I stopped the car about 100 kilometers south of Nampula, city ??in northern Mozambique. My body was shaking as if it had been beaten with clubs and it was already difficult for me to focus my gaze a little.. "Victor, I need to stop”, I said on the radio to my traveling companion. I got out of the car and went to the back of the vehicle., in the middle of the track, where I started vomiting almost choking. “Amigo, “You are really screwed.”, Victor told me, “I think you caught malaria.”.
My body was shaking as if it had been beaten with clubs.
We were in the middle of nowhere, on a lost road in Mozambique, bacheada, full of stretches of sand, and some 200 kilometers from the town where we planned to sleep. can you continue?, I wonder". “Claro, there is no option, "We can't leave one of the cars here.", the challenged. At that moment we looked at a map and saw that about 100 kilometers there was a population, Alto Molocue, where maybe there was a hostel to sleep in. "Let's go?" "Let's go", I responded while unsuccessfully trying to button a jacket he had lent me to stop shivering.. My hands were shaking so much that it was Victor who had to zip me up..
We leave with my body destroyed, with a very high fever and with my head focused on fixing the road. Within a few kilometers, late at night, a flashlight light appears telling me to stop the car. They are three soldiers in the middle of the darkness and in the middle of nowhere. They ask me for papers and ask me where I come from. “From the Island of Mozambique”, I answer them while trying to get my driver's license out of my wallet.. Then, a soldier with a cap, sunglasses and an AK 47 hanging from his arms he tells me with a threatening tone, “What has the gentleman from Cabo Delgado brought us? (northern province)?”. The response came instinctively from the rage of being there screwed and putting up with those guys.: "Diarrhea, high fever and vomiting, So I would like to be able to leave.”, the challenged. I guess the answer surprised them and they gave me the card back without looking at it, leaving to let me go..
He tells me with a threatening tone, “What has the gentleman from Cabo Delgado brought us??
More than an hour later we arrived at Alto Molocue. Almost at the entrance Víctor passes a place that looked like a hostel. "For, to, "I'm not looking for much.", tell. Effectively, It was a decent roadside hostel. there was no room, but they arranged one for us where it seems that some friends of the manager were staying. I, while, I was shivering on a couch thinking about how the hell I could get to a destination like that., having to drive a car, which was almost 1500 km.
I entered the room and after a surprising hot shower I lay down on the bed.. I fell asleep after drinking four malones that by chance I had with me. It was a possible remedy to alleviate malaria. They didn't last long in my stomach., In ten minutes I was vomiting my guts out again.. That's how I spent the next hour, with a small cube on which my head balanced. I managed to sleep for a while and woke up in the middle of the night shivering convulsively.. Víctor put two blankets over me and buttoned another jacket with which I barely managed to alleviate the tremors.. I managed to sleep after taking paracetamol and reducing the fever. I woke up drenched in sweat.
Let's go to the hospital, I want to get tested for malaria here
That morning Víctor and I were clear: I had malaria. We decided to make a plan: The car stayed at the hostel and Víctor took me to the city of Quelimane where I would fly down to Maputo. I didn't like the idea of ??leaving the car there thousands of miles away., which generated all kinds of inconveniences. Then I learned that there was a small rural hospital in the town. "Victor, let's go to the hospital, I want to get tested for malaria here. Maybe it's not and then I find myself capable of whatever it is like to stumble down the car.", I said.
We arrived at the hospital. It was better than some I've seen on this earth. It should have been released recently. There were many very humble people lying in hallways and corridors.. A man told us the question. There was a queue, but we went in right away. In Africa a white man is almost never made to wait. It's something that happens often. You are in a store and the seller serves you quickly even if you are the last to arrive. I guess they know you can protest a wait, something an african would never do, and I guess they know you have money to buy more things, to pay them also at a higher price.
He asked us for a bribe to serve me quickly
I was screwed, worried, with fever again. I wanted them to confirm whether or not I had malaria.. A doctor of some 50 years serving us. “We want you to get tested for malaria.”, explains Victor. The guy looks at us, he smiles and says quickly. “Claro, clear. But it would be very good for him to have the attention the gentleman deserves if they had some kind of gratitude for the doctors.”. I was paralyzed, That fucking phrase hurt my soul.. He asked us for a bribe to serve me quickly. Ie, If I pay I walk past a bunch of "miserables" who are waiting there to be tested.. But, I will be the last of the last. They know we have money and if you don't pay then you will end up in the end for not accepting their rules..
Cover, we gave him 200 MZN (5 EUR). I felt terrible. I'm ethically against all such arrangements fucking destroy this land. What to do? How to play the cards in a world without rules? I am very far from my house and I have a plane to get to in four hours if I have malaria, Not doing so is leaving an illness in my body for another day that only time makes lethal.. I am not afraid of illness, nothing will happen to me, I can buy the pills, but I need to know if I have it in my blood. Car, the ticket, the expense, the discomfort…
He died alone, no goodbyes, thrown on the floor
I also remembered a Portuguese friend, a good man, family man who came to make a living in Mozambique, and the one I met recently arrived in Maputo full of hopes and doubts. The crisis, the harsh crisis, he kicked him out of his house, of its people. The last time I saw him he invited me to have a beer in a bar, I was happy, full of plans to bring his wife and children. He appeared dead weeks ago in his home in Tete due to malaria. He didn't treat her, They told him it was the flu and one day it was all over.. He died alone, no goodbyes, thrown on the floor.
I finally reached the door of the laboratory. There was a long line of women, some with children, that I passed by. The doctor who had treated us accompanied us. He called a young boy to whom he told that I had to take the test while surreptitiously passing him a bill. They did the analysis right away and told me to wait for the result outside.. I went out and sat next to a woman who was carrying a child of about two years old with a very high fever., It seems he had malaria. After her, other faces and other people who would spend more time there. The ticket, the fucking morally repugnant ticket, marked the destiny of that queue. A perfect metaphor for life in this place that I have suffered so many times..
He told him that I had to take the test while he surreptitiously handed him a bill.
I do not know the reason, but on that occasion everything affected me a lot. I guess my weakness made me more sensitive. “What the hell kind of world is this where even public hospitals treat those who pay first?”? This is shit, “We are doing something very wrong.”, I told Victor. As, He played with the sick child who clung to his mother's knees between sporadic cries.. I offered them some money, I guess to clear my conscience. That's when the doctor came out of the lab with my quick results.: “He doesn't have malaria.” (It seems that it was a very violent infection that was similar to one that I already suffered in Panama). I got up and behind me there was that long line of people who surely had the disease and who were waiting for someone to treat them.. I didn't have malaria.
PD. The photos correspond to the Manhica hospital, not from Alto Molocue, where the Spanish Pedro Alonso has his research center to find the long-awaited vaccine against malaria.
