At the clinic

I sat across the desk from the doctor who wrote notes on a prescription pad. He asked my name.

On the walk with Mama Happy to the clinic, Happy had called and said, “Tell the doctor you’re married to an African! He will charge you a lot of money if you don’t!”

I did not like this idea. This would mean I’d have to keep track of my fake identity if I ever went back to the same clinic again. It would become exhausting and if I were really sick, my story would surely fall apart with more probing questions.

But I also had a total of 15,000 Tanzanian shillings, the equivalent of $15. So I decided I would be married to an African. I would use Happy’s last name and say that my husband was a lecturer at a college in Masoka and that I taught at Kirima Primary School.

The doctor misspelled my first name as “Jane,” and I didn’t correct him. I could later explain to government investigators that it wasn’t my fault he’d gotten the name wrong. When I spelled Happy’s last name, the doctor corrected my spelling. He should’ve been suspicious, and maybe he was, but he neither blinked nor paused in his routine.

He asked if I had a fever. I said no. I waited for him to pull out a thermometer, but instead, he wrote, “No fever.” I was amazed I was that credible. I told him I had no appetite and was extremely tired. I told him what I thought was wrong: a tapeworm or malaria. Mama Happy added to the list: a glucose problem. He wrote these things down.

Then he sent me to the nurse across the hall who knew no English. She expertly took blood. Then taking a box of Lucky matches, she emptied it, saved one match and handed it with the box to me. She said “stool sample.”

I was mystified. Would I be lighting this one match to dynamite for stool? Outside the nurse’s office, Mama Happy sat on a bench and did some talking and gesturing with the box in hand. From that I understood I needed only a little sample in the box. I put the box under my bottom and said, “Like this?” She laughed. The teenage boy sitting next to her turned his head away.

I walked to the toilet still mystified. At least I knew the sample would go in the box. Even so, I was pretty sure nothing would happen, since this was the wrong time of day. And it was.

Back in the doctor’s office, the doctor informed me I had malaria. I did not have a glucose problem, I did not have typhoid. And if I really wanted to know about tape worms or any other kind of worm, I could return to try again with the stool sample.

We walked to another room just down from the doctor’s office and there was the nurse again, dispensing medicine. She did not charge me an arm and a leg for the malaria pills, perhaps because she thought I was married to an African. Or perhaps it was because Mama Happy had pushed me aside at the window and demanded to know from the nurse what each medicine was, how much it cost, and why did it cost that?

As Mama Happy and I walked away, I looked at the prescription slip. All evidence of my visit, both true and false, was there: symptoms, test results, failed test results, and fake name. I was free.