Bittersweet Africa

Rust scampers up the sides of rickety iron bedsteads, thin blankets ingrained with dirt and sweat lie limply over the meagre skin and bones that rasps occasionally in the stifling heat. One tiny fan sounds its presence overhead, fly’s dart around hands that are too weak to brush them away. The smell of blood, the stench of piss engulfs the broken down hospital as another leper takes his last pitiful breath. Tears continuously quiver behind the bloodshot eyes of the British nurses, their stomachs churning as they work with primitive surgical tools. For this is Africa, where limits of human endurance are smashed and dispersed like butterflies in a storm.

Four months in Tanzania discovering the contrasting sights, sounds and smells of heartbreaking human distress and unadulterated natural beauty. They left home prepared, complete with the pact that only one of them would be a blood donor for each other if the need arose. Four nurses, four friends, their hearts set on adventure into the unknown.

It’s not what they expected, the hospital. Working with makeshift, old-fashioned instruments born of Medieval torture. They live and breathe the cries of pain, get accustomed to the dirt, sweltering heat and death quivering in every pore of each patient. They live on tasteless rice, their patience tested through the ritual of purifying the water just to simply cook. They lie awake in their hut at night, their tired eyes wide, blinking in the moonlight that spills across the floor, their beds swathed in mosquito nets, their bodies continuously damp with sweat. They look forward to the end of their time at the hospital when they are free to travel, soak up the real Africa, discover the sights and sounds of exotic landscapes, escape from a place where death is as ironically natural as breathing.

But there are moments that make the discomfort worthwhile, moments that instigate girlie giggles and screeches as a venomous snake is captured in the parched hospital garden with a kitchen sieve as their makeshift weapon. There are watery smiles on pale lips when a successful operation relieves agony. Sometimes gentle laughter can be heard at night from their hut as the girls’ chat as only girls can, their circumstances faded from memory for a brief respite.

They finally leave the hospital with a flood of relief in their hearts and a pang of guilt in their stomachs. They leave in the knowledge of having done some good whilst their eyes were opened and tainted by a once in a lifetime experience. Now it’s time for adventure…

There are drugs in the hire car. Immense fear wells in the pit of their stomachs. They’ll see the humorous side to it later but for the moment there’s just panic. Drugs in the glove compartment, the lingering heaviness of cannabis ingrained on the seats, in the air. Dump the car; find another way to travel. They’ll laugh about it later.

The hotel they stay in that night in Dar es Salaam seems beyond luxury. Soft beds, clean sheets, proper showers to wash away the stains of six weeks living in primitive conditions. Sleep comes easily and deeply. No unusual or disturbing noises to ensure eyelids flutter open, hearts thudding, breath paused to listen…

Their pale skin has adjusted to the climate taking on varying guises from pasty white, to blotchy pink, then touchy red, through to creamy bronze. Laughter tickles the air as the girls lounge on silky sand and bask beneath the sultry cloud free sky of Zanzibar, their senses awash with sweet salt air. They ate caviar last night washed down with spine tingling good Champagne aboard a multi-millionaires luxurious yacht. Like stepping into a Hollywood movie it was so unreal. Then later they soaked up the vastness of a Diamond mine under midnight stars, their ex-pat new found friends driving them around in the dark, the girls feeling warily too trusting their spirits high from copious amounts of alcohol as they fly along dirt tracks swamped by darkness, driven by a lonely millionaire with too much time on his hands, hideous amounts of money and a head swimming with booze. They’re sensible girls usually, who’d never dream of doing anything crazy like this back home. But this isn’t home, no rules apply as their spirits grasp for adventure, spiced by pure adrenaline.

Topaz blue crashing waves fall like thunder onto the astounding softness of untouched sand. The girls lazily sink into the pearly whiteness of the beach and lap up the unrelenting sweet heat as thoughts distil into pure pleasure. Long gone are the horrors of the leper hospital, like a distant dream that fades the second your eyes adjust to the welcoming light of day. The end of their adventure is on the horizon, like the evening sun dipping its tendrils of crimson flames into the shimmering darkness of the sleeping Indian Ocean.