it is beyond our current understanding. As such, we tend to fill in the spaces of our incomplete knowledge pool with wildly inaccurate speculation. A rash becomes the harbinger of death. A doctor becomes a scalpel-wielding madman.
This type of thinking isn’t isolated to moving a family to another continent. My pre-Africa past is littered with moments in which I’ve allowed my imagination to dictate the existence of others. I’ve placed people in boxes before I’d ever even spoke to them. I’ve labeled people in an attempt to fill in a knowledge gap. Why would I talk to him/her? Look at them, he’s unfriendly, she’s unapproachable. She’s rich and he’s poor. Rather than invest in accurate information about the lives of others, I’ve put them in boxes to comfort myself and my own existence. I think we all have. Even now you’ve all probably seen a picture of me at some point. I can only assume you noticed my masculine beard and piercing stare and began wildly speculating about the type of rugged adventurer I must be. Now you’re filling in the knowledge gap by reading these stories and coming to a more complete understanding of just what a dweeb I am.
I suppose the same is true of events. From birth we’re ingrained with certain beliefs, certain ideals, and certain information databases. We use these to view the world and hold them aloft as visors when scanning our surroundings. There is certain naturalness to that, and it certainly has some benefit. But when these visors predetermine our experiences and keep new knowledge from filtering into our consciousness, there is also great deal of harm being done. How can you experience the reality of the world when you’ve already painted your complete picture of its existence?
The reality is that we’ll never understand an event or an individual before we’ve taken time to delve into his/her/its depths. Even then, we’ll never come away with a complete picture. We can only take delight and take joy in doing our best to uncover the secrets that each new moment, experience, and relationship offers. After 10 years of marriage there are still things I don’t know or understand about my wife. And I’d be foolish and ignorant to assume I knew everything about her. Instead, I can only stand in awe-struck wonder each time a new facet of her emerges and I’m privileged to know her on a deeper level.
That day, I committed to doing the same in Africa. Because of a heat rash and a caring doctor I decided to take off some of the lenses with which I’d been viewing my surroundings. I committed to experiencing life as it came, and allowing people and events to speak for themselves. There is a simple beauty in a Tanzanian doctor giving up money to serve the needs of the less fortunate. There is also a corresponding beauty in taking the time to put aside assumptions and allow that information to come through unabated. I still fight, as I’m sure you do as well, to cease judging people or events before I’ve had time to experience them. But whether I’m walking through life, or walking through Africa, I’m doing my best to listen to what the world, its people, and my God are saying.
And what of the rash? I used the cream for the next several days and eventually the rash subsided. The kids too returned to their new beds with no more problems. Our daughter’s room finished drying and she eventually moved all of her stuff into her new princess colored room. We finished unpacking our boxes and suitcases and settled into a new normal. It was different, but different isn’t bad. Above all, it was an experience. And the experience was speaking for itself.
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