Hula

"We took a steamboat to Carócacas then drove to a small unincorporated village fifty kilometers south of the township. The people came at us straightaway with machetes and tears. Their village was dying, they said. Please help us. Our guide was a burly little man named Augustín and he translated for us, though it was obvious he didn't want to stay.

"The first night we slept under the Jeep. We put down a tarp onto the ground and drove over it, then erected a mosquito net, plugging the bottom into the ground and making a seal with clothespins and heavy stones. The insects were enormous. All night we heard them scuttling and fluttering against the net.

"Malaria was the chief problem. Our early estimates were somewhere around 80% We were told many of the children were in pain and in the middle of the night they screamed out in a language we could not understand. Neither of us got any sleep.

"The next morning Augustín was gone. No one could tell us where he went. No one heard him leave. All of the petrol had been siphoned from the Jeep, and it was obvious he could take just a quarter gallon on foot to one of the regiments stationed nearby and trade it for horses or food. It took half the tank just to get out there.

"Butterflies swooped like bluebirds from the Guinea trees and tickled our arms with their wings, leaving a light frosting of pollen on our white skin. Jane stopped wearing her mask after the first week, which I thought was foolish, and told her so. Why take chances when a vaccine is just a few years away? She responded that she wanted these people to feel 'not alone'. The masks made communication much more difficult, even without the language barrier. She couldn't just stand by while the disease spread to the rest of the population before a vaccine could be developed.

"Still, I didn't want the disease to spread unnecessarily to her in the five or six years before that happened."