July 12 1986
While working as a freelance pilot based in Pretoria, South Africa, my wife and I purchased our first house. On a good month we could just make the repayments, on a bad month we had to dig into our savings. I was flying for whomever needed a pilot, and flew what ever aircraft needed flying. My favorite flights were to the Okavango Delta in Botswana.The summer January rains that fall in the Eastern highlands of Angola form the Cubango river. The river has many names as it winds its way over a thousand miles. Cubango, Okavango, Boro, Thamalakane, Botlete. It finally fans out into the Kalahari desert in Northern Botswana about April, forming the Okavango Delta. The Delta is a Garden of Eden. If you put me down there naked, I could survive with least hassle of anywhere else I know of on Earth. But, you must keep in mind, that you are also just one link in the food chain.
One charter flight assigned to me, was flying some rich Americans from Johannesburg, South Africa, to an airstrip on the north edge of the Delta. We left from Lanseria, and 3 hours later landed in Maun for Custom and Immigration. Maun is a town on the edge of the Delta, and has a small International Airport.
After refueling we flew another 45 minutes to a short dirt strip near the Okavango river itself. There, was a small, luxury, tented camp. The reason we were there was so the clients could get onto a big house boat and cruise the Delta for a week.
The clients wanted the pilot to stay near the airplane, in case emergency transport was needed. Staying with me in the camp was a very thin, old gardener and a very fat maid. These two people had been born and raise only 100 kilometers from where the camp was located. They spoke little English, and my Setswana was only at the daily use level.
The clients all boarded the house boat and waved good bye, and I settled down to a quiet week in a luxury camp with a stack of books brought from Johannesburg. I also had the company of the camp dog that was very sick. They think he had been bit or stung by something.
The next morning, I didn't feel so good. It felt like a bad cold or flu coming. The following morning, I couldn't get out of bed. The world was a heated blur, but hopefully the cold/flu would be gone before the clients returned. At least I could rest undisturbed.
The next thing I remember was the huge maid sitting next to me sponging me down with cool water, while I shivered and shook. I passed out quickly, and only woke up occasionally.
Before I continue, let me talk a bit, about the most dangerous animal in Africa.
The Anopheles mosquito. It flies silent, and the female only lands on you with four legs, the back two are curved up to the rear. It is the saliva of the female Anopheles mosquito that carries malaria to man.
Malaria comes from the Latin “Mal Aria” (Bad Air). It was believed that air blowing off of water caused the disease. It was only around 1900 that the mosquito was found to be the culprit.
Malaria is not uncommon among contract pilots of Africa. The side effects of most of the malaria prophylactics are not compatible with the operation of heavy machinery. Different strains of Malaria need different preventive medicines. Because contract pilots could be in many different Malarial zones in the same month, most pilots used mosquito nets and insect repellent as first line of defense against malaria. Obviously I hadn't done that very well.
In one lucid moment, I remember the maid saying “You are too much sick. Same like the dog.”.
The next time I woke up, I was on my back in a shallow, leaking dug out canoe in the middle of a river. The gardener standing over me was under orders from the maid to pole me 15 kilometers up river to a clinic at Seronga to treat my malaria.
The next wake up reveled a small, crying black child in the crook of my left arm. I was lying on a garbage bag on the floor of a hot windowless room with about 10 other people. Some barefoot local lady came over and took the child from me, and stuck a tit in it's mouth. I did not feel very well at all. A nurse came past and saw I was awake. She handed me some pills. The water tasted muddy, and gritty.
The next wake up was with a different, small, black child sleeping next to me. I was still on a piece of plastic, and was still with many other people on the floor of a still hot, windowless room. But now I felt much better, just very tired. A nurse took the child and asked me if I would please give my sleeping spot to someone else who really needed it. She picked up my garbage bag and replaced it with a new one. The clinic in Seronga had no beds, no running water, and no electricity. There were 2 nurses that worked shifts. The nurse said I had a bad case of malaria, and that she had given me Fansidar, and Chloroquine both. She said they had given me a large dose, and there could be bad side effects, so I should stay in the clinic another day. I slept that night outside leaning against the wall of the clinic.
Next morning, I was feeling better, but very sore and tired. Some lady came by and gave me a small child to hold while she got examined by the nurse. I looked around, and saw that everyone, including me, had a small child or baby with them. The nurse explained it was the clinic’s weekly baby check up day.
A mother and her baby came forward to get checked over. The nurse poked and measured the baby, then asked the mother to put the baby on the scale so she could weight it. The baby quickly crawled off. The mother put it on again and it squirmed off. All the women in the line, waiting, were giving advice and clicking their tongues.
The nurse said that she had a good idea. They would weight the mother while holding the baby, then put the baby on the floor and just weigh the mother. Then with the calculator box, she could do some math and figure out the weight of the baby. This produced lots of tongue clicking from the admiring ladies. So the mother holding the baby stands on the scale, the nurse writes down the weight, then they put the baby down, then the nurse says “Stop. Start over.” The mother must first take of her sandals while holding the baby, because you can't get an accurate weight with shoes on. I started explaining to the nurse, how that was not necessary because she was going to subtract the weight anyway, ...and ....all the women were looking at me, and talking at once. I caught a few parts of the chatter. Like “Is this white man trying to tell us how to weigh babies?” “How many babies has he ever weighed?” “White people always think they know everything”. So I shut up, and just watched.
I ponder at how Africa's move into the 21st Century has been by leaps and bounds, missing the gradual growth in knowledge. The basics of a simple thing like weighing a baby was done as memorized in school, with none of the concepts fully understood.
And the calculator box is how you do math. There is no other way.
The next morning the nurse released me from the clinic. I had no money with me, but she said that the bill was the equivalent of one US dollar, payable the next time I came through Seronga.
Feeling better now, I polled the dugout canoe all the way back to the camp with the old man sleeping in the bottom. Of course it was downstream now, and a lot easier. We arrived back at the camp, and the maid cooked me a big plate of spaghetti. She said it was good after malaria.
The next day the clients arrived, and I was feeling much better. We flew to Maun for Customs and Immigration, then on to Johannesburg.
That night back in my new home, while my wife was hearing all about Seronga, I started to feel a bit woozy, and went to bed. A few hours later I awoke with a screaming headache, and a very stiff neck. My wife took me straight to the hospital where we waited a few hours until a stack of papers were filled out and signed, and the financial arrangements were deemed satisfactory. Then another 3 hours in a crowded, noisy waiting room till the doctor could see me. He checked me out, and said to go home, and if there are any worse symptoms to come back tomorrow. On the drive home things got much worse. My wife stopped and couldn't decide if we should go back to the hospital. Then my eyes became uncontrollable. One would wander off on its own while the other pointed somewhere else. This made me dizzy, and nauseous, and very scared. We zoomed back to the hospital. I was unconscious by the time we arrived. My wife carried me in, and waited for another 2 hours till the doctor could squeeze me in. They gave me a lumbar puncture, and a bit later the doctor came out and made everyone in the waiting room put on a mask. I had infectious viral meningitis.
After spending 5 nights in isolation, I was allowed to go home. The Civil Aviation Administration had pulled my aviation medical, so now we had no income. We moved into a friends spare bedroom and rented out our house to help make the repayments. The Doctors only re-approved my aviation medical a month later.
We assume the meningitis was contacted in the Seronga clinic, probably while I was sick with malaria. We also assume I gave it to the multitudes of people waiting in the hospital. I am grateful that the diseases this time were identifiable and treatable. A few years later I would get very ill with an Undocumented Tropical Disease. The Doctors could only treat the symptoms. They never did identify what was wrong with me then.
I am a bit uncertain whether I would rather be sick in a first world hospital, where paperwork and financial arrangements seem to take priorities, or a bush clinic where they just want you well and out of the way so they can treat someone else.
I did manage to send 100 US$ up to the camp. Half went to the gardener and the maid. The other half went to the Seronga clinic.
Fortunately the camp dog also got better, and didn’t become...“Too much sick. Same like the pilot.”
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