by Lara Blunte
The story I was covering again became too real when I thought of Musiga and her parents, Kasozi and Nassuna. I had sat by them, talked to them, read to them: they always wanted to listen to the Bible and now I knew why Kasozi cried when he heard the Gospel. Nassuna was more serene, she listened and sometimes she smiled.
I had fed and bathed Musiga, changed her, kissed her, held her as she slept. She was a sweet baby, quiet and happy.
Two people doomed and a child who could get very sick. None of it had had to happen. Kasozi might have easily bought condoms and worn them, Nassuna might never have contracted the disease; Musiga might have been born healthy.
“People are scared sometimes to buy condoms,” Gideon contributed. “They are afraid of being considered gay, or having it known that they sleep around. All the work that had been done to put condoms in front of people, to make them understand it’s the best protection against AIDS is being undone.”
“I’m not ashamed of my country when people say it’s poor, it’s backward, it’s dirty,” Chris said. “I am ashamed of this.”
We finished the meal with lighter conversation and by the time we were having dessert we were laughing again, but I couldn’t help, at that moment, admiring Chris and Gideon for being outspoken in favor of the innocent, of the gays, of the sick.
And then, three days later I saw something at the hospital that I have never been able to forget: Kasozi was dying and he began to cry. Chris sat next to him and spoke to him for a while.
Kasozi wanted to beg his wife's forgiveness. He was sicker than she was, he was close to the end and he had lost his fear. He admitted that he had been promiscuous, that he had caught the disease and passed it to her and she to their little girl.
And this is what I saw, with my own eyes: Nassuna asked for help to get up, shuffled painfully to her husband's bed, lay down next to him and held him as he cried. He had killed her and doomed their child, but she comforted him.
She forgave him.
Eva
I had asked Pete for two months off, but he Skyped me every now and again. "Are you still trying to save the world?"
"Maybe," I said.
After I sent him part of the story he had commissioned and some photos, he Skyped me again immediately. "Now I know why you are still there! I wouldn’t trust that doctor, he’s too good-looking to know what he’s doing!”
“He knows what he is doing,” I said repressively.
“Oh,” he replied knowingly. “I see!”
"Shut up!" I frowned at the webcam.
"Are you sure you want to go down the road again?"
"What road?"
"Handsome-bloke road?"
"I am not going there at all, believe me or not."
"Ok, then."
His ironic smile irritated me.
I went to the hospital, hitching a ride on the back of a motorcycle. It was a good way to move around in Uganda; one gave the driver some change and sometimes he didn’t want anything. I patted the driver’s shoulder in thanks when I got off and he put his cheek against my hand, smiling.
I gave Eva some magazines I had with me and we sat cutting things out. Miriam was there and the idea came up to put on a show and display everything that the children could do: some could sing, others dance, others recite, or juggle. It would be a fun afternoon.
I could see in Eva’s eyes that she wanted to make the clothes she had imagined.
And here is the value of a community: Miriam told two women in town about Eva and the show and they came with fabrics that were left over from things they had made; they sat and talked to Eva and understood what she wanted. She asked us to be the models and the seamstresses returned to fit us until the clothes looked as Eva wanted them to.
The show was a great success, with children singing, putting on a play with paper costumes, dancing, telling jokes. Then it was Eva's turn: she felt strong today and had refused the wheelchair so as not to frighten the other children. She was too shy to give a speech, but when we walked in wearing her clothes and did our best on the catwalk to the sound of music, there was applause, whistling from Chris and Gideon and laughter.
But there was the sad part too: I saw Eva surrounded by the other kids, happy that she had seen what was in her mind come true, and I knew that she was dying. We all knew, except the children.
She went back to the ICU and after a few days she started getting progressively worse. It was as if she had lived long enough to show something of herself, and now she could go.
At this point, Eva was never left alone. There would always be one of the doctors or nurses with her and most often it was Chris. I saw his despair; I saw how hard he fought to bring her back. But she was such a gentle spirit and I think that she was tired.
Her fever went up and she broke out in sores. Chris cleaned them with care, instead of telling the nurses to do it. Gideon and Miriam always suffered when someone was very ill, or when someone died, but they had a greater sense of acceptance. People there truly lived in the midst of death: the life expectancy in Uganda was an average of fifty some years, very low in the world ranking. Even educated people coming from the middle classes such as the two doctors had seen death around them all their lives.
In this, Chris was a mzungu. He did not want to accept death, even when it was inevitable; he fought. He was now fighting for Eva and she knew it, but she smiled at him as if saying that it was no use.
He was home one Saturday, though I knew he would rest with the mobile next to him in case Eva needed him. Miriam had gone into town to get boxes of supplies that had arrived from Kampala.
There was only Gideon at the hospital with us when a SUV arrived. A logo on the door showed the car to be from one of the more fundamentalist churches in Uganda.
Foreign and local men in buttoned-up shirts, as well as women in long skirts, came out of the SUV, smiles glued to their faces, eyes wide as if they felt some internal panic they needed to control.
I didn't see this, as I was in class with the children, but Gideon described it to me later. The missionaries walked into the hospital and started greeting patients in soft voices, and pulling up chairs to talk to them. Gideon had been busy with Eva, but he came out and they introduced themselves, asking if they could bring comfort to the sick.
Gideon was not the kind of man to enter a confrontation and, above all, as the only doctor there he was busy with the sicker patients. He didn’t immediately see the harm.
When my class ended I was told by Kaikara, who worked in the kitchen, that the missionaries were there, and that they were from a quite extreme sect. All the hair on my head felt electric. If Chris were to walk in, tired as he was, desperate as he was to save Eva, I didn't think that this would have a happy ending.
I started to walk toward the hospital quickly, but I arrived too late.
What I was told later, both by the nurses and by the patients, was that one of the men had sat next to Nassuna. He had started speaking to her in a soft voice and they had heard him say, "You still have time to ask for forgiveness, or you will not go to paradise, you will not be with your husband and child..."
The rest I did see. The stranger was lifted from the chair by his shirt and faced the angriest man he had ever met. Chris had arrived just in time to hear what he had said to Nassuna. His face, with the veins sticking out on forehead, temple and neck, looked scary.
"What did you say?”
The Ugandan male missionary came closer to free his colleague and Chris barked at him to move aside. The women had stood up from the beds where they were sitting, but by this time Chris was dragging the man through the ward to the door of the ICU, where patients lay in agony.
“You think they won't see paradise? Why don't you say it to them?" His voice was low, so as not to disturb the patients inside, but he shook the man again. "You miserable bastard, go in there and take their hand and say it to them!”
A mixture of fear and perhaps shame made the man hang his head, but something went out o
f Chris, and he just let him go. The missionary took two sideway steps, his friend rushed to get him and they walked through the ward and out of the building together.
One of the women turned from the door and wagged her finger at Chris. "We are doing good work! We have been invited by the government! We shouldn't be treated like that!"
Gideon and I were near Chris by this time and we saw the anger leaving him. He turned, walked into the ICU and went to Eva’s bedside.
Later I saw him remove the gloves everyone always wore around the sickest patients, so as not to give them an infection. She was going, and he didn’t want the last thing she felt to be a latex glove. He held her hand in his and waited with her.
She died that night.
Happy Together
"That man might have been more extreme than many,” Chris said to me the next day, "but I still don't see Jesus in people like him. Even though I’m not religious, I like the teachings of Christ. They were about love, compassion and wisdom. There was nothing like that in that man, it was just dogma of the worst kind. Putting fear in a dying woman, someone as sweet as Nassuna..."
We were sitting in the kitchen of the nursery the next day, having coffee. His face was very tired and, above all, his eyes seemed dead. There was no twinkle in them, not even a little.
Eva’s funeral had already been held: they buried people who died of AIDS quickly in Uganda, because of the danger of infection. There had been no family at her graveside, because her parents and her brother had died before her. Her bed at the ICU was empty, though soon someone would inevitably occupy it.
Her notebook had been found and Miriam had asked the nurses to hide it, so that Chris wouldn’t see it. Maybe later, she had said, not today.
"Would Jesus ever tell a dying woman she might not see paradise?" he asked. "Even if I don’t believe in such a place, the patients do! For these fundamentalists, the most important thing is to scare people into believing and behaving, not to really think of a woman who has gone through so much already. Fuck, I feel so angry even now..."
I could see that he was slightly ashamed, even in his fury, to have grabbed a man and dragged him around.
Two policemen came later, because the missionaries had filed a complaint and Chris talked to them and made the African noise of derision with tongue against teeth. The policemen laughed, clapped him on the back, had some lunch in the kitchen and left.
Chris seemed to be bearing up, doing his rounds and so was Miriam, whereas Gideon had gone home to rest. When a life ended there, more needed their attention.
Then a nurse went to Chris and gave him something. Sitting next to Nassuna with Musiga on my knee, I saw that it was a red cardboard heart, the card that Eva had been making for him. The nurse must have thought he would want to have it, though Miriam had meant for anything of Eva's to be kept away from him for a while.
Eva had let me see the card: it was a heart with a wheel inside and at the opening on top a different message would appear when one turned it. I remembered one that had the cute drawing of a lion and said: You are a lion to us.
No, he should not see that yet.
I saw him looking at it, then walking out to the courtyard a little blindly. I knew that he was going to his office to grieve alone and I suspected he might find Adroa there.
I excused myself, handed Musiga to a nurse and started running after him, but it was in vain. I arrived just in time to see him enter his office, only to find Adroa in his usual place, leaning over the desk as he colored the drawing he had made.
"How many times do I have to tell you, you shouldn't be here. You should be with the other kids!" Chris said.
Adroa lifted his face, saw the doctor glowering at him and his eyes widened. I suppose Chris had never spoken to him like that before, and the boy realized that his charm wouldn't help him at that moment. He still started to tidy up the desk as he had been taught, putting his pencils away and trying to close the damned lid of the little basket that was hard to fit.
Chris needed to be alone because his heart was breaking and the sight of the boy he loved could only make things worse now. Adroa could also fall sick, he could also die. I walked in past him and grabbed Adroa, who put his arms around my neck.
I heard the door closing behind me as we moved away and Adroa looked at me with the guilty face of a child who had done something wrong.
"Dr. Chris is a little bit tired," I told him. "He will be better later."
Nevertheless, Adroa was quite sad and listless all afternoon. I asked Miriam if I could take him to my house on a play date, explaining what had happened.
Miriam, who was the most practical of us all, told me, "If you feel it will make things better, take him!"
So I took Adroa to my little house, where we sat drinking coke and eating biscuits. I started to draw a story that we were making up together. It took place in a world that only had animals he knew: the spider, the lizard, the rooster.
Looloo was a little French lizard dressed in a striped shirt, who loved to pick up cigarette butts from the ground and smoke them. When he was running away from the rooster, who was a hysterical control freak, his tail was pecked off. After that he had to go around in crutches, because he had lost his balance.
Adroa loved the story and kept adding more things as I drew, until there was a knock on the door. I knew it was Chris and I left the boy with paper and pencils.
There was the doctor, looking ashamed, though I couldn't think of anything that he should be ashamed of. I closed the door behind me and we stood in the little yard in front of my house.
"I'm very sorry," he said.
"Wasn't it you who said apologies can be boring?"
He smiled. It took him a moment to say, "Sometimes I feel like I picked a fight with the biggest bully in the neighborhood. He can kick my ass like there is no tomorrow."
"It's a horrible disease," I said.
I sat on the steps and after a moment he sat next to me.
"AIDS is the biggest bully, because by the time people get sick there is little hope" I said. "But you are still keeping people healthy through medication and check-ups. You are still helping them die without pain."
"I know. I just ..." He shook his head. "Too many coffins."
We couldn't continue the conversation because we heard the knob rattling and the door opened.
"Hi," said Adroa, coming forward with his hands on his hips.
He walked over to Chris as if he had never been angry and leaned against him. "Can we take Bobbie to your house and sing?"
Chris put his arm around Adroa and looked at me. I nodded and said, "If you feel up to it..."
"All right, we'll go sing," Chris said. “And ask Bobbie if she can bring her photos, we can look at them on the TV as well…”
Adroa turned to me, “Can we?”
I smiled and went inside to get the pen drive with the photos.
At his house Chris put on the TV and I connected the pen drive. The three of us sat together on the sofa, and the good doctor had not forgotten to give me a glass of white wine.
I flipped through the photos: our day with the gorillas was there, and I smiled at the photo of China touching Chris’ hair and looking into his eyes. Adroa emitted a delighted yelp and almost fell off the sofa, laughing.
“It’s your girlfriend!” he told Chris.
“That’s right! We’ll be getting married soon.” Chris said.
Then there were the children in the nursery, playing, the cooks, Gideon and Miriam, and some of the patients. There was Eva, too, but Chris said nothing. It was Adroa that pointed with his little finger and said, “Oh!” as if he missed her, but I just kept clicking through the photos and he started laughing again at the people he knew, went “Ah!” and pointed again at Musiga. When photos of him appeared, always playing in front of the camera, looking like mischief itself, it was Chris who started laughing and tickling him.
After it was over, they clapped. Chris told me, “You’re an incredible w
riter, but you’re an extraordinary photographer.”
I actually blushed and said, to disguise my embarrassment, “You haven’t read what I write.”
“You think not?” he asked me with a sly smile. “A story on Cambodia, when I was getting my nails done the other day…”
“Can I read it?” Adroa wanted to know, and that made both of us laugh.
“Time for the karaoke!” I said. “Let’s see what Adroa can do!”
"We’ll sing our favorite one for Bobbie," Chris said.
Adroa was in firm possession of the microphone, the music started and they began to sing Happy Together, jumping at the chorus.
They did seem to be very happy together as they chose another song. I went to the kitchen and started to order it, to wash the dirty dishes and cups, to cook pasta while they sang.
And then, I can't explain it, but it felt to me as if we were a family, as if I were a wife and mother who knew that her husband was sad and was taking care of him, and of a son. I suddenly thought of the words mother, father, son, husband, wife as beautiful, as if I were hearing them for the first time, though we were not really a family. I felt that everything that I was doing, even as I washed the dirty dishes and cleaned the sink, was being done with love.
When the food was ready and the table set, I went to get them. I had been humming Happy Together to myself, but I realized that they had been quiet for a while. Chris was stretched out on the sofa, his face to the side, and he was sleeping very deeply; Adroa's head lay just below his chin as he slept against the doctor's chest and also dreamed, his mouth a little open.
And although I told myself not to be silly, I still considered it one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.
An Invitation
It was Miriam who reminded me of the danger of loving Adroa too much, which Chris had also tried to keep me from doing.
She came to the weekly dinner we had at my house and told me that Adroa had been the first baby at the nursery; he had been a few months old when his mother had died. The father had succumbed to AIDS even before he was born. None of his relatives had wanted him, for fear of catching the virus and when other children began to have the same problem, they had started the nursery.