Death tends to hit us like a ton of bricks, or at least it hits me that way. Since I’ve been here it’s been a constant part of my routine (which I suspect is because for the people in my village death plays such an important role in life) but until yesterday I’ve always been able to push it to the back of my mind. I mean almost everyday someone comes to tell me that someone in their family died or that so and so lost a child or that they would be gone for the weekend to travel back to their village for a funeral… and I’m not exaggerating pretty much everyday this comes up in conversations at the hospital or with friends in the market or neighbors in the quarter (any peace corps volunteer in Cameroon should be able to vouch for me on this account). But in spite of all this I’ve always felt a bit removed from it all. Even when people die at the health center and I’m there it’s sad and I feel for the nurses who were involved and the family, but I’ve never let myself dwell on it for too long. Maybe it’s a coping strategy, or maybe I just don’t want to think about it because that’s too sad, but whatever the reason for the past 18 months I haven’t let myself dive too deep into on the issue.
All of that changed yesterday. I should back track a bit… last week I was making the rounds in the market, and when I went to visit Little Abdoulie at his shop I found it all closed up. I thought this was a bit odd considering he keeps pretty strict hours everyday of the week so I hopped on the back of a moto and went to visit him at his house. When I got there I learned that he was in bed sick with malaria. I ended up saying a quick hello, tried to encourage him to go to the hospital for treatment, and wished him a bon garrison. On my way back home I decided to stop and say hello to Abdoulie’s neighbors Alahji Yaya and his first wife Dija, both of whom are good friends of my and regular members a community group I meet with weekly. The meetings form the last weekend had been cancelled and so it had been a while since I had been able to see either of them. When I got to the house no one was home except for a few kids who told me everyone was at the hospital. For reasons mostly revolving around the fact that the little kids don’t speak French and I don’t really speak Fulfulde I wasn’t able to figure out exactly what was going on, but I wasn’t really worried yet because like I said before, people are always visiting one another in the hospital. I just figured if it was someone they knew, it was probably someone I knew, and I didn’t have anything else on my plate so why not just pop down there to see what was going on.
Upon my arrival I immediately ran into to B and after a few moments of greetings she told me what room “my friend” was in. It turned out it was a friend (a friend named Dzoulika whose 3 year old son was admitted with Tyfoid) but it wasn’t the friend I was looking for. So I kept walking down the general patients ward and then made my way to the maternity ward (forgot to mention Dija was pregnant but still had about a month and a half or so to go). Sure enough I found her there in the second room. She had been admitted that morning with malaria and then diagnosed with a Burili ulcer (flesh eating skin disease that’s pretty prevalent in my part of Cameroon), and was hooked up to an IV drip.
Now, despite the fact that I’m a community health worker partnered with a health center, I still don’t particularly enjoy visiting sick people who are in the hospital. That’s not to say I don’t visit them, I do, but I just always feel a bit awkward, and out of place, and like people are looking at me to do something when there’s honestly not much I can do (I have no doubt that by the end of my service I will have spent an entire two years trying to convince people that I’m not a doctor or a nurse). This was no exception, and after about 10 minutes of sitting on a chair watching this poor women with her huge belly sitting on the bed looking absolutely miserable, and again feeling like everyone in the room was waiting for me to do something, I was ready to head out. So I told her and her husband to please call me if there was anything I could do to help and quickly left.
This was on Thursday afternoon, and by Friday morning I had received a phone call telling me Dija had gone into early labor during the night and was stable now but her baby had not made it. This was sad, but it wasn’t the first time a friend had lost a child and I knew that I was expected to go to the hospital and pay my respects to the family. So I got dressed and went down. When I got there what I saw just broke my heart. I found Dija lying on the bed looking like she had lost the will to live surrounded by half a dozen other women all looking somber. I stayed in the room for about a half an hour, reiterated my offer to help with anything and then headed home thinking about how it must feel to lose a child.
The next day Little Abdoulie told me that Dija had been sent to a bigger hospital about 4 hours up the road, and that things weren’t looking good. The day after that I got the phone call that she had started bleeding again, and they couldn’t stop it so she bled out. I got this phone call while I was eating lunch in my friend’s restaurant in town and I was shocked… i just couldn’t help but start crying. Now, anybody who knows me knows that crying is my go to emotion… infuriation, sadness, happiness… it all comes with me and a side of weeping blubbering mess. However, that is NOT how Cameroonians do things and I’ve found in my experience here that when I do have one of my cries it’s best to do it from the comfort of my home and not in public.
When I got the news about Dija I had no warning and nowhere to go and more importantly no sunglasses to hide the tears that were welling up, so in other words I was a little S.O.L. I can remember sitting at the table staring at my plate of fou-fou and njama-njama in shock. My friend Ibrahim came over to ask me what had happened and as soon as the words left my mouth I started to cry and when I looked up at him all he could say was, “I’m so sorry, but now you have to stop crying. Stop crying before you go outside. You can’t let anyone see you crying. Don’t cry.” Not exactly the soothing words I was hoping for but I don’t think he knew what else to say or do.
That evening I ended up going to visit Aislynn and after some American comfort food and a nice hot bucket bath I was feeling much better. The next day I went back home to Bankim and trekked out to visit Dija’s family. I was expecting to visit with the other co-wives and maybe a sister or neighbor, but when I got there I was shocked to see well over 50 women (which might not seem like a lot, but considering women don’t really ever leave their homes, it was quite a site to behold). There were some that I knew, some that had clearly traveled in from the bush, young girls, and old mamas, and everyone was there to mourn the loss of our friend. I sat down next to a friend and looked around taking in the gathering of women and began to cry again, but this time there was no one telling me to stop, no one looking at me as if I was acting strange, I just felt a simple hand reach out and touch me on the back. We were grieving together. Some days we’re worlds apart, but in that moment we were together… and even amongst all the sadness of the events that had pasted, it felt good.
Dija
?- March 2011
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