Still Sick In Benin

The next morning (March 15) I got a message from David:

‘David Edem passed away this morning at 9am’

I was still sick and couldn’t dream of leaving my hotel room and the toilet bowl just yet which gave me a lot of time to ponder his death.

Why did it make me so sorry to hear that he died? I didn’t know him, the only time I saw him was that one day at the hospital when he was so close to death and in such a bad state I had actually thought he should die. Maybe I was sad on behalf of a family he may or may not have, who will never see him again or ever know what happened to him?  Maybe I was sad for David who I could tell held hope that a miracle would happen and he’d magically be well again in a matter of days? Maybe I was sad because culturally we are trained to be sad about the death of a fellow human?

Or was this woe more positive than that? He died in dignity in a hospital bed rather than the pile of rubbish David found him in. David had given him the greatest gift a person can give another person – the gift of caring. In the last miserable, suffering moments of his life a total stranger had gone out of his way to give a shit.

*

All I had consumed in the last day and a half was that pineapple juice, which had made me sick, I had been awake in the foetal position or on the toilet all night and I didn’t have any fluids left so I knew I had to somehow make it out of the hotel room, down the street to the shops and back. I didn’t want to take the Imodium I had, because I am a firm believer in letting an illness run its natural course.

I showered, dress, said an anxious farewell to the seat-less toilet bowl and left my hotel room. The nearest shop was about six blocks away. I made it only two before turning on my heels and running back to my hotel, ass clenched tight.

On my second attempt I made it all the way to the shop – only because I took a zemi-john (local motorbike taxi) this time. Feeling like perhaps I was a little better I attempted the extra block to the internet café. Got to the door of it, and jumped back on a zemi and back to my hotel room.

I slumped off the bike, bowels churning, sharp stabbing pains in my abdomen, my half drunk juice and bottle of water tucked under my arm, and as I was just about to barge up the hotel stairs a young guy called out to me. He asked for my half empty bottle of ginger juice. I couldn’t even be bothered saying no so I just gave it to him. I get into my hotel and a well dressed middle aged man in a suit asks for my water. Possibly insane from sickness I say out loud “Kai… tell him he’s dream’n”. A reference to the film The Castle that he obviously won’t understand but delirious from illness I chuckle all the way up the four flights of stairs and sit back on the toilet chuckling to myself until the sun goes down and I crawl back into bed.

*

The next day I woke up early and decided to jump off my high horse. I have to pick up my passport, I have to leave Cotonou and see more of Benin which means I have to take some Imodium and fight on. I only gave myself a week in the country, I didn’t want to spend the entire week sick and wrapped around a bowl on the bathroom floor. My sole mission for going to Benin was to find some Voodoo, and I am so stubborn I wouldnt leave without finding it. The fact that Benin is the birthplace of Voodoo and still considered the State religion was too fascinating for me not to go on a witch-doctor hunt.

The day started off badly.

I got on a zemi to go to Immigration, the driver looked at my hand-scrawled address and nodded to say he knew where it was. We drove for a really long time before he pulled over and indicated to a building that is not Immigration. I shake my head no and show him the address again. A man across the street saw all my wild gesticulation and came to help. He spokeEnglish and told me he was a cop. He gave the driver instructions on how to get there.

We rode on, across a bridge and out to where the city was less crowded before I finally told the driver to pull over.  I gave him some cash and he told me I owe him more. I wildly indicate that I shouldn’t pay him anything, that I am no where near where I want to be, I am stranded and sick and that he’s a dick head... He may have understood the term dick head.

I stop a woman walking nearby and show her my disintegrating paper with the Immigration address written out. She indicates for me to follow her and I do. But we walk for a block or two and my stomach is burning, I am sweating from either the heat or a fever and I am fed up with everything being ten times harder to do then they should be. Finally she walks into a little shop with a pig carcass hanging in the door – exactly what you want to see when you’ve been needing to throw up all day. The man behind the counter speaks English and I tell him where I need to be, he goes outside waves me down a zemi and gives him instructions. Then he pays the driver and instructs me not to give him anymore. I try to pay him and he says no, and I am overwhelmed with emotion and try not to cry… I had been so frustrated I wanted to smack the driver and hit my own head against a brick wall and now this man had reminded me that some people are good people.

The driver took me to the Immigration Department, first we stopped at his friends house so he could have a chat there, so the trip took twice as long, but then the bastard demands more money. “You were paid!” I told him. He shrugs. “Argh!” I grumble in his face but pay him more anyway… I’m weak like that!