“Do you have your own needle?”, he asks me as I am sitting in the hospital chair getting a blood test. “Uhm, no I do not”, I say, hesitant. His hand goes into his white doctors coat and gets hold of a syringe. I find this strange. Should he not get that from a special box with syringes? Why from his coat? But I need this blood test and the needle does have a plastic cap. In my complete state of a failing body I see him putting on his white gloves and taking out an extra one which he straps around my biceps. I let him take my blood.
 

By Saskia Roskam

Congo Calling

About Saskia Roskam

Saskia Roskam, born in 1982 from a Cameroonian mother and a Dutch father, is travelling over the next six months through the Democratic Republic of Congo. In her fortnightly column entitled ‘Congo Calling’, Saskia shares with us the impressions of her journey.

I have malaria. It is not the first time this has happened to me, but I forget. I forget how it incapacitates you. How it drains your body. How it feels as though somebody is pushing pure poison through your veins and intestines. And the medication only seems to make it worse. You get dead tired and it gives you nausea.
 

Now any doctor will tell you to eat. To force yourself to eat when you have malaria. But the one thing you feel you can't is just that... So next to me I have two people who look at me while I am eating a piece of bread with cheese. When it is swallowed together with some fizzy drink I feel I have completed a major task. For them though it is not enough. They fill another glass and hand me another slice. This is going to be a long day...
 

After three days of medication I feel a bit better. I am still tired, but the fever and aching body symptoms are gone. I decide to go out for a little walk. After fifteen minutes I feel as though someone has taken all the life out of my legs. As though my knees are empty structures. As though them are made of air and can collapse any moment. I go back and sleep some more...
 

The feeling of a healthy body is something we take for granted. The silence of a working body not asking for attention who we feel we can abuse as we wish by pushing it to the limits. The moment I feel better that is exactly what I do. I take out my camera and start manoeuvring myself in impossible positions again.