Coming to America

Just as I was starting to feel better and admit this was my one necessary “adjustment” episode, I came down with a fever. It kept climbing, and I had layers of wet towels on my head all night. Finally, I decided to go see the medic at the UN. Of course, I would not think of going to the hospital, because, as the Guineenses say, “you only go to the hospital to die.” Great.

As soon as I arrived they hooked me up to an I.V. and I stayed there sleeping on and off for several days. Due to the fact that Bissau does not have much laboratory capacity, they were unable to identify what illness I was suffering from. They determined I had some sort of throat infection, put me on an antibiotic regimen, and threw in some quinine just in case I also had malaria. Malaria, known by its local name, “paludismo,” is a persistent problem throughout the country. I would estimate that, at any given point in time, a minimum of 2 employees at the UN are debilitated by malaria. My boss has had it once, and one of my Portuguese colleagues has had it 4 times over the past 6 months.

I had the fabulous luck of falling into the attentive care of the UN nurse and the doctor, who happened to be named América. Of course, with a high fever, this small coincidence amused me to no end. I’ve already learned how easily one can entertain oneself in a feverish delirium. Once, when I was in Medoza, in Argentina, I came down with similar symptoms: the throat infection, high fever, headache. I was holed up in a raggedy youth hostel with a burning forehead, and with my mind going a million miles an hour, I became convinced that I would write a splendid, long novel in Spanish in the illustrious style of Gabriel García Márquez. I could just see the words running through my head, the sentences arranging themselves into place at a mad pace. But it was not to be, as even though it made sense to me, it came out rather incoherent when expressed to others. So while I was regaining my strength on the little yellow cot, I started chatting with the nurse who dutifully checking all my vital signs every couple hours.

We started talking about the challenges that Guinea-Bissau faces and the apparent inability on the part of the government to address any of these issues. She confirmed many of my suspicions: that the issue of poverty is not due to a lack of food, but instead revolves around a problem of conservation and transportation. In the South, during the mango season, it is so plentiful that 80% of the fruit goes to waste. Cashew fruit dangles from nearly every tree, but still Guineans scrape by on a subsistence economy.

Many years ago, before the independence from Portugal, Guinea-Bissau was completely self-sufficient in rice, and exported great quantities of rice to Portugal. Those days are long over. Before the war in 1998, the economy was improving, and a cashew-nut processing plant was built, building local production capacity. However, the civil war devastated the nation’s infrastructure and little has changed over the past ten years since the war ended. Political instability is the major factor in preventing development, or better said, reconstruction. The old presidential palace still occupies a large terrain on a roundabout in front of the Foreign Ministry, pink and decrepit, riddled with hundreds of bullet holes. The roof long ago caved in.

The roads of Bissau, as I mentioned previously, could easily mangle any vehicle, save for the hardy white UN jeeps and the seemingly invincible “toca-toca” collective taxis which resemble the skeletons of former buses left to die in the 1960’s. These blue-and-yellow painted micro-buses are often covered with Madonna stickers on the back window, or have names painted in yellow on the bumper, but in all their glory they still pale in comparison even to the Brazilian white “kombi” minvans which still have seats overflowing with stuffing and doors that do not fall off their hinges.