Читать книгу In My Dreams I Dance - Anne Wafula-Strike - Страница 7

I was too young to remember what happened next, but my family have told me the terrible story many times. As swiftly as a rainy season downpour drenches the earth, my happy, carefree life in the village ended.

My dad was away trying to stop the Shiftas, Somalian bandits, from crossing the border into Kenya and stealing livestock, when catastrophe struck. I had accompanied my mum to the river. As usual she was washing clothes and then washing us. I liked to carry a small pot of water on my head, copying the huge pot she balanced effortlessly on hers. But something was wrong with me that day. As soon as we returned to the homestead, I fell down screaming.

My family thought a snake had bitten me, even though none had been seen anywhere near me. But, after examining my writhing body all over, my grandmother, who was an expert in these things, pronounced, ‘No snake has bitten this child.’

My mum and grandmother could see that I was in terrible pain, but if it wasn’t a snake, what had caused it? They had no idea. Nor could they calm my screams. They told me later that I had cried for 24 hours, giving great heaving dry sobs when no more tears would come. At one point I was so distressed, I swallowed my tongue. And then my whole body went limp.

My grandmother was a Christian, so she prayed and poured holy water over me. When that didn’t work, she turned to traditional medicines. She was perplexed. Why was a previously healthy child suddenly unable to talk or eat? How could it be that I had gone down to the river apparently well and had returned terribly ill?

The more baffled everybody became, the more desperate the remedies they resorted to. My legs were massaged with donkey dung, tribal cuts were carved into my skin and foul-tasting potions were forced down my throat. Though my dad was an educated man, he too believed that the herbs could cure me because a British doctor had once told him that a lot of powerful western medicines were contained in them.

Alas, none of the traditional remedies did me any good. My condition was deteriorating and I was struggling to breathe. My family were convinced they were going to lose me.

In a flash of inspiration, one of the villagers found a plastic tube and put it into my mouth. Family and friends took turns blowing their breath into me to keep me alive. It was the primitive equivalent of an iron lung.

After a few weeks I recovered enough to breathe unaided, but my breathing remained very laboured and the bottom half of my body mysteriously withered, leaving me unable to move around. I was effectively paralysed from the neck down. I reverted to babyhood, no longer able to talk or to stop myself from dribbling. I shared a bed with my mum and she had to turn me over when I wanted to change position. With tears in her eyes, she fed me sloppy food because I could no longer chew anything. Her lively, inquisitive daughter had turned into a helpless rag doll.

‘What kind of illness is this?’ my mum and my grandmother kept asking each other. They had never seen anything like it before.

My immediate and extended family rallied round, but some of the villagers thought I’d been cursed and should be left to die.

Solomon, a local witch doctor, was called in to treat me, but he too drew a blank, muttering only that an evil spell had been cast on me. ‘This is caused by black magic,’ he declared.

People in the village started to shun our family. ‘They’ve been struck by a curse from God,’ they muttered. They couldn’t understand my parents’ determination to keep me alive. ‘She’s more or less dead—let her complete her dying,’ they said.

My dad didn’t discover what had happened to me until he returned home on leave six weeks later. He was distraught at this terrible transformation in his formerly healthiest child. ‘We’re not going to give up on our daughter,’ he said firmly whenever the villagers urged him to let me die.

So profound was his distress that he even forgot to shave when he went back to the army. Shaving regularly was a vital part of army discipline, but he told his superiors that he hadn’t bothered because it ‘wasn’t important’. He was promptly demoted for rudeness and lost out on being commissioned as a senior officer. My illness was not only affecting me but also those I loved the most.

Gradually some movement returned to my upper body, although from the waist down it remained like dead wood. Slowly and painfully I learned to pull myself onto my stomach, my thin misshapen legs and feet dangling inertly, and drag myself along the floor using my arms.

My mum and dad were delighted that I had regained some mobility, but this technique didn’t impress the villagers. ‘There’s a young snake living in that house,’ they chorused. ‘It is not right that it should remain amongst us.’ They gathered at our door and said, ‘You need to get rid of that child, otherwise the curse that has possessed her will spread to the other children in the village.’

My mum begged and pleaded with them to leave us in peace, but they were in no mood to compromise.

‘We’re going to burn your house down,’ they informed her. ‘It’s better that you leave now, before you all perish.’

Family members advised my mum to run away and we escaped to my maternal grandparents’ home in a nearby village. We stayed there until my dad was next home on leave.

The behaviour of the villagers made him sad and angry. ‘We have as much right as anyone else to live in our own village,’ he said. ‘This is our ancestral land.’

Defiantly, he rebuilt our home, substituting corrugated iron for straw so that the villagers couldn’t burn it down. But even with the reinforcements we continued to feel under siege.

My dad was confused by my illness. He had a modern, educated outlook but was also steeped in the traditions of the village and wasn’t entirely sure if my illness was a new disease or witchcraft.

He was also torn between staying at home to protect his family and continuing in the military so that he could pay for our schooling and give us the kind of life he had ambitions to provide for us.

Eventually, with a heavy heart, he decided to apply for accommodation in the army barracks in Nairobi for all the family. He thought that we would encounter less prejudice in the capital and hoped that I would be able to get some proper medical treatment there. He also thought that that way he could be closer to us.

His faith in me remained steadfast. ‘One way or another you’re going to recover, Anne,’ he said. ‘The local remedies haven’t worked, but in Nairobi you can get the most modern treatments.’

It was very hard for my dad to uproot his entire family and transplant us all into unfamiliar territory, but he felt he had no choice. He realised he wasn’t going to succeed in changing attitudes in the village and needed to keep his family safe.

So, one year after my illness started, our family gathered up our belongings and bade farewell to the villagers. Our relatives cried, but it was clear that many other people were glad to see the back of us.

In many ways it was a relief to my family to make a new start and our mood as we travelled to Nairobi on the JJ Family bus was quite positive. My mum and dad took turns at holding me on their lap.

The first thing my dad did after we’d settled in was to take me to Kenyatta hospital where I could be examined by a proper doctor. The hospital was overcrowded, dirty and chaotic and overflowing at the seams with people of all ages suffering from everything from malaria to malnutrition.

The doctor examined me carefully, moving my limbs in various directions and noting the shape of my spine.

My family gathered around anxiously. They hoped not only for a diagnosis but also a cure, so that the lively two-and-a-half year old who had suddenly been lost to them could at last be restored to full health.

Although my condition was a mystery to my family, the inhabitants of my village and assorted witch doctors, it wasn’t to the doctor at Kenyatta hospital. He looked at my body flapping helplessly like a fish on the shore and pronounced flatly, ‘This is polio.’

My mum and dad gasped.

I was too young to understand what was going on and lay oblivious to the sickening blow the doctor had just delivered.

‘But all my children have been vaccinated against polio,’ my dad said. ‘My wife walked many miles to the health clinic with Anne to make sure she had the vaccine.’

Some Kenyans chose not to vaccinate their offspring because they thought that whatever substance those strange syringes were putting into children’s bodies was a plan of the white man to reduce the African population. My family, however, didn’t share that view.

The doctor shrugged. ‘That’s too bad. But it happens sometimes. Maybe the vaccine was out of date and not that effective.’

He explained that the polio virus had attacked my spine, entering in an asymmetrical way and leaving it curved in two places. Some muscles had completely wasted away, though some function remained in others.

‘What can you do for her?’ my dad asked.

‘I’m sorry, there is nothing we can do for her now,’ said the doctor, shaking his head sadly. ‘She can have some physiotherapy to improve the movement in the muscles that are still working and a plaster cast to straighten out the limbs, but we can’t restore movement. We can’t repair the nerves the virus has destroyed.’

My mum started to cry. My dad put his arm around her and did his best to comfort her.

Polio is a virus carried in water and food that causes nerve damage. It attacks different parts of the body, leaving them withered and lifeless. There is a great deal of knowledge about how to prevent it now, but because it has been successfully eradicated in most of the world it is regarded as a disease of the past and not one that researchers are looking into anymore.

As I lay quietly on the examination table my dad sighed heavily, wondering what kind of life lay ahead for me. One thing was certain though: things were not going to be easy.

Still, he was determined to try to make the best of it. ‘Well, thank God my daughter has survived,’ he said. ‘We will find a way to make life as good as possible for her.’ He stroked my hair sadly. ‘You are a strong girl, Anne, and I know that somehow you will overcome all of this. I didn’t give you the middle name Olympia for nothing. I know that despite your polio you will still show the world how strong and powerful you are.’

I didn’t understand what he was talking about and was absorbed in looking at the strange surroundings of the hospital, a place that looked nothing like the traditional village I had spent all of my life in. Things were already changing for me.

Our family moved into Kahawa barracks and without any fuss adapted to my newly diagnosed disability. My dad was given a small two-roomed place which was more luxurious than our home in the village because it was made of stone and had running water and electricity. My mum lavished enormous care and attention on me. Because she couldn’t do farming in Nairobi, she spent much more time doing knitting and needlework and completely devoted herself to her children. I lacked for nothing and she knew instinctively everything that I needed in order to thrive. She made sure I was always clean and comfortable and played with me a lot. My favourite foods were beans and sweet potatoes with fermented milk, mixed with dried leaves and mashed together into a thick paste. She often cooked this for me because she knew how much I loved it.

One of the best things about our new life was that nobody wanted to burn our house down anymore. Nobody living in the barracks pronounced that our family was cursed because of my disability.

Back in the village, our extended family took over the farming of my dad’s land so that we didn’t have to worry about it being neglected.

The doctors at Kenyatta hospital referred me to an orthopaedic hospital, Kabete, on the outskirts of Nairobi. The doctors there were very familiar with cases like mine and, as the doctor at Kenyatta hospital had predicted, put me in a heavy, uncomfortable plaster cast from my feet to halfway up my ribcage with just a space between my legs to allow me to urinate and defecate. I was very floppy and my knees and elbows were starting to bend. The doctors said that the plaster would straighten my muscles and help me to grow to a normal height. You see some polio survivors in Africa whose knees are bent permanently because they were not put into plaster.

‘I know it will be hard for you to put up with the plaster, Anne, but this is the best chance you have to straighten out your twisted body,’ the doctors explained.

I had to endure this for about a year, which would be hard enough for an adult but was particularly tough for a little girl like me. I couldn’t understand why my body was suddenly locked into this horrible white material. In the village I’d adapted well to only being able to use the top half of my body, but being trapped inside the plaster often made me cry. It was the worst kind of prison and always became unbearably itchy. A new cast was put on every three months and each time the medical staff removed the old plaster they found many wounds underneath it where I had managed to dig my finger or a spoon through the plaster to scratch the maddening itches. Sometimes lice got under my plaster and bred there in the warm conditions.

While I was in the cast my mum carried me around everywhere. My sisters Alice and Jane were very good to me and found ways to adapt their games so that I could join in. We liked to play a game with bottle tops where the person who could make the tallest pile was the winner. My hands used to shake a lot and my sisters helped me to steady them as I tried to place one bottle top over another. Unwittingly, they were helping with my rehabilitation.

The hospital staff always used a noisy saw to remove the old plaster and its harsh screech made me cry, but afterwards my body felt so free. I was allowed a few plaster-free days before the new plaster was applied. At these times one of my sisters would fling me onto her back. It was much easier for my family to carry me around when I was plaster-free.

To me the plaster was just a heavy burden—I couldn’t understand the advantage of it at all. Sometimes I poured ink from my dad’s fountain pen onto it so that it didn’t look boring plain white. My sisters helped me decorate it. We giggled over the designs we created and it made the whole thing a little bit easier for me to bear. When I got bored I would pick up sharp sticks and make chipped patterns in the plaster. Whether I liked it or not, it was part of me and so I just had to find ways to live with it.

My mum and dad did their best to stay cheerful, but both were devastated by my condition. Every time they looked at me they saw the happy, active child I had been before the virus had struck. Seeing their little girl struggle with a partially paralysed body caused them great pain.

‘Your sickness is like a knife going through my heart,’ my dad would often say sadly.

My mum and dad were members of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God and when I arrived at church with my mum, the people said, ‘Let that crippled child come forward and we will pray for her.’

Reluctantly my mum took me to the front of the church, where a group of congregants shook me hard and pulled my legs. I can still remember the agony of that pulling.

‘Don’t cry, child. We’re trying to cast out the demons in your body,’ they said.

‘Leave the poor girl alone,’ my mum said. ‘She has suffered enough.’

She and my dad were very unhappy with the church for the attitude they adopted towards me. But both were devout Christians, so they continued to attend services there.

When my mum returned to the village for a visit she encountered similar attitudes. Even though we were no longer living there, people wanted to come to our house to pray for the demons inside me to be cast out. They told my mum she needed to slaughter goats and sacrifice them if she wanted me to get better, but my mum and dad refused to get involved with these superstitious rituals.

‘Our daughter has polio and she’s trying to get help,’ my mum said firmly.

Although we didn’t encounter problems in the barracks, there was plenty of prejudice in Nairobi too. My brother and sisters faced abuse because of my disability when they attended school. ‘Our parents say we shouldn’t play with you because your sister is a cripple and you will bring bad luck to us,’ their schoolfriends said. But they ignored their jibes, loyally defending me and doing their best to protect me. They carried me on their backs to wherever they were going to play and put me down nearby so that I could be part of what was going on. When they climbed trees to pick fruit, they made sure they threw some down for me to eat.

My brother was often busy playing football with the other boys or killing animals or birds with a slingshot, so I didn’t get too involved with his games, but Alice, Jane and I often played together. To them, I wasn’t a girl with a disability, but simply their sister Anne.

My dad gave me the pet name Mamy, a term of love and respect, and my mum did everything for me—bathing me, wiping my bottom and putting me to bed, helped by my brother and sisters. No child could have been more loved and cherished by their family than I was by mine.

My family became very sensitive to my difficulties, but not all of my relatives understood my condition so well. I used to have long hair and one of my earliest memories is of sitting uncomfortably on the knee of an aunt while she plaited my hair in cornrows. Sitting in that position caused me great pain and I began to cry.

‘That girl’s body is aching all over. Don’t hurt her more by plaiting her hair,’ my dad said.

Although at that time I wasn’t fully aware that I was disabled, I was aware that I was different from other children and my parents spent a lot of time reassuring me. They told me that I was a beautiful, intelligent girl who would succeed in life. ‘Don’t listen to what anyone else says. You’re beautiful on the inside and the outside and everything will be fine,’ my dad often said. ‘Your middle name is Olympia and your destiny is to be great.’

When he returned home at the end of the day he always called out, ‘Where is my rose flower?’

My heart lifted when I heard him utter those words.

When I first went to Kabete I didn’t pay too much attention to the other patients, but by the time I was four I began to notice that there were others like me at the centre. I became friendly with a little girl called Rosa who also had polio and we used to play together at the hospital.

When I was four-and-a-half years old the staff at Kabete decided that I didn’t need to be in plaster any longer. The day I heard that news I clapped my hands together and whooped with joy. I thought that at long last my body would be left in peace. For a few months, it was. But my relief was short-lived.

‘It’s time to fit you with some callipers, Anne,’ the staff told me. I’d no idea what they were talking about, but I didn’t like the sound of it.

I cried when I was fitted with my first pair of callipers and crutches. They felt almost as restrictive as the plaster. I felt cheated. I had simply exchanged one prison for another.

The aim of the callipers was to keep my legs straight and help me to walk, but I could only wear them for an hour at a time at first because they hurt me so much. They were clamped to the whole of my legs, with an extension for the lower part of my ribcage. The metal was held to my legs with leather straps. The whole contraption was very hot and uncomfortable, totally impractical for use in a hot African country.

My right leg was a few inches shorter than the left and I was given ugly black polio boots to wear, one a few inches higher than the other to balance my uneven legs. I hated wearing these boots almost as much as wearing the callipers. I looked longingly at the other children of my age who ran around barefoot or in flip flops.

I did enjoy the gentle, relaxing physiotherapy treatment on offer at Kabete, but sometimes the physiotherapists pulled my tendons to stretch my legs and it was so painful that I used to scream. I grew to hate doctors in white coats and associated them only with pain. I tried to accept my situation, but I had reached an age where all I wanted was to be like the other children who ran around the barracks in nothing more than a few flimsy clothes.