by Jody Berger
Inside the tent, I was grateful to see cots already made up with scratchy white sheets. I searched my bag for my head lamp, a toothbrush and my bright green sleeping-bag liner. I slid the thing between the sheets, crawled in and fell asleep almost instantly.
Hours later, I woke to big, thundering noises. Thump, thump, crash, crash, thump. The ruckus sounded like it was just beyond the canvas wall. I wanted to lift the window flap to see what was going on, and at the same time, I wanted to stay very still. Whatever it was didn’t sound dangerous, just really, really big, and maybe a little uncoordinated.
Thump. Thump. Crash. Thump. Crash.
“Are you guys awake?” I asked so quietly that my words were almost inaudible.
“Yes” came back equally small.
“What do we do?”
“Nothing.”
I lay still, listening to thumping and branches breaking until sleep took over.
In the morning, I bounded out of bed at six to full daylight. I walked around the tent to see what had happened and saw broken branches, scuffs in the dirt and enormous circles, one the size of a hubcap just six inches from the tent wall. While I was staring at it, trying to make sense of it, Lepikayo came around. “An elephant footprint, probably a baby,” he said and walked away.
If I had stuck my arm out the tent window, I would have touched elephant. Wild.
After breakfast, we climbed into the dusty green Rover and drove through the park looking for animals. We saw giraffes, elephants and gazelles. We saw one lion walking alone along a ridge, slowly, sweetly, as if she were enjoying herself and the view. We followed along, thirty feet behind her. She knew we were there and didn’t care, just kept doing a model-like strut, swinging her hips and tail, moving slowly and purposefully with her head held high until she found her spot and sat herself down like royalty.
Midmorning, we drove to the Samburu Game Lodge, a luxurious palace of a hotel where I imagine Ernest Hemingway would have stayed. Thatched roofs stood tall over the long wooden bar, and the sprawling deck offered a view of the mostly dry Ewaso Nyiro River. Lazy ceiling fans barely moved the hot, heavy air. Tables and chairs sat empty. Monkeys ran along the railing and onto the bar, where they helped themselves to sugar packets until the waiters shooed them away with shouts and slingshots.
Michelle, Lepikayo and I took a seat on a plush sofa and ordered three fruit juices. The waiter left and sometime later returned with tall glasses, filled with a sweet orange liquid and one ice cube floating in each. We chatted about nothing much and watched the monkeys and the men with slingshots until we were ready to head back to our campsite in search of lunch or a nap. On the way out, I stopped at the front desk—another expansive stretch of carved wood under the shade of the thatched roof. On the wall behind the desk, I saw a thermometer: 120 degrees, in the shade. In. The. Shade. If heat was going to hurt me, this counted as heat. And I felt great.
That night, again, I woke in the dark to a new, more frenetic symphony of crazy crashing sounds. As I lay motionless, listening to screeches and snaps and collapses, I thought it sounded like a barroom brawl, the kind on TV where everyone gets pulled in: men breaking chairs over one another’s backs, women screaming and glass shattering. The brawling continued unabated, neither growing louder nor calming down, until sleep took over again.
In the morning I asked Lepikayo about it. “Baboons,” he said. “They were fighting in the trees.”
On day three, we awoke at four in the morning, got in the car and left the park, pointed for more remote and rougher terrain. We drove and drove—or more accurately, Lepikayo wrestled the vehicle over rocky roads that became sandy paths with deep potholes and brutally bumpy stretches. We saw ostriches running in packs and little kids walking alone. We weathered the obscene heat and the gasoline fumes coming off the engine into the workhorse of a car.
Late in the afternoon, when we were so dusty and sweaty that it was impossible to tell the real color of our skin, we descended a small slope to a dry riverbed, where two little kids, a girl and a boy not more than seven, stood surrounded by hundreds of black-and-white goats. Lepikayo rolled down his window and shouted a burst of syllables in Samburu. The kids came running over. They each had the same gap-toothed smile as Lepikayo. “These are my brother’s kids,” he said, “and his goats.”
After a brief conversation, Lepikayo said good-bye and continued driving along the center of the wide, flat riverbed that hadn’t seen water in years. The drought was in its third year.
We came to a bend in the river where Lepikayo had set up a camp for us. He’d built six traditional Samburu homes—or had women in his tribe build them from sticks woven together with reeds. Each had about the same footprint as a twin bed. The roofs, made of smaller twigs, were about four feet high. I could duck inside and sit cross-legged if I wanted. No standing though. Traditionally, an entire family, parents and kids and all, would sleep inside one of these babies. I was lucky—or maybe unlucky—and had my own.
The camp sat near a watering hole dug deep into the scorched earth. Every morning, young boys would come with their goats or camels or donkeys. One boy would drop down into the hole, fill a bucket with water and hand it to another boy, who would dump it into a trough to water the animals. The boys would chant an easy rhythm and the animals would bray and snort and slosh.
Lepikayo and his friends, five Samburu men, sat in the shade between our huts, playing a game with pebbles and a small wooden board. As I sat and watched them one day, I couldn’t make heads or tails of the game, but I realized they all had the same smile as Lepikayo and his brother’s kids. All of them had a gap between their bottom front teeth.
Later, I asked Michelle about this, and she explained it was a tribal custom that began when babies suffered lockjaw from the tetanus bacteria. Saddened by watching baby after baby die, the tribal elders decided to remove front teeth as a prophylactic. The kids would live with a gap-toothed smile, but they could get food and medicine even if they couldn’t open their mouths.
Tetanus is no longer a baby killer in most parts of the world. People wear shoes to avoid puncture wounds and get tetanus shots to stay a step ahead of the bacteria. Even in Kenya, where more Samburu wear shoes and aid organizations give out tetanus shots, the disease has retreated. Today lockjaw is rare, yet this tradition to remedy it remains.
That afternoon, I thought about that—about how often after a problem no longer needs solving, we still insist on solving it anyway. Or how when a custom is no longer necessary, and can even be harmful or wasteful, we still continue to do it, generation after generation, simply because someone told us to. Bruce liked to tell a story about a woman who always cut the ends off her roast. When asked why, she said it was how her mother did it. Her mother cut the ends off because her mother did it too. When someone asked the grandmother about the practice, she said she cut the ends off because she didn’t have a roasting pan big enough. The granddaughter had a new pan that was more than adequate to fit the full roast, but she still threw away food to solve a problem that hadn’t applied to her family for two generations.
I wondered how often this happened in other areas—places where we think we’re making rational decisions based on current circumstances when instead we’re making irrational or inaccurate ones based on old information. How often, for example, do Western doctors and patients alike commit to a “solution” and stick to it long after the problem is solved and treatment is no longer required? For example, Dr. Lee advocated interferons on the basis of an MRI from one year earlier. Maybe a more recent picture would tell a different story.
Was this the case with my mom too? She and I, it seemed, reacted to each other on the basis of actions taken and assumptions we’d made long ago. She was angry because of an old assumption that I’d somehow been able but unwilling to control my health issues when I was younger—that I’d used them to punish or embarrass or hurt her (although I couldn�
�t imagine she really believed I was diagnosed to hurt her). I, in turn, was afraid to talk to her, because I was afraid of repeating a pattern that we’d established in my childhood and perpetuated. I was afraid to disappoint her yet again.
In Africa, for Michelle and me at least, there were no old patterns at play. The heat was so serious it made immediate demands—and that was eye opening and refreshing. During the day, the temperature forced us to sit still for great chunks of time. We stayed by our huts near the bend in the dry riverbed, watching the herders come with their animals each morning and drinking sugary tea with Lepikayo and his friends in the shade of an acacia tree. In the early afternoons, we’d eat a meal, usually rice with boiled carrots and cabbage, the only meal of the day unless Lepikayo decided to kill a goat that he and his friends would cook over the fire. Michelle and I tried to teach them English, and I learned a few phrases in Samburu. Kay deh deh means “it is true.” Ashee olaing, “thank you.”
One afternoon, Michelle and I took a walk up the dry riverbed. We saw monkeys in the trees and a family of warthogs on the far bank. The warthogs—which were happily trotting along—saw us and froze in their tracks. We did too. And then, as if on cue, the whole family of beasts lifted their tails and sprinted back into the brush.
Michelle and I walked on. After about a half hour, we came upon a muddy puddle, eight feet across and too murky to see how deep. The brackish water was green and black with some oily substance smeared across the surface.
“One time, I was hiking with Lepikayo and we sat down near a pool like this,” Michelle said. “He started taking off his clothes like he was going to dive in so I said, ‘Oh no, you can’t do that.’ I told him all about bacteria that lived in the water, and I explained how the bacteria would get in his mouth, into his intestines and make him sick. I explained as much as I knew about drinking clean water and antibiotics and how to stay healthy.”
She continued, “I talked for a while and I thought he was really listening to me, that I was doing a good deed, you know, helping him to stay healthy. And when I was done talking, he looked at me and said, ‘That is not my belief system,’ and dove in.”
“Did he get sick?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “And I never brought it up again.”
We started walking back to camp, and as we slowly retraced our steps, I thought about how much I loved that story. “That is not my belief system,” I repeated. What a handy tool to have in my toolbox.
That night, as I looked at the African sky, I felt small yet strengthened by the endless sea of stars. Each was immense and powerful, shining all alone, and part of a far greater constellation. Looking at such a big picture before me—an endless expanse of sparkling information—it was so easy to see how limited a view I normally had. Even when I can’t see all the stars, or know all the answers, I realized, I can trust that they are there and have faith that this universe and all that’s in it is really well designed.
CHAPTER 19
A Real Disconnect
Sitting in Heathrow, midway between Nairobi and Denver, I texted Bruce to see if he was around. “Hey, sweetie, I’m in London. If you are too, I’ll reschedule my next flight and come hang out with you for a few days.” He wrote back that he was in Amsterdam on his way to Suriname for some new massive deal he was putting together.
“So you’re feeling better?” I wrote. “That’s good.” No need and no reason to state the obvious: flying to Nairobi was too much, but South America, not a problem.
Bruce texted that he and his doctor had sorted out whatever was making his belly hurt. “It was a value problem,” he wrote, and moments later added, “I mean valve problem.”
“Value, valve,” I replied. “It’s all the same. It’s about what gets in and what’s kept out. Have yourself a ball in Suriname.”
After I sent the message, I read it again. “Have yourself a ball in Suriname” sounded like poor cover for “Go fuck yourself in Suriname,” and neither was what I actually meant. I wasn’t necessarily wishing Bruce a jolly good time there. He would have whatever kind of time he was going to have (I don’t know that he ever had a ball doing anything, in fact). But sending him anger felt equally off base because I wasn’t angry. Bruce was who he was. And in the end, I was absolutely fine with that. It occurred to me that he liked to swoop in when someone was in crisis and help that person out, try to save people at whatever cost. He’d done that with his ex-wife during her illness, and he’d done that for me through this whole year of fear. When I thought I might be sick and would suffer greatly and alone, Bruce said not a chance: “Whatever it is, we’ll take care of it.” He stood like a sentinel, saying, “Nothing bad will happen on my watch, and you, Jody, are on my watch.” I will be eternally grateful to him for that.
Now, when we were both pretty sure that I was healing (or healed!), he’d moved on to other people, other places, other dramas. He didn’t say he was done with me, that he wanted to change or end our relationship. He just would become less available and wander off. I understood where we stood, and for the first time, I accepted it.
Have yourself a ball in Suriname, I thought, and I meant it, as I wandered off myself in search of food.
At Heathrow, it wasn’t hard. The airport offered all kinds of pleasures I’d missed in Africa. I found a restaurant and inhaled a fresh, green and leafy salad, then I walked to another and savored cold, sweet and creamy ice cream. And finally, I bought the London Times, a heavy dose of solid news and analysis, before boarding the next flight.
Eight hours later, I landed in Denver and had to remember where I’d left my car. It seemed so long ago. I found it, picked Riley up from my friend’s and pointed my trusty Jeep for home. I unpacked, showered and tried to stay awake until a reasonable hour. I failed and nodded off around seven thirty.
The next morning, wide awake at four in the morning, I made myself wait several hours to call Lisa to let her know I was home safe. I went to the post office to pick up my mail, and leafing through the pile of magazines and junk, I found a small envelope from Dr. Lee. I opened it and read that it was “a pleasure” to see me in the office. Her experience was different from mine, clearly.
“There is a real disconnect between the clinical symptoms and the findings on the MRI,” she wrote and briefly recapped what I had told her about the now nonexistent tingling. “The only other symptoms are a slight sensation of decreased strength in the left foot that only identified today in testing when you first went on to the ball of the right foot and then onto the left.”
Why not say I can balance longer on my right foot? I kept reading.
“Your history is notable for an absence of many symptoms, including weakness or further sensory symptoms in the upper and lower extremities as well as an absence of visual symptoms,” she wrote.
Call me crazy, but doesn’t an absence of symptoms point to an absence of disease? What do I know? I’m no neurologist.
The MRI, Dr. Lee wrote, “favored a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis” and led to her list of recommendations, which included getting a microbial evaluation of my gut, calling her Buddhist teacher for support and making an appointment with the MS specialists at the university.
She signed her name in a large scrawl and below that, she noted that she had CC’ed Dr. Maureen Duncan.
Ridiculous, I thought. I had filled out the HIPAA release form and wrote very clearly to send results only to me. In person, I had told her twice more to send the results to me and no one else. Still, she copied Dr. Duncan.
She didn’t listen to me, and as I reread the letter and reconsidered what she was telling me, I realized she didn’t listen to herself either. She had conducted a two-hour interview and an extensive physical exam and dismissed the results because they did not confirm the image of a $3,000 snapshot taken one year ago. Her three-dimensional, full-color, surround-sound, live experience was less important than the silent black-an
d-white picture on a computer screen. Her time and what she saw, heard and felt meant less than a test ordered by another neurologist who she thought “hadn’t done his work emotionally.”
It was as if she were focusing very closely on just one star and excluding all the others in the galaxy.
I went to my filing cabinet, dropped her letter in my medical folder and kicked the drawer shut. Never believed in the tooth fairy anyway.
I wondered if I believed in doctors at all. I thought about my earliest memories and all those years as a kid when my mom said, “Fix her,” as she handed me to one doctor or another, as if the doctors were powerful and perfect and I was neither. I thought about all the times I struggled to trust my experience—with the shrink and the stomachaches, with the orthodontists and ultimately with Dr. Silver—all the times I wondered whether they might be right and I didn’t really feel what I thought I felt.
Was I doing it still? I’d just spent a year touring the American medical landscape—and hating nearly every minute of it—and I had two more doctors’ appointments in my calendar, both booked before I went to Africa. I had a follow-up with Dr. Desai and an appointment with an osteopath a friend recommended because osteopaths are systems thinkers. They look at a bigger picture and see how pieces interrelate. Still, I contemplated canceling her and Desai. Then, I contemplated keeping both, considering what I hoped to get out of either. And while I didn’t know, I was curious.
In the end, I kept the osteopath almost by default: I never made the call to cancel.
On a sunny morning in mid-February, I followed the directions to a quiet street in Boulder. I walked the stairs to her second-story office and took a seat on a wicker chair in the small waiting area. She had old magazines in a basket and books on gardening. Soon, I heard movement behind the closed door. When the door opened, a shortish barefoot woman said good-bye to a taller blond.