Northern Road Trip 6
Trip Start
Apr 26, 2005
1
17
42
Trip End
Nov 17, 2005
Lusaka,
Zambia
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
The guesthouse in that town was easily the worst we've stayed in but I hardly noticed, shivering and looking around for extra blankets, which the night watchman refused to give me on the grounds that he'd get in trouble from his superiors. Bwalya eyed me with worry as my hands shook, retrieving money to pay for the room.
That night I put on two pairs of boxers, pants, two t-shirts, a sweater and two pairs of socks before I climbed into bed and finally stopped shivering
Kapiri Graffiti
. I didn't even bother to brush my teeth, though I made it to the toilet, plugged as it was with someone else's business. The next morning I felt better, but took an anti-malaria pill my father had procured for me. Whether by medicine or placebo effect I felt much better for next few days, and it was only after Kasama that things went south again, this time literally. While it might not be a savoury thought for the reader I assure you it was worse for the writer, as I spent much of the day looking for a decent toilet. Thankfully, and rather randomly on my part, I'd packed some Imodium and was saved from further difficulties.
It was around this time that Bwalya began complaining of similar health problems, and I gave him one of my dad's pills. Despite sleeping each night under mosquito nets we were still being bitten, and the stress of the road seemed to be taking a greater toll than it had last trip.
After the torturous ride to Chilubi I was sure I was screwed, and returning to Lusaka a few days later my father took me to his clinic for a blood test. The doctor, a motherly Indian woman with shining brown eyes, checked my throat and lungs and ordered some tests and an X-ray of my chest
Mpulungu Portrait
. While the tests came back negative for malaria the doctor looked over the X-ray and told me I had bronchitis. She gave me a trio of prescription pills and told me to lay off the cigarettes. I should have been relieved and I guess I was, but didn't at all feel like I had bronchitis. At almost the exact same time back in Canada, my mother, with far more common and obvious symptoms, went to see a doctor about what she thought was bronchitis.
The public health system told her she was fine and to go home and rest. At the private clinic in Lusaka I was barely coughing or wheezing but was given a chest X-ray, blood tests and three different pills, to the tune of almost US$100. I took the pills for a day or two and then stopped.
After 10 days on the road, numerous mosquito bites and the requisite symptoms I was surprised to find myself free of malaria. I'd become cavalier about the infection, taking it in stride as if catching malaria was inevitable, and was disgusted with the diagnosis of mere bronchitis. If I ever do catch malaria I'm sure I'll rethink my attitude.
On the road back to Lusaka we passed through Kabwe, our last job of the trip, well after dusk. While it was impossible to work in the dark, Bwalya parked the truck by the side of the road and we walked over to the site to check on the billboard which we knew had fallen down. The mushy, almost waxen surface of the site made me turn back to get a flashlight, and with the light we could see that the billboard, lying prone on the ground, was covered in road tar.
Installed on a grassy roundabout on the outskirts of town, the billboard and surrounding area was covered with the sticky black goop that some road crew had used to resurface the road some days before. Our indignation reached a fevered pitch as we drove out of town, made worse by the knowledge that not only was there nothing we could do to punish or even catch the culprits but that we'd have to clean up after them. Even on the home stretch our work, it seemed, was still far from over.
