If the first thing one wants to do while sick in a foreign country is return home, the last thing they want to do once better is spend any time revisiting the memories of said malady. However, my last little stint with illness provided some pretty interesting cultural insight that I’m willing to share. At some point during last Tuesday I started to get pains in my stomach. At first it felt like a random and dull tick somewhere in my stomach which increasingly worsened until it felt as if someone was holding the whole of my digestive tract in their hands, clenching their fists every minute or so. I’ve always thought it was silly when people clench their stomachs and double over in pain but now I understand. It felt as if there were volcanoes erupting on both the northern and southern extremes of my body and it wasn’t long before these sensations turned into realities. I pride myself on having a strong immune system. I’m a huge believer that most sickness is mental: if you tell yourself you’re not going to get sick and if you believe you’re not going to get sick you won’t get sick. However, before the volcanoes started spewing their hellish contents, I knew that I was defeated. I was a ticking time bomb that needed quickly to get home. I walked, or rather waddled, to the bus stop stopping every thirty of so feet and bracing myself against a tree or whatever stationary object was near by. Judging by the looks I received from passersby I must’ve looked like I was performing some hallucinogenic-induced dance. I remember a random and immediate stint of hunger as if my body was telling me, “Get food because you’re not going to be eating any time soon.” I never found that meal but I was able to buy a cold sprite which pacified the imminent doom until I was able to get home. I took a car rapide home which looking back on it was a terrible choice. I haven’t talked about car rapides because I try to avoid them as much as possible. From the outside they’re fairly pleasant looking. They’re bright, colorful, undersized busses decorated with religious phrases. But as the saying goes, never judge a car rapide by its welcoming exterior. The insides are rusted, the wheels usually mismatched and of different sizes, there hangs a naked light bulb (if one is lucky) from the ceiling under which entirely too many bodies pack in, feelinging more like anchovies than human beings. The three accidents I’ve seen in Senegal have all involved car rapides. Twice I’ve seen car rapides hit motorists and the other time I saw the front right wheel of one of these combustion coffins fly off and the bus skid for thirty feet as the axle ripped through the highway like a hot knife through butter. Most of the times the drivers don’t even have their licenses but there’s not enough law enforcement here for that to be a problem. Why then, would anyone ever take one of the awful vehicles? Because they cost twenty cents compared to a two dollar taxi ride. Also because it provides the same adrenal rush as riding as say a roller coaster or bungee jumping or playing Russian roulette. When I got home I quickly retreated to my room, closed the door and waited for the sickness to start which didn’t take long at all. After two hours my host mom came to check on me and I told her I wasn’t feeling well. She said she thought I had spent too much time in the sun and that I needed to get a good night sleep. I lied down in my bed, sure that whatever was taking over my body wasn’t a result of the sun, and tried to sleep. Before long I heard a murmur of voices and whispers downstairs. My room is located directly at the center of the house and with my window open I can hear everything. After a five minute argument that took place in a whisper Babakar came and into my room and in a concerned and stern tone I’d never heard him use before asked me if I had been taking my malaria medication. I told him I had. Five minutes later both Papa Ousmane and Mama came to check on me. There’s literally a foot of unoccupied floor space in my room due to the size of my bed so we all sat on my bed and discussed my symptoms. Papa Ousmane seemed confident, Mama less so. They left shortly after but only one set of footsteps walked away from my door. It was half an hour before Mama left. After that I fell asleep. Around ten that night my fever started to get really bad. I kept thinking that there was a cockroach of my shoulder which I’m not completely convinced was a hallucination because there are often cockroaches in my room. However not long after I became a bit delusional. Oscillating between throwing up and the other equally unpleasant and forceful bodily function, I rose from my bed every ten or so minutes until morning. I felt as if there were multiple beings in the room that I had to take care of. This entailed finding a new position to lie in every time I returned to bed. I’d place my head at a different position of the bed each time, looking somewhat like a compass struggling to find north. I wasn’t literally seeing other people but I felt the presence of multiple people whom I felt responsible for taking care of. I remember sweating profusely but feeling extremely cold under my blankets. I told myself that my fever was killing whatever was inside of me and that tomorrow everything would be ok. Possibly the strangest part of all this was that throughout the night the worst pains that I had were in my right thumb and the side of my left foot. I woke up in the morning looking like a mummy. I hadn’t been able to eat of drink in over twelve hours. My face was pale and covered in dry sweat. I’m sure I smelled like something dead. Mama called the WARC and I went to the hospital. The doctor gave me five different medications (appetite stimulant, nausea pacifier, antibiotics, and painkillers) and diagnosed me with a digestive tract infection. His diagnosis, however, isn’t what is interesting about this story. When I got home my mother took me to Babaker’s room and explained to me that she had made a mistake in designing my room. She said that she hadn’t had time to properly safeguard the room from bad spirits and that she was very sorry. She was extremely regretful. She told me that she was in the process of redoing my room and for right now I’d have to sleep in Babakar’s room. I lied down and shortly after she started burning a callibas of incense. The smoke at its thickets prevented me from seeing Mama who sat just at the end of my bed. She said that there was nothing bad in Babakar’s room but that just in case I still had anything bad inside of me the incense would kill it. When I woke up the room was clear of smoke but Mama was still there. We ate bread and butter together and then she brought me upstairs. My room was completely different. It took Mama around ten minutes to explain all the changes that had been made. A queen sized bed had been replaced by a twin so that the bad spirits couldn’t sleep with me. The window had been caulked, it previously hadn’t been which was always frustrating when it rained, so as to keep the bad spirits out. The tapestry, sheets, pillows and furniture had been replaced because that’s where the bad spirits reside she explained. For me this experience seemed to kind of sum up Senegal in a nutshell. It’s not rare to see a BMW and a horse drawn cart side by side in the street and nor was it rare to see illness treated traditionally and modernly (I know how problematic those terms are but for right now they’ll have to suffice). Senegal is a country of contrast. Ostentatious displays of wealth and extreme squalor, Western and African, modern and traditional. The Senegalese designate a very special place in the world for the spirits that they believe live all around us. For example one always pours the first sip of a beverage on the ground as to respect the spirits but one is never supposed to throw boiling water on the ground as if not to harm any spirits. Do I agree with the Senegalese on this? No. However, during a phone conversation with my parents after this was all said and done I found myself struggling to explain my fever-induced hysteria. It did at the time, after all, feel as if there were multiple people inside of my room. I do not believe in spirits any more than I do Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny but I do believe in the shared human experience. Hundreds of years ago some guy probably had the same thing I had and in the absence of science and medication explained that his body had been taken over by spirits. Today we have scientific explanations. When it comes to treating the illness the modern method may be more efficient but I believe it’s important to acknowledge and respect alternative explanations and realities. What makes something real, after all, is our belief in it. In the past I would’ve thought my mom’s reaction to my illness was derived from a lack of knowledge and although harmless, a general waste of time. Now, however, I see it as a very important belief in one’s culture and attempt to save that culture from totally being consumed from the Western World. What makes Senegal so interesting for me is the strength and perseverance of the people here. Under constant attack from all things Western, they’ve to a great extent preserved their traditional culture. There is not a McDonalds in Senegal, most of the people wear traditional clothing and although there is traditional medicine, illness is still treated as it has been for hundred of years.