On Kapuscinski Being So Right About Malaria

Ryszard: Ok, so he might be dead now, but look! He lived a long life after the malaria. I'm just trying to reassure myself.

I know I am very behind on my posts, so let me endeavor to explain my absence from "class". It actually fits in perfectly with one of my readings. How convenient.
Ryszard Kapuscinski traveled through Africa in the 1960's and wrote several books about his experiences. I have been reading The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life.

The first pages of the book find Kapuscinski in Ghana, a place that has become quite familiar to me. I remember picking up this book before I came to Ghana and flipping through the first chapters. Even with Kapuscinski's vivid descriptions of Accra and Kumasi, I couldn't picture these places with any conviction. The places he described seemed unreal, intangible.

Kapuscinski leaves Ghana and heads east, and when he is in Uganda, he falls ill. Cerebral Malaria. Ah malaria, the bane of all African life. The dark shadow that hangs over new mothers, small children, tourists and expatriates. Kapuscinski's description of his condition is both detailed, and as I recently learned, accurate.

Yes, I fell prey to those evil little parasites that use mosquitos as their vehicles and human beings as their homes. In fact, as I write this I am slumped weakened and wasted in my bed, hands swollen from poorly tended IV's, ears still ringing from the Quinine that was pumped into my body.
When I first began to feel unwell, something struck me as familiar about my symptoms. I reached for Kapuscinski's book, flipping to the chapter in which he describes malaria.

"The first signal of an imminent malaria attack is a feeling of anxiety". Ok, check.

"Everything is irritating. First and foremost, the light; you hate the light. And others are irritating - their loud voices, their revolting smell, their rough touch". Again, check.

"A sudden, violent onset of cold. A polar arctic cold. Someone has taken you, naked, toasted in the hellish heat of the Sahel and the Sahara, and thrown you straight into the icy highlands of Greenland or Spitsbergen, amid the snows, winds, and blizzards. What a shock!" Yes! I have that!

"You begin to tremble, to quake, to thrash about". Mmhmm, yes.

"The only thing that really helps is if someone covers you. But not simply throws a blanket or quilt over you. This thing that you are being covered with must crush you with its weight, squeeze you, flatten you. You dream of being pulverized. You desperately long for a steamroller to pass over you". I remember calling for the nurses in the hospital to pile blankets on me. When they suggested making the room warmer I told them it wasn't just for warmth that I needed the blankets, it was for weight.

"A man after a malaria attack is a human rag. He lies in a puddle of sweat, he is still feverish, and he can move neither hand nor foot. Everything hurts; he is dizzy and nauseous. He is exhausted, weak, limp". My first morning in the hospital I was so weak that I had to ask the nurse to help me take my tylenol. The physical effort was too much for me.

I don't have cerebral malaria, just severe malaria, but it seems to me that the symptoms aren't too different. Kapuscinski hit the nail right on the head. As I read more of his book, I am reminded that if he was able to so accurately describe what it feels like to have malaria, then the rest of his descriptions and stories must be just as accurate. Knowing this enriches the novel for me. Anyone can write his or her perceptions of Africa, but what does it take for a person to really know Africa? Now I am assured by more than the review blurbs on the back cover that Kapuscinski saw beyond the "exotic" in Africa and experienced his own African life.