written Tuesday, 14 October 2008
This morning after breakfast the village imam came and told me that his 12-year-old daughter is sick with malaria. He had money to pay for the doctor, but no way to get her to the health post ten kilometers away. Of course I offered to take her on my bike, as he was clearly hoping, so about 9 am we set off, with my passenger sitting on the luggage rack behind my seat.
This is the first time I've carried almost a full-grown person on my bike for any real distance, and it is hard! Of course it didn't help that the "road" we were taking is just a dirt trail through the woods, or that it rained yesterday so the path is just a mud swamp in places. But eventually we made it to the health post, where I paid 100 CFA (about 25 cents) for a consultation, and after not too long a wait we saw the doctor who promptly confirmed she has malaria (although he didn't bother to do a blood test to check for sure).
So she got a shot in her leg and about four different kinds of pills and syrups to take (which cost 4500 CFA, about ten dollars – two dollars more than her dad gave me, but luckily I brought my own money too just in case). Then since it was midday and hot and she was clearly exhausted (besides making you feel awful, malaria causes anemia as the parasites break open your red blood cells) we went to her relatives' house in a village close by and rested for a while, and then I biked us home again.
I'm really glad that my villagers come to me when they're sick and need help getting to the doctor, but I wish we had a better way to get people out than by donkey cart, which takes forever, or on the back of a bike, which is just exhausting.
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