Chapter 3 - Walkabout

I began a very strained relationship with my doctor. She later told me I needed to shove a wax enema up my arse. That was tricky. It melted from the heat on my finger tips and I had trouble getting it in. I asked her if she'd do it. She refused. Then bollocks to it. But unless you use the enema you won't ever get well. You have a parasite that's carried by the mosquito and it is this that ends up in your blood stream and makes you ill. In a nutshell. Stick that wax cone up yer arse or you aint ever gonna kill the widget. It went in. The only relief I knew was thinking the bastard mozzie that sank its teeth into me would have swelled up and been written off by the same parasites. How does one invisible little thing take out both a miniscule insect and a fully grown man?

Later I noticed that the man in the middle was missing. The doctor changing the sheets said simply that he'd died. One down, two to go, I thought. Just me and Fatty and Fatty was moaning loudly. I had to get out. I had nothing to wear except some ragged fisherman's pants and a dirty, puke soaked t-shirt, some shitty trainers and a drip on a set of wheels. I decided to make a break for it. If I didn't find out about my friends I seriously thought I'd go mental. I unhooked the bags from the drip stand and staggered out of the room carrying them. The doctor, incredulous, asked where I was going. I kept walking. I made it down the corridor and down the stairs. My strength was still there…ha ha! Out, out in the street of Osu. Middle of the day, African sun, African traffic and African pollution. Even the mozzies probably backed off. Now this is where I have serious doubts and am convinced I was deranged. I can picture myself walking that street to find an Internet café to see if I'd heard from anyone. That seemed to me the only shred of proof that could satisfy to me that I wasn't going crackers. And there I was trying to satisfy that worry by walking the streets with two drug bags and drips coming out of my hand. Or did I? Could it be a trick of the mind? I swear I did. I can even picture myself in the Internet café I visited; yet I doubt I had any money. And I remember having four or five bits of junk mail and no correspondence, hence: Last night's party with my friends was all one big motherfucking hallucination and I am seriously ill sitting in an internet café with two bags of liquid drugs, sweating and shivering and trying not to pass out and feeling constantly sick with diarrhea. OK, better to try and make it back to the hospital, prudent I feel.

On the way back, faces rose up before me smiling to sell Tupperware and hair clippers and they fell away when they saw there was a madman loose on the streets. Ghanaians are very meticulous about their appearance and I must have looked a state with my sick smeared shirt and dirty pants. Something warm and slimy slithered down my leg and sick bubbled into my mouth and the weight of the drug bags exhausted me. It was probably a quarter of a kilometer to the hospital. I'm sure I remember making it back to the crowded hellish clamour of the waiting room and a disgusted doctor helping me to my room. The big man was still there. Where could he go? The room stank of something unholy. His leg was a mess, I felt for him until he woke and started moaning again. Then I collapsed into unconsciousness. When I came round alarmed sets of eyes were staring at me in disbelief. It was a friend, Jess, paying a visit. She looked horrified. I could barely move I was so under. I couldn't answer her questions. I just didn't have the strength. She asked me if there was anything I wanted. I wanted to say sanity, books, magazines, music but all I could muster was a weird mumble that made me yearn for health and coherence. James' face appeared behind her and his jaw dropped. “Jesus man, you look fucking shitty. I came by before but you were out of it. Are you ok?”

What a question. I nodded, nonetheless. Their voices came to me muffled because of the quinine. I felt wretched. I managed to get the words out that I wanted something to read then the blackness came and I faded. The need to rid myself of something foul in my gut woke me later. I managed to get across the room the few metres to the bathroom but when there I didn't know whether I was gonna shit or puke. I settled down and shit and puked. Simultaneously. African toilets aren't all blessed with flushers so I had to swill the mess out with a vessel full of water and was sick again and washed it through again and sick came out of my nose and eyes and then I had to shit again and then I didn't know if I'd be able to get away from that toilet so I lay down on the cold tiles and my drips tore out of my hand again. I heard the big man crying out in agony again and I decided to try and wait ‘til I passed out but my body hurt so much it kept me conscious. Tears came out of my body from somewhere. I was pleased to know I had water left for that. The cold tiles felt good against my fever but soon enough I was icy cold again and I had to struggle to my feet to get to bed, otherwise it felt like I would have frozen or my body, shaking so hard, would have got bruised against the floor. Those few metres were a nightmare to walk but eventually I got back to bed and by then I was sweating and burning up again. I wanted those tiles again. I realised through the daze and madness that at least the swings in temperature were less rapid now and perhaps that meant I was recovering a little. Someone else showed up. I felt like Mr Popularity or a freak show. ‘You gotta go check Howie out. He's dying man! It's hysterical!'

Hard not to feel bad about yourself and isolated but when Jess asked if she should contact anyone. I didn't see the point. I tried to fortify myself with thoughts of Rimbaud, sick and fucked up in Aden, or of Papillon, totally isolated and alone. Nothing worked because as soon as I grasped for a ray of light my body overtook all thought and reminded me of the anguish. I tried to focus on a point in the future, to lay down something sublime along time's tracks to ensure my survival and sanity. I swore I'd get religion, I'd give up smoking, but here I sit next to a filling ashtray, writing this now, Godless as ever. I felt weak. Jess gave me a copy of Frankenstein but I never got past the first page without wanting to chunder. Literature is useless to the infirm.

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