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“Bitten”

April 25, 2022 by Ruth Misori

Have you ever travelled internationally before? If so, have you ever travelled to a country that has so many diseases that you weren’t even aware of until years later? Have you ever contracted an illness while abroad or even upon returning home? Thankfully, I haven’t experienced any illnesses while traveling abroad or coming home, yet I was still unfortunate to witness a close relative experience a life-threatening ailment during his trip abroad.

My father, Collins, is a native of the beautiful country of Cameroon, which is located in central Africa.  He grew up in the anglophone region in the city of Kumba, which is also nicknamed K-town. He was born and raised in the anglophone village with his parents and seven siblings for the first twenty-five years of his life. He later decided that he wanted to further his education by studying in the United States in 1985. Oftentimes he would visit Cameroon at least every 4-7 years since it was too expensive to visit annually. During those periods, he would visit relatives and life-long friends from primary school and would often travel to beachy areas such as Limbe, and mountain areas in the city of Buea.

Though he was a health professional- in fact, he is a nurse practitioner, he assumed that all his trips would turn out fine since he knew the basics of health and in addition to this, he took his travel medicine religiously. Sadly, he had the misfortune of encountering a near-death experience of malaria in January 2016. I vividly remember all of the events that occurred from the time my father was preparing his trip to Cameroon for Christmas, to the time that he returned home weak and frail, which took weeks of recovery. I was fourteen at the time, and initially I was happy for my father before he left for his trip since this was another opportunity for him to reunite with his loved ones, whom he hasn’t seen in years. I was especially excited for him as he was going for the purpose of preparing a nice memorial for his own late father of thirty years.

Memorials are a Cameroonian ritual, even decades after one has passed. We do it for the purpose of celebrating his or her lives by spending time with friends, singing, and dancing. We also wear colorful attires, and eat traditional meals like Fufu, Garri and Eru or Egusi soup, chicken, and Puff-puffs, which are my favorite. Goat is the most significant dish as it represents the sacredness of family bonds such as weddings, baby showers, and various special occasions. In addition to that, it shows respect to your patriarchal elders and demonstrates their importance as a person. It’s a bonus if you receive goat from a host because it signifies that he or she thinks highly of you. Anyway, my father was preparing this trip for months and was grateful to receive a donation of small clothes and toiletries from his coworker to give to the children who are less fortunate, so his suitcases were full.

Everything was arranged and all my dad had to do was show up so the memorial can start. Unlike funerals, memorials are actually a lot of fun because they are essentially parties in honor of our deceased loved ones. Time was moving faster and before I knew it, there was a week left so I wanted to spend as much time with my dad before he embarked his month-long vacation. One morning he took my sisters and me to school and he was telling us a story of how a small family visited their home country in either Nigeria or Ghana and all fell ill with malaria and died. “What a freak accident”, I silently thought to myself. What is malaria anyway? Did they all die one by one or was it within weeks of each other? All that mattered was that none of them survived and that they were wiped out by this mysterious illness. I’ve never heard of the term ‘malaria’ at that point, but I was frightened, nonetheless. I shrugged off any further thoughts of it and we drove the rest of the way to school in silence.

Two days before the trip my father takes my sisters and myself out to eat since we won’t see him for Christmas or New Year’s this year. Normally, I have fun spending time with my dad as I enjoy his company, but this particular time I felt a vague, unsettling emotion, like something bad was going to happen. I discarded that idea and assumed I ate bad pizza. The day before he leaves, I eagerly accompanied him to the airport to weigh his bags since it had a lot of children’s necessities in them. This time, I felt a little better than the night we went out for pizza but noticed that the slight discomfort was still there. The following day comes, and my mother and I drop my father off at the airport. I realized that my vague discomfort is completely gone, and I’m once again excited for father’s adventure. We then bid our farewells and I watch as he passes through the airport security before he does a final wave goodbye and leaves for his terminal.

I return to the car and listen to music on my phone as mother drives us home when I realized that I was supposed to ask him for his relatives contact numbers, in case something goes wrong. I pursed my lips in annoyance, which caught mother’s attention. She quickly glances at me and asks what’s wrong as I explain to her that we don’t have dad’s relatives’ contact information. “Don’t worry, Ruth, everything will turn out fine, just keep praying for your father and know that God is in control”, she reassured. I smiled. She was right; after all, mothers know best. What could possibly go wrong? I didn’t give anything else much thought and was looking forward to my Christmas plans with the rest of my family.

Two days later father finally called to let us know that he arrived in Cameroon safely. He made it a habit to call us twice a week since international phone lines are expensive. We also didn’t use WhatsApp at the time. I enjoyed the holidays as the days went by and received the last phone call from dad on Christmas. He informed us that the memorial went really well and was having a wonderful time. He promised to call us again on New Year’s. On New Year’s Day, I realized that he didn’t call all day. “That’s weird, he said he was going to call”, I said to mom. “Maybe the connection was bad”, she suggested. This however is true. Cameroon is a 3^rd world country, therefore power outages were common, so that’s something to prepare for in the future when visiting.

Ten days passed and we still heard nothing from dad. This was strange, even for him. My sisters and I grew anxious as he was supposed to return on the 5^th of January. “Mom, where is he? Why hasn’t he called any of us? I’m starting to get worried!” And I was. Did he catch bad food poisoning up to the point that he was too weak to talk? Was he kidnapped by Cameroonian soldiers? Was he martyred? I understand now that these were crazy thoughts to have, but I didn’t know what to think as this has never happened before. I decide to just pray very hard and search my parents’ bedroom at night to check to see if he returned, since he was supposed to return in the span of those ten days.

January 8^th comes, still no sign of dad, nor did I receive any phone call. I continue to check the room the next day at night. Nothing. Then the following day comes, no sign. I grow in a state of panic. “Mom, I’m waiting patiently but he still hasn’t come yet”, I cried. “How about we say a huge prayer for him.” And we did just that, with the whole family. Later that night I was restless. It took a lot for me to finally drift to sleep. One would think that I would wake up and feel a little more refreshed and feel some sort of relief, but I felt just the opposite.

I had a bad dream about dad in some odd area that I couldn’t identify but was visibly dangerous. I can’t recall what was happening, but he looked very uncomfortable and that’s when I jolted awake and scared. I decided to say a prayer about canceling bad dreams, since that was a spiritual practice that father taught me all the time whenever we’re confronted with nightmares. He believes that if we pray to God to cancel our dreams, then they won’t occur in reality. After I finished praying, I decided to go to my parents’ room again to check one more time.

To my delight, there he was and awake. “Dad!” I exclaimed “You’re finally back!” I ran to embrace him warmly and tightly. As we hugged, I noticed that he was sweating. “Why is he sweating in the middle of January”, I asked myself. My relief overpowered my curiosity, and I was just glad to have my father back. “Dad, why didn’t you call us? We were so scared! Did something happen to your flights? Was the Wi-Fi connection that bad?” “I have something to tell you, but I want to wait until your sisters wake up, ok”, he responded weakly. I took quick notice of that. Why is my dad’s voice so frail? And why are his eyes yellow? Was it the pollution in Cameroon? Does he have a cold?  Most of all, what’s so important that he has to wait and tell us? I just knew that he wasn’t going to tell us something good because I found the phrase, ‘I have something to tell you’ equivalent to the phrase that a woman tells her boyfriend that ‘We need to talk’, which is bad.