It turns out Jeanne’s malingering crud is, well, malingering. When she’s out of earshot the word “malaria” is bandied about. I’m struck by how pleasant sounding a word it is. It could be a Latin dance or a tasty Italian fizzy drink. Here, in a part of the world where it continues to devastate communities, it is about as common a topic of conversation as “Brangelina” is in the states.The trouble is malaria can apparently be a difficult thing to diagnose as the damnable disease shares symptoms with a host of other ailments, including the flu and the run-of-the-mill hangover. Even the blood test can return false or misleading results.
A long way from a physical exam, Jeanne elected to press on with the day’s schedule: visits to nearby Tafi Atome, home to a monkey sanctuary, and Tafi Abuife, a working kente village. She spends the drive sitting blankly staring out the window, only occasionally digging her hand into a bag of corn flakes.
(Picture: The nasty malaria mosquito)
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