A Journey in Fever

7:30, Nungwi: I push aside the mosquito nets and haul my aching body to the shower. I’m sticky with sweat and exhausted. I have tossed and turned all night long, trying to fight whatever virus or bacteria has invaded my body, but it’s useless. Feverish and damp, I head to breakfast. There is no choice, today is a travel day, a long one, and I must go with the group all the way back to the Dar es Salaam campsite and then, to the airport. At breakfast I concede my French toast to the flies, but not before one commits suicide in my tea. My roommate for the duration of the trip, Gay, a 70 something Australian from Darwin says, “That’s how you can tell how long someone’s been in the bush. The new people pour the tea out. Those who’ve been out a while flick the flies out. Those who’ve been out a long time just drink the tea and leave the flies in.” I remove the fly with my spoon and stare at my cup, hesitating.

10:00, Stone Town: The bus driver is all in white with a white round cap. I hear him talking with Geno, the trip leader, about how he’d got married the night before and today, he’s working. Geno is singing On the Road Again. “Guys, who wrote that song? Is it John Denver?” In my head, I hear myself say, “No, it’s Willie Nelson, of course,” but my body is asleep, my mouth refuses to form the words. I try to remember if I’ve been bitten by the tsetse fly, the one that carries sleeping sickness. “Don’t be dramatic,” I tell myself, “you just have the flu. Plus, you’ve been reeking of bug repellent since the day you landed.”

The driver, whose name refuses to stick in my mind, is kind and solicitous towards me. He doesn’t raise an eyelid when I knock over my soda and spill part of it on the floor. “No worries, hakuna matata,” he says, and he means it. I take a very short walk through the Old Fort thinking I should get some food for the day’s travel, but even the slightest conversation feels like shouting into the wind, plus, I have no appetite. In the courtyard street hawkers call to me, quietly, “Karibu, you are very welcome, come look,” but I float past them to find the damp, dark bathrooms. I return to the bus and pass out across the four front seats. When the rest of the group returns, they look at me with concern, I have turned an unfortunate color as my fever has taken hold.

12:30, Ferry to Dar es Salaam: The crowds are blissfully light at the ferry dock. I sit on a wooden bench blinking in the sharp noon light. When my group boards, I find an empty seat towards the middle of the boat and collapse into another sticky haze of not quite sleep. It is a two hour trip back to the port. About half an hour in, the sea becomes quite rough. I open my eyes and there are uniformed men in white passing through the cabin handing out seasickness bags. I reach up and take one, but I am too sick for seasickness, even. Behind me, I hear the unpleasant sound of one of the passengers throwing up. The boat rolls and slaps over the swells. I peer across the rows of seats towards the changeable horizon, and then, I close my eyes and give in to the sound of the engines.

3:00: Dar es Salaam: I must walk for about 15 minutes along the water front to get on another ferry. I shift my pack to my shoulders and set my sites on Ibs, a Brit, and Jared, an Australian, the two tallest of our group. If I can see them, I will find my way. It is brutally hot on the road and the group is walking against traffic. There is a dusty shoulder, shadowed by some trees; sometimes, there are little collections of things for sale. The noise vibrates inside my head, honking, hawkers shouting, taxi drivers looking to pick up a fare, women on cell phones talking much too loudly. Even the women who are fully covered have some kind of color on them, a turquoise headband is bright against a black burqah, the long skirt in front of me is decorated with a swirl of rhinestones in silver and ruby red. My eyes hurt, there is no where for them to rest, not on a flattened cardboard box held down with just a few pairs of beige shoes, one pair arranged as though they are to walk off on their own, not on the water which is punctuated with ships, not on the ferry itself, where two teenaged boys carry crates of tomatoes on their heads. At the front of the deck, I squat on my day pack and stare, eye to eye, with a little boy who stares right back and does not blink or smile.

5:00, Kigamboni/Dar es Salaam: I sit in the gas station parking lot leaning against a cattle grid fence. The group is waiting for our driver, Matt, to come pick us up, he has raced on ahead. The air smells of fuel and exhaust. I’m in a full blaze of fever, everything is too loud, too sharp, too hard. There is a boy, maybe he is 16 or 17, who can not speak, but is gleeful with the tour group and friendly with Geno, the group leader. He is animated and draws pictures in the dust of the parking lot to explain things, when he becomes excited, he makes a strange noise. I think he’s explaining how he’s lost his voice, he took a fall down some stairs, can that be right? Someone buys him an ice cream, I hear the conversation, but I’m not sure what’s happening at all, while it’s all too loud, it’s also like watching TV with the sound off. The rig arrives, I board, and lean against the window.

In camp, Aude, a traveler from Paris who lives in London, offers me one of the beds in her bungalow. There is pulsing techno music coming from the next lot over but it does not prevent me from falling into a deep sleep for about an hour. I shower again and clumsily repack my belongings for the flight home. I have to do this several times; I can’t make things fit. This is not because I have acquired so many things, no, I just don’t have the strength to do it right.

The sun sets while I wait for my taxi with the remaining travelers, Simon and Kelly, Helen and Chris, Jared, all Aussies, Tanya from Sweden (via Norway), and the trip crew, Geno, Matt, and Charles, the Kenyan chef. My clothes, which I have chosen expressly for this trip because they weigh so little, are heavy on my skin, my shirt is stuck to my back, my hair is damp with sweat. My taxi is late and I am nervous. I buy a Coke and try to drink it, but mostly, I hold the cold glass bottle to my cheeks and the back of my neck for relief.

7:45: Julius Nyerere International Airport: When I close the taxi door I feel a moment of regret for kissing my fellow travelers on the cheek to say goodbye. One dose of antibiotics is not enough to stop my being contagious, surely. My taxi rolls to a halt in the village at the ferry dock. The streets are so dark for so much activity. There are still plenty of hawkers selling peanuts, sunglasses, fruit, CDs. The car inches forward past shops that are open to the curb. One sells LED lamps, an array of pinpointed light punches through the blackness, the smell of smoke and grilled meat floats in the air. There is music from a bar or club nearby, the speakers buzz from the volume. Cars and motorbikes and tuk-tuks squeeze around each other in seemingly random order, jockeying to find a place at the front of the boarding line. The driver shouts to people I can not see, sometimes a man appears at window of the car and there’s a conversation. The driver’s phone continually sings, and he texts his responses. I lean over on to my backpack and close my eyes.

After the short ferry trip, the roads open up. The breeze from the window feels good. I see a luxury shopping mall, a big dumpster in full flame, empty buses, fuel stations. I lean back in my seat and breathe in the night, the space and speed of the motorway feel like a relief, even this motorway, this dimly lit airport highway. I roll my luggage from the dark parking lot to the not as dark terminal. I ask a security guard for departures and he stares at me, blankly, and then waves in no specific direction. A man sits at a desk at the end of an empty maze of rope lines, he confirms I am in the right place and I clear my first security check. At the check in desk I learn that my seat from Amsterdam to Seattle has been cancelled. “Your luggage will go to Seattle. You will fix your ticket in Amsterdam.” The agent peers at me over her glasses, they are perched on her nose at a comic angle. I believe her statement of instruction and faith, I take it at face value. At the gate, a little boy in a turtle neck sweater runs around tickling random strangers. When I stand up, he runs towards me and wiggles his little hand right below my solar plexus while looking me in the eye with a deadly serious gaze. Overhead the lights buzz and hum and flicker and snap.

1200: Air World. In the darkened cabin of the plane, I fall, finally, into a deep, dreamless, unbroken sleep. When I wake up, many hours later, my fever is gone. In Schiphol Airport, I head to the transfer agent and she prints me a boarding pass as though there were never a problem. With my homeward flight sorted, I have just enough time for a shower. In the immaculate, white tiled shower cabinet, I peel off my dirty travel worn clothes and turn the water up, hotter and hotter, until I am enveloped in a cloud of steam.

My travels to East Africa were sponsored by Intrepid Travel as part of their “classic journeys” campaign.” Most – but not all – of my expenses were paid for by Intrepid Travel.