Outbreak

When North Americans travel abroad, it's generally understood that we will get sick. Perhaps the local cuisine includes a spice our bodies are not accustomed to. Perhaps the food bought from the street vendor wasn't as well cooked as it had appeared, despite being twice-fried in 3 inches of grease. Or, perhaps like Brad Pitt's character in the opening scene of Babel, we simply cannot resist the lure of an ice-cold soda. I came to Haiti mentally prepared to experience all sorts of digestive adventures. I did not, however, expect Pink Eye.

I had pink eye when I was young. I have a bizarre snapshot of a memory of it: it was mothers' day...we were at a large banquet with all women...I was wearing a pair of white gloves and my socks had ruffles...I repeatedly assured everyone who looked at me: it's okay, I'm not contagious anymore—words I'm sure mom had had me repeat till I'd memorized them. I remember my eyes itching horribly, but I also remember making my own sort of peace with the illness. After all, pink was my favorite color, and if you're going to come down with a disease, it might as well have as forgivable a name as "pink eye." Certainly, that made it much easier to endure than ailments I came down with later in life, say "green hair."

Somehow, I'd come to assume that pink eye belonged in the same realm with chicken-pox: you get it once when you're young, and then never again. Oh! How I was wrong.

It started Sunday morning with an itch that wouldn't leave my left eye. By the afternoon, it was getting worse. I kept assuring myself that I'd simply gotten a persistent speck of dirt in my eye, till I was standing on the balcony chatting with Bernady and his friend when one of them said: Hey look! It just spread to your other eye, too!

What just spread to my other eye???

They explained that it wasn't serious, it was something going around Port right now, parts of the family had had it last week, I just needed some eye drops...and no, I wouldn't die.

Monday morning after walking blindly to the bathroom to wash my face I went to the pharmacy, barely able to open my swollen eyes. The pharmacist gave me an antibiotic ointment, so I took off my sunglasses to be sure we had understood each other and that this ointment would, in fact, cure me. For the next 3 days I didn't leave the house. I slept. I did my Kreyol homework. I watched a Brazilian soccer match. I washed my face and applied ointment 3 times each day. I organized my dresser. I called fellow MCCers to ask if there was anything they needed me to sit around and think about. I read Greene's "The Comedians" and two issues of Harper's. I stared at the wall (what else do you do when you've just read that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket and you're cooped up inside with pink eye?). I played Solitaire.

Wednesday night, I decided that I probably wasn't contagious anymore. I mean, my eyes certainly looked much better...still a colorful mixture of bloodshot and jaundice, but worlds better from what they'd been Monday. Family members had started greeting me with a kiss on the cheek again. And when I asked them if they thought it was safe, the only objection that was given was that I looked a bit like a vampire. When I came into the office this morning, my coworkers were all good-humored about it. Some ran from me. Others shaded their eyes. And a few just sat and laughed.

Now, if I can just manage to avoid the flu that's going around...

-L