Sickness: A Short Story

As I come back to New Ebu on a high from the buzzing energy of the retreat I’ve just returned from and greet my host mother, I notice that something is different. She welcomes me back in the usual way, but her eyes are tired and she’s a little quieter than usual.

“My waist, it hurts.” Her expression is strange, but the message is clear: she’s sick. I ask her if she’s gone to the clinic. She hasn’t but she shows me some pills she bought from somewhere (it’s not clear where) that she’s been taking. I contest their necessity and insist that she goes to the clinic in the morning if she’s not feeling well.

I head to my room and am able to quell my worries easily enough before falling into a deep sleep. I awake the next morning feeling slightly off-kilter myself and, preoccupied by my own issues, I only quickly assess my host mother’s health. Superficially she seems fine, so I’m on my way to work. Half way through the day, I go home sick and sleep through the rest of the day and night. The following day I have to rush to work so I just quickly greet my host mother and am on my way. After a productive day, I head home once more, when I finally take notice that she still isn’t well. On top of that, my host sister had had a small accident and injured her leg. I assure them that we will go to the next village over to see a doctor tomorrow. She says that she doesn’t have insurance and that she’ll just wait it out, as “only God knows what’s wrong with us.” I tell her not to worry, and that we’ll head to the clinic in the morning.

The same feeling of discomfort and unease is around me as I try to make conversation and go about our daily routines. Nothing is to be done though. My host mother insists that we will just have tea and bread for dinner so no cooking needs to be done, and conversation is one-sided and absent of her usual laughter. I try to make myself useful by insisting on making dinner, but find myself incapable of finding any of the required tools or ingredients, and she ends up having to accompany me to a neighbouring compound to take some burning charcoals. As I walk up to the ladies sitting in the compound yard, they are quiet, and the skies are grey. There is no laughter, no hilarity at the white girl who can’t do anything. My host mother takes the charcoals in silence and I smile and greet the women. They are kind enough and greet me back. Today is probably like any other day for them. Not exciting, not new, not different, as I had seen it weeks ago. This was life in New Ebu. People got sick. People who couldn’t afford to get sick got sick.

Under that gloomy sky, I thought about how I neglected to think of my host mother in my own moment of sickness. I thought about the many cedis I had spent on my hospital visits. I thought about the many cedis I had spent on things much more frivolous than doctor’s visits. I felt sickened by my selfishness. I thought about how, in the week I was gone, three people from New Ebu were buried and that when I asked why, the response from my host family was “only God knows” since they couldn’t afford to see a doctor.

Today I’ve seen a side of rural Ghana that is a sad reality for so many people here. Tomorrow I will take just one of these people to a hospital so I hopefully don’t have to see the sadder reality faced by most rural Ghanaians.

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