flash back

I was reading a book the other evening. I was in bed relaxing from my long day. In the book the main character is helping take care of people who were sick, the people had high fevers and were delusional. The didn't go into to much detail about what they did or said only that they weren't making to much sence or they thought they were somewhere else. As I was reading it I had a very intense flashback to Tchad. The memory hit me without any warning -bam.

It was the week that the little boy from our Church died. He had malaria that wasn't taken care of sooner and it had gone cerebrial. He laid in the bed closest to the door, it was a private area and had windows on two of the four sides with one wall being a curtain. He would cry out all night and day, he would cry out to Jesus over and over. He would talk loudly as though he were reliving memories from playing down at the river with his siblings. His family would stay by his side fanning him, trying to hold him, feed him, wish him better health.

The memory was so heavy I had to set my book aside and just accept the memory and review the whole thing. I remembered him lying in his sweat, with the Africa patterned material as his sheet. Things came back to me, from me passing his family constantly as I walked through the hospital to the night shifts I worked and could hear the cries all night to the fear and dedication his older brother had as he sat by his side for the time he was in the hospital. Then I remembered his death. The raw pain we felt when we (the sm's) realized that we would never see him or hear him sing in church. How it hurt when we heard the death/morning chants coming from his hut compound.

It was all so fast and so real and so, so Africa.