Morosely, I flicked through the traveller’s health
appendices of one of my guidebooks, but found nothing helpful. I went out for
another walk but returned after a few hundred metres. I couldn’t be bothered
with it. I picked up the other guide: “…symptoms
include loss of energy and appetite, general malaise, pale-coloured stools, sulphur
smelling belching…” I heaved a sigh of relief, and headed for the nearest
pharmacy.
My (minimal) understanding of the human immune system is
that it is optimised, from birth and before, either to be good at dealing with germs
and bacteria or to be good at dealing with parasitic infections, but not both.
If you are raised in a clean, modern western city, and made to wash your hands
before every meal as child, then you probably don’t major on the parasitic
infections side of things. Based on my experiences as a traveller, I seem to be
an extreme case.
The recommended treatment was the antibiotic metrodinazole,
branded as Flagyl. Thankfully it was stocked in the nearest pharmacy, and this
being Africa, no prescription was required in order to purchase it. My
guidebook suggested a dosage, and lacking any other information, I followed its
advice. With hindsight it is possible that its recommendation to “take three on
the first day” may not have meant three at the same time. Be that as it may, no
parasite could have survived the resulting conflagration in my guts.
My symptoms matched those of the parasitic infection
giardia, most easily contracted from eating undercooked infected food. It was
not difficult to understand how this might have happened. I had left Marc with
his hangover quite early in the morning, and walked down to the Ouagadougou bush-taxi
park. Evidently I was already too late. I should have come at dawn, I was told.
Nevertheless, if I was prepared to wait, eventually a minibus would fill up
with passengers and head south towards the Togolese border. No taxi ever leaves
with an inch of spare passenger space, so these situations are simply a
question of patience. Quite how much patience is very hard to determine, as all
the passengers know that the vehicle won’t leave without them, and so keep
wandering away. As the day wore on towards lunchtime, the most edible-looking
food on offer was “brochette”, basically a barbecued goat-meat sandwich. From
its taste, it could quite easily have been undercooked, infected, or any other dubious
verb-ed. I only swallowed one mouthful, but that was probably enough.
Eventually we set off, apparently in completely the wrong
direction. A few of the passengers ventured a small protest, but the driver was
unmoved. We turned down some sandy back streets, carefully steering around the
goats, and eventually pulled up outside a small house. The driver disappeared
inside, and emerged triumphantly bearing his lunchbox, which he had forgotten
to pack earlier. Evidently he was wise enough not to try the brochettes and stuck
to his wife’s home-cooking.
We headed extremely slowly towards the border. There were
villages every few kilometres, and at each one it seemed a passenger needed to
get off, which meant also finding his or her luggage on the roof, and lowering
it down. As it was unthinkable to travel any distance with a spare space, a new
passenger had to be swiftly picked up, with associated reverse process for
luggage. We finally arrived around dusk. The border was still open, but by the
time passport formalities were completed, including a rather hopeful search of
my rucksack, all transport on the Togolese side had ended for the day. I could
purchase a ticket for the dawn bus, and did so, but there seemed to be no prospect
of accommodation. The only food option was more brochettes, which looked as
though they had been there all day and certainly smelt like it. However there
was a vacant concrete bench so I slept on it with my rucksack for a pillow.
Fortunately there was no possibility of getting cold.
The journey down to the capital Lomé was tiresome but
uneventful. One of my guidebooks suggested a hotel which managed both to be
cheap and reasonably pleasant and to actually exist when I got there. The city
itself was much like other African capitals with two exceptions: the
presidential palace was by the attractive beach but the improbably grand “Hotel
du 2nd Fevrier” was not. Apparently it had been named in honour of
the nationalisation of the phosphates industry (Togo had had a relative
shortage of violent coups to leave it with other significant dates), and
towered high over the rest of the city, a glass and concrete white elephant.
Nobody seemed to be staying in it.
Getting in the catch: beach at Lomé
Possibly due to feeling ill, I found it a difficult town to
like. More pressingly the Nigerian consulate was inexplicably closed. Lacking a
visa, a 2000km detour via an unstable Chad beckoned. Feeling somewhat better
after my first violent encounter with the Flagyl, I decided to press on to
Benin to complete my recovery and visa collection.
I had only once previously been a motorcycle pillion
passenger, finding the experience simultaneously thrilling and alarming, and
disliking the heavy helmet. In Cotonou motorbike taxi was the preferred means
of public transport. Without a helmet, but with my rucksack strapped loosely to
my back continually throwing me off balance, it was simply alarming.The rainy season was approaching, it was stiflingly hot and humid, and I still had a craving for ice-cream. Presumably these cravings are caused by a lack of elements normally present in the diet. On a previous journey across South America, I had started to dream about a bowl of Weetabix, and later on this trip I became desperate for a pint of Guinness. I don’t normally care much for either ice-cream or Weetabix. The Cotonou French patisserie boasted such frigid air-con that it presumably made its surprisingly cheap ice-cream without the need for expensive additional refrigeration.
Next day, donning my “official shirt and tie” (very rumpled
after residing at the bottom of my rucksack), I set out extremely early for the
Nigerian consulate, aiming to be first in the queue and also, since the
official shirt was rather thick, to avoid the midday heat. Arriving well before
it opened, I spotted a coffee stand along the street, where the witchlike old-woman
who ran it was just brewing up for the day. Water was just coming to the boil
in a large cauldron, into which she carefully spooned a prescribed quantity of
Nescafe. Two small tins of condensed milk followed, accompanied by careful
stirring. She was now ready to dispense, scooping out a cupful and then pouring
it flamboyantly from high mug to low mug to cool it down to drinking
temperature.
The Nigerian consul complemented me on the official shirt and
tie - “many people who come here dress like tramps” – and promised that since I
had made the effort to be smart, I could have my visa the same afternoon. I did
not yet feel quite recovered enough to face Nigeria, and sought out some
entertainment while I waited another day or two. Posters for a “battle of the reggae
bands” in the covered stadium looked promising. There were three different
ticket prices, so I opted for the middle, the correct decision as the more
expensive seats were entirely occupied by the local elite, the men looking very
hot in suits, the women in full African-style finery.
The music, mostly cover versions of Bob Marley played very
well on indifferent instruments through impressive speakers, was quite good. My
neighbour was less impressed, haranguing me during an interval in extremely
rapid French featuring the word ‘injustice’ repeatedly. As I understood it, the
battle was actually a competition, with a quite decent cash prize for the
winners. As my neighbour saw it, it was all a sham, the elite at the front had decided
the winners beforehand, and furthermore the ticket prices had been designed to
ensure that nobody else could afford to sit where they could influence the
judges.
I shot the sheriff but
I did not shoot his deputy plus corrupt judges: Nigeria beckoned.
No comments:
Post a Comment