Touch Me
Lone basketball standard at ITC Compound in Monrovia
Abee approaches me from behind. I sense him just as I release a shot from what I have marked with two black pebbles as the foul line. “Eeeooo, is that you?” Abee bellows in his immediately recognizable low voice, “someone told me you would come.”
This is the compound next to the President’s residence where Seongeun and I used to live. I came here to see what after the Ebola epidemic remains; to create some space following my first week back in Monrovia since 2011. The basketball standards, which I re-welded, are long gone now. In their place is a single narrow hoop on the north side of the court supported by a sturdy pole two feet beyond the baseline and a jet-black backboard less rectangle than square. The rim is too high and the circumference too narrow, both seemingly constructed so as to play tricks. On the other hand, this is the only outdoor basketball court in Monrovia right now. I am happy to get some exercise in a familiar safe setting after a long day of work.
It is great seeing Abee, the indefatigable ITC foreman. I move towards him, “Woe,” he says pulling back his arms like a bird landing on a narrow plot just after flight, “in Liberia we don’t touch anymore.”
I am surprised. “Come on Abee, its me!” I say half joking. The feeling is actually worse than putting up a high five only to have someone leave it hanging. I have known Abe for years. I treated his daughter for septic arthritis. I taught him how to use the computer then gave him one. We have eaten together bitter Tobogee.
“Sorry, doc” he says, “Ebola. You are even worse than a stranger. You are a doctor. Who knows where you have been.”
This is the difference between the Liberia in 2011 and the Liberia currently responding to the world’s worst Ebola epidemic: Fear of touch. Now to enter any public place, one must wash their hands in 0.05% chlorine. A security guard with latex gloves splotched by voluminous palm sweat measures your temperature with a non-contact infrared thermometer, squinting at the reading as if not convinced at whatever the result on the screen.
Fearless Jude. Senior Health Coordinator at IRC-ETU in Monrovia.
Every single hospital except ELWA near Kendaja beach is closed. All the health workers have gotten sick, left the country, or sought work with patients less likely to kill them. JDJ, Redemption, and JFK, Monrovia’s largest hospitals with a total of 600 beds are shut down. ELWA might as well be shut down because the public confuses ELWA with ELWA I and II down the road, two unrelated 100 bed Ebola Treatment Units, where entrants go to die.
As if to clearly illustrate the untoward effect of fear on the human spirit, the gestures that humans use to greet one another here have assumed an awkward feel. If you are family or very close, you give a fist bump. More common is the covered elbow tap as if Monrovia residents have suddenly become amputees. As common is the self-hug, arms crossed across your own chest with hands touching the opposite shoulder-- a sway from side to side. I find this practice almost mocking.
A non-touching world is a strange thing. It feels much like writing without punctuation. Accomplishments feel unnoticed. Misunderstandings abound. Words run on without the caesura of a back slap or forearm squeeze. Where eyes could reassure, the momentary doubt that the person opposite might kill you severs most possibility for intimacy. It’s the ultimate person-to-person downer.
The usual suspects at Saturday Diabetes Clinic at JDJ, plus Jennifer
The exception of course is children. Chastising them does little to hold back these warm minions running and colliding into adults. They embrace to stay warm. They adhere with sticky fingers. Legs are their hiding place. My first Saturday back at diabetes clinic, Daniel poked his head in the doorway with his large grin. He sauntered over to me as if on a mellow stroll along a tree-lined pleasant path. When positioned just out of sight behind me, he then suddenly moved to wrap his thin arms around my neck, pressing his face against my head. It was wonderful the affection. It was also scary.
Is it preposterous to die because you don’t want to be rude? When I was twenty-five years old, I used to spend my summers in Guatemala learning Spanish. On the weekends, my school organized volunteer work in the fincas-- the plantations-- where we rebuilt collapsing fences, played soccer with orphans, and taught English to sun withered adults because they wanted to imagine a different life trajectory. At the end of our time together, the finca leaders out of appreciation for our time, would give us the most valuable possessions they owned. More often than not, this was an old piece of chicken and a dirty glass of water, which you always knew would make you sick. Call me an idiot, but I took down that dry chicken and warm water every single time. And every single time I found myself clogging my host families toilet with each end of my GI tract for the week, dreaming of home and wondering at the limitations of applied logic. I mean, how do you say no to that which people so naturally give?
Abandoned JDJ Pediatric Ward. Closed since 5/1/14
3 years later at the diabetes clinic Augustin and I started in 2012 on the 2nd floor of the now abandoned JDJ building, I try to evolve. When Princess’s blood sugar comes out at a whopping 565, I offer to check my own blood sugar so she doesn’t have to test again and to make sure that the meter is reading right. Princess is happy at this prospect and tells me that she’ll prepare the blood pricking “machine”. I watch her insert the needle pellet into the tip of the pen and cap it. She then cocks the spring-loaded device and hands it to me. I am thinking, where has this pen been? How has it been stored? Is it possible at all that Princess has been around someone with the virus? The implications would mean blood to blood, the worst type of exposure. Princess looks at me expectantly. And once again, I have this irrational fear of hurting another’s feelings and being rude.
“Thank you Princess,” I say ,”but I want to do it the old fashioned way.” I grab another of the needle pellets and pierce my finger with it directly letting out a yelp. The children laugh at me. “Doctor Wang is scared of needles,” they say, "it doesn't even hurt!"
I admire Daniel, Princess, Felicia, Nouche, Ernest and Susan for never complaining despite the serious challenges of diabetes control-- One of the many other serious diseases that still exist in Liberia. They come every other week from long distances for our ad-hoc care with small ice-filled coolers in their hands carrying earned smiles and obligatory hugs. You have to reciprocate. While Ebola is here in West Africa and people must act differently to stem the epidemic, communities must not lose their powers of differentiation and negotiation. We change to preserve human health. It would be ironic if in this pursuit, we lost the generous reasoning and mutual belief that defines our being in the first place.
From left to right: Daniel, Priscilla, Nouche
