Recently one of my best friends in village, Dorcas, has become very sick. Dorcas is about 30 years old and has two small children. She is a neighbor of mine and lives in a mud hut with the parents of her husband (who died last fall). Many women in my village make money by selling things at the market, sewing, or doing hair. I’m not exactly sure what Dorcas does for money aside from the money I pay her every month to help me with my laundry and bring me water once a week. She has been a very good friend to me over my last year in village. When I have been sick she has brought me food from the market and is generally just really nice and thoughtful. She is very poor but has never asked me for anything except for a mosquito net for her 2 year old daughter who kept getting sick with malaria. She fed my cats when I was gone in America and refused to take money from me when I offered it to her afterwards. She is an honest and hardworking person and she sees me as a person as well, not just a rich white anomaly in her world. Also, she speaks some English, which has probably helped us get closer.
Anyways, recently Dorcas disappeared from her house across the street and when I finally found her at her mother’s house near the market it was a sad shock. She was lying on the ground and could barely get up to greet me. The last time I had seen her she had complained about a pain in her side. When I found her, she showed me these horrible open sores on her side that looked like the skin was being eaten away. It went all down her right side and onto her stomach. She was also very tired and occasionally dizzy. She complained that her heart would suddenly start beating really quickly and she couldn’t breathe. Apparently she went to several doctors in the area and they gave her a bunch of medicine that cost a lot of money but could not explain what was wrong with her. After she explained all this she told me how she believed that someone in the village had cursed her and sent bad spirits to her and that was what was making her so sick. Benin has very strong Vodun traditions and many of the slaves that were taken from here went to the Caribbean and created the voodoo traditions there. Essentially there are many good and bad natural spirits. The bad ones can be sent to others in the form of gris gris or a curse and can make that person sick, die, or have bad luck. It may seem sort of crazy but it makes more sense when you live here and you see the kind of lives that many people live.
I tried to work within this structure when I talked with Dorcas and I asked her maybe if the curse had come in the form of the actual disease or sickness she had and she said yes. When I asked her what disease was, she said it was a bad spirit, so we were back to square one. It was so frustrating to me to not be able to understand the sickness that she had and do nothing to help her. She couldn’t even lift her two year old daughter. As I sat with her next to her mother’s mud hut and watched the other women prepare a meal on the fire, it made more sense to me why so many people here resort to blaming evil spirits for their misfortune. Who/what else can they blame? Many of them wash with and drink water filled with parasites. They eat untreated fruit and vegetables. They go to the bathroom in a field next to their house. They sleep without mosquito nets. They are not vaccinated against any diseases. The cause of Dorcas’ ailment could have been any combination of these factors and perhaps exacerbated by others. She has little money to pay doctors and the ones around can’t even properly diagnose her problem. When you have no explanation, no options, and no education an evil spirit makes as much sense as anything I could have told her about the transmission of parasites. It was just so frustrating and heartbreaking to sit there with her and know that there were not many options. I called the male nurse who works in my concession and he came over to look at her and decided to give her infusions of some liquid that he said would reduce the infection. When I asked what the infection was he couldn’t really explain it. Even if I had the money to pay more/different doctors for her, they would probably all say the same thing. There I was sitting with my best friend who could not get access to decent medical care and I could at any moment call the Peace Corps doctors and tell them of any ailment I had and it would be taken care of. The sad difference is that she is a real citizen of a third world country and I am an American citizen.
Currently, Dorcas is still sick but slightly better. The last time I saw her she was living in a local church and spending her days praying with other women for God to take away her sickness/curse because there is nothing else she can do. Regardless of the state of health care in America, none of us will ever have to experience the kind of powerlessness my friends here do.
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