The Birth Of Cholera

At the moment of death, my elders taught me, the soul of the deceased escapes with the body’s last breath. It isn’t a normal breath, they said, but a sigh from deep within the belly. When Aro, sickness, came to our village, my two elder priests were the first to so sigh. I was the last priest left to my people. Some said they were the ones to bring osogbo to our town. Now I must be a healer, a doctor, but at this I am a failure. While my patients lay dying, I console them as well as their loved ones. The sick fight death; they struggle against the pain and the weakness as their bowels unleash an unholy flood of rice water, their eyes sinking in their sockets while once-healthy black skin ashens, turning bluish in the extremities. They flatten with death as water leaves from their behinds, but their loved ones don’t care. They hold the dead close and wail, unafraid that their own time might come soon. Then I am forced to be a mortician, wrapping flat, stiff corpses with white sheets before the stronger men of our village pile the bodies on carts.

They all smell like dead fish.

Each body is a failure, my failure, sealed in white cloth.

Together, with thick ropes biting into our shoulders, we pull the carts into the forest. We are silent, and under the strain sweat drips down our faces, our muscles aching from working so hard under a hot summer sun. Our noses know we are near the iroko trees before our eyes do; the stench there is thick from dozens of bodies exposed under the roots of the trees.*37 Most men cover their mouths, but the smell no longer bothers me. I say a prayer for each before we tip the cart—and, yes, we tip it because we can no longer bear to touch the hard, flat corpses filling it. They roll onto the earth, a mass of dead wrapped in white. When the plague began, further north, we lay the first ones ceremonially, my elder priests included, and with the proper rites—we lay them carefully against the tree trunks. But now those older bodies poke through shredded cloth, the elements already doing their job and taking human flesh back to the earth.

One corpse looks like the next; in death, all are equal.

It’s a nightmare, I think. If only someone would touch me, or pinch me, or shake me . . . so I could wake up.

“Obeyono?” A man standing to my side grabs my shoulder; I don’t wake up. The nightmare is real. I try hard to remember his name but I can’t. He is young, tall, and wiry. Someone this young should not know so much suffering, I think, but how old am I? Twenty-six. All this sickness makes me feel old, as young as I am.

“Obeyono?” he says again. “Is there nothing we can do?” I see another young man in our group sprinting south, guarding his abdomen with one hand while the other seals his mouth. Vomit runs between his fingers. We have another one, I think.

“We need help,” I say. “Maybe if I go see Olófin, maybe he can help us.”

While that one young man falls behind a tree, retching and relieving himself, the young man next to me has a glimmer of hope in his eye.

We carry the sick man back to town in one of the carts; no one is willing to touch him or help him except me. Still guarding his stomach, he crawls into one of cleaner carts, balling up in the only corner he can find not soiled with human waste. He lies there shivering as we pull him back from the forest. We enter the village. Normally on a day like this the marketplace would be filled with women hawking their wares while their men look on protectively, and children would be screaming and shouting under the darkening shadows of a setting sun. But today is quiet except for the wails of women over their newly sick or dead husbands and children. There are lamps and torches lit in memory of loved ones, and their fires light up the shadows as the sun slips from view. My own wife tends the sick under a makeshift tent set up in the village square, bedrolls and blankets being all that separates their bodies from the earth.

The smell is horrible.

I find her showing a woman how to change her husband’s soiled sheets without lifting him; she rolls him from side to side as the wife cleans his backside, putting a new cloth between him and the bedroll. “Obeyono, there are more sickened,” she says. Even though she has not bathed in days, she is still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, my only happiness in the wake of so much osogbo.

“I am going to Olófin’s,” I say, my voice firm.

“Obeyono, no. We need you here.” Her eyes are pleading with me.

“Olófin is the wisest among us, and if anyone knows how to stop this epidemic it will be him.”

“Can’t you make ebó?”

If only she knew how often I’ve made ebó, how many times I’ve opened my own odu on the table of Ifá and chanted my heart out for the orishas. My prayers have gone unanswered. “I’ve made ebó. But I’m missing something.” Then, more quietly, so no one else can hear, I whisper to her, “I don’t know what else to do. I am too young and untrained.”

She moves close to me, her head touching my chest lightly. She smells of earth and sweat. I take her scent in deeply; it is fresher than the other smells of the square. “I will pack for you,” she says. “But for our sake, husband, be swift.”

While the sick moan and their caretakers sleep fitfully at their sides, I mount my horse and slip out of town.

The last time I traveled this path I went with my elders. The day had been young, the sun barely over the tops of the trees, but it was hot and we stopped frequently to water our horses. Now I travel at night, and there is only the moon, full and pale but high enough in the sky that the forest glows with silver light. It is just enough for me to see a few feet ahead, and I know my horse’s eyes can see much farther. With nightfall comes cooler air, and although I travel slowly through the shadows I know I will make it to Olófin’s house much faster than the last time I came this way. There will be no stopping to rest the horse, no need for frequent watering. His gait is fast and steady. Soon, I relax on his back and let my body rock in time with his.

There were three of us on my last trip, myself and my two elders. Olófin had called for us by messenger, and his message was cryptic. “Olófin feels that something isn’t right in his life,” the young man told us, “and he wants the three of you to come to his home and divine for him.”

“Us, divine for Olófin?” I asked. Olófin was the wisest man in the land, the closest person to Olódumare we knew. “Why would Olófin need a diviner?”

“You are too young to understand these things,” said the eldest priest. “Everyone comes to the feet of Orúnmila in time.” He stood quiet for a moment, letting his words sink in deep. “We will go,” he said to the messenger, “and we will divine for Olófin. Go ahead of us while we make preparations and tell him we will be there soon after your arrival.”

The messenger left as he was told; we packed. Before too much time passed we were on the road, and within two days we were at Olófin’s house.

We wasted no time there. We sat before the table of Ifá. Because I was the youngest, the freshest, my elders demanded that I be the one to make the prayers and work the ikin, counting them by hand and then marking the figures in the sand on the table. I was nervous, my fingers fumbling with the palm nuts while my elders frowned and Olófin looked on. But soon I found my rhythm, and I was counting the palm nuts and marking lines in the dust on the wooden board. Soon there were several lines marked, a complete series, and I put the ikin back in the container.

My elders smiled. “Ogbe Ogundá!” said the middle babalawo, the odu after which I was named. “Maferefún Orúnmila! What troubles you, Olófin?”

Olófin frowned and took a deep breath before speaking. “I woke up yesterday with the feeling that something . . . wasn’t quite right.” There was silence. This was what the messenger had told us, and my godparents were waiting for more. “So I called for you. Something has changed in my life. I want to know what it is and what to do about it.”

“There is nothing new in your life!” said the eldest babalawo. “As always, you are Olófin and you know your place. You have all the blessings Olódumare has to give!”

“As said my brother, there is nothing new under the sun,” said the middle bobalawo. “You have the blessings of Olódumare and all of the orishas. Your life is as it should be.”

They looked at me, my godparents and Olófin, all three of them waiting for me to speak. I sat there trembling, looking at my own pattern in the dust, worried. This was my sign in Ifá, the odu under which I was born. And when I was made a priest, both of my godparents had told me how blessed my own life would be. Not two months later, my first and only child died. Cholera, one of the village women had called it; she was a healer, an herbalist, and before she could treat my child, my little son was dead. I no longer felt that my odu was much of a blessing.

I had watched when the last breath left his body; it was, indeed, a great sigh that came from deep within his belly. Whether or not his soul left with it, I have no clue.

“This is my odu, Olófin, and it is a very dangerous sign.”

My elders were annoyed. “He is too young. He knows nothing,” the eldest said. The other priest agreed.

“Everyone has a right to speak here,” said Olófin. “Young man, continue.”

“This is my odu as a babalawo,” I said. “Everyone told me it was blessed, that my life was as it should be. But not two months after this odu fell, my son died. One of the older women in the village said it was cholera; he couldn’t be saved.”

“Did you not make ebó?” Olófin asked.

“I made ebó when my odu came, but when my child got sick things happened too fast. There was no time,” I said.

“Olófin has no children!” said the oldest babalawo. “There is no child to die!”

“Agreed,” said the other babalawo, “because this odu speaks nothing of children.” He looked at Olófin sternly. “Please, Olófin, pay no attention to him. He knows nothing about odu. And he is so young. There is nothing wrong with your life.”

“Everything is as it should be,” said the eldest priest.

With those words, they closed the odu.

We were sent home, and three days later the messenger returned. I greeted him at my home, but as before he wasted no time with his message. “Olófin sends for your elders,” he said. “Have them make the trip immediately. You are to stay at home.”

A few days later they returned, their skin ashen and gray, smelling of rotten fish. They weakened quickly, while others in our town also began to get sick. “Those two priests brought back a great osogbo with them,” whispered the wise woman, the same woman who was there when my own son died. Before long, it was a plague. And it took the old woman with it.

By sunrise, alone, I arrive at Olófin’s home. I tie my horse to a tree and quietly approach the front door. It is too early, I think, gently tapping on the wood frame. The same messenger who had come to our village many times opens the front door. “Obeyono,” he says, “Olófin said you might come.” He points to a stand just outside the door that holds fresh water and black soap. “Wash your hands well before you come in and remove your shoes. You must be clean when you come inside this house.”

I wash, and after I wash the messenger pours another jícara of fresh water over my hands. My shoes come off and sit outside the door. I walk into the morning gloom; Olófin’s house is usually light, airy, and well lit. Today it seems a home in mourning.

The messenger seats me while he disappears deeper into the house. It was here that we sat and read the table of Ifá. It was here that the odu Ogbe Ogundá opened in the powder. It was here that we told Olófin nothing in the world had changed. I shudder, for surely the world has changed. People are dying and it seems that there is no way to stop it.

Shadows in the house shorten as the day grows brighter. It is perhaps noon before Olófin comes in to greet me. In reverence, I kiss my fingers and touch the dust on the floor. Olófin offers no blessing; his eyes seem empty, full of sadness.

“I know what brings you, Obeyono,” he says, his voice a whisper. “Of the three of you who read for me that day, you were the wisest. I should have listened to you.” With his arm on my back, he gently leads me through his house, to his back door. He pushes it open and shows me the woods that lie just beyond his compound. “Out there, deep in the woods, lies the body of my son. My only son.”

I have no words, only shock, and I listen as Olófin speaks.

“When the three of you came to see me that day, my child, my only child, lay sick in bed. No one knew I had a child. But you seemed to know.” He is silent. And then he tells me, “Well, maybe you did not know I had a child, but you had experience with this odu, and you yourself lost a child. Your elders should have let you speak, and I should have listened more carefully. But they . . . they were trained by Orúnmila himself, and I trusted their wisdom. It was not a trust I should have so easily placed.

“After the three of you left, my son died. I mourned. I sent my messenger back to your village to ask for just your elders. I wanted them to come see what they had done—that they had refused to let you speak, refused to let you save my child with your ashé. But now I know there is no way to save someone from this illness. It can only be prevented.

“So filled with grief was I when they came to my house that I had part of my son’s body stewed, and since they failed to see death in my house, I fed them death in my house. It is that same death that they took back with them to your village.”

Now I understand the horror Olófin feels. His own son, dead; the babalawos he trusted most, dead. And there is no coming back from death.

“But now, Olófin, we all suffer,” I tell him. “The elderly. The young. The weak. The strong. We all die, and we die in great numbers. Is there no way to call back what you have unleashed?”

“I will teach you a great secret, Obeyono, and never again will anyone criticize you for your youth.” I am silent. I wait. “Ano is a creature of filth. And while she can be spread on the earth, in the air, or in the water, most often we spread her by our own hands. This is why I had you wash your hands before you came into my house. You came from a place filled with sickness, and that sickness you carry with you on your very own hands.”

It takes me a moment to realize what Olófin is saying. I look at my hands. I turn them over. How many sick people have I touched? How many corpses have I carried? The number is too high to count. The thought that Ano can be spread on my hands makes me feel ill.

“But I’ve not washed my hands before, Father,” I say. “My wife, she has never washed her hands. There are many in the village who do not wash their hands, yet they tend to the sick and they don’t get sick.”

“Olódumare was wise when he created the world,” says Olófin. “Even though Ano would like nothing better than to make the entire world sick so that Ikú can gorge herself, there will always be those on the earth with the ashé to fight off any plague that comes. Were it not for that, life would have ended centuries ago. The first case of smallpox would have wiped the world out; instead, it gave birth to Babaluaiye’s priesthood, those who are immune to his scourge.”

“Olódumare is wise.”

“That he is.”

I put my head on the floor in obeisance to Olófin. Gently, he blesses me and lifts me. As he embraces me I feel his ashé; it is like warm water flowing into me, soothing me. I don’t deserve his blessing, but the old man is so kind he gives it despite my shortcomings. When he holds me at arm’s length and lets me go, I want to reach out to him, to grab him and fall to my knees and beg his forgiveness. As if he is reading my mind he says, “There is no need for that. But you must go back to your village. You must teach them how to wash their hands. Those who have tended the dying since the plague first began are the strongest among you; they will not get sick if they have not yet. The bodies of your dead—take them far away from your village, for the disease can sink into the earth. Take them far away from your rivers, because it can travel in the water. Do these things and the epidemic will slow, and then it will end. This I promise.”

I am crying when Olófin leads me to the front door. “Obeyono,” he says as he opens the door, “there is no need for tears. You are blessed. The world is as it should be. And you will be remembered in history as the one who knew the secret to ending the great plague.”

So I take Olófin’s wisdom home to my village. Those of us who cared for the sick in the beginning continue to care for the sick until the end. We clean them; we change them; we feed them and give them cool water. And we wash our hands well and change our clothing before going home to our own loved ones. The great caravans of cadavers are no longer taken to the iroko trees at the edge of town; instead, they travel at least two days into the depths of the forest, and those who take them wash their hands and change their clothes when they leave that place.

It only takes eight days; eight days and the plague that sought to destroy us all leaves us.

And since that time, whenever Ano comes to visit our village, we follow the words and wisdom of Olófin: we wash our hands whenever sickness is around. And we live. My son did not live; Olófin’s son did not live; but we—we live.