Malaria Lessons

In May 2012, I traveled to Uganda with the noble intention of serving as a Peace Corps volunteer. After ten weeks of training and getting sworn in as a community health volunteer, I moved to the small town of Bugiri to start life with a new community for two years. Within a week of arriving, I fell sick with malaria. After three days of being nearly bed-ridden in Bugiri and a week of medical treatment in the capital, Kampala, I resigned from the Peace Corps and flew home to the United States to recover. I felt like I’d had a brush with death.

I am learning to accept my disappointment at not being able to complete my term of service with the Peace Corps, and I am hopeful I can be reinstated. I did not imagine the toll disease would take on my body – nor did I imagine how much it would teach me.

The symptoms I experienced from malaria included low energy and emotions, the loss of a sense of taste, simultaneous sweats and chills, and vivid violent dreams. At the lowest moments, I was ready to welcome death because I was in so much physical pain. There were moments when I felt like I was losing myself – almost as if suffering was a gift given to awaken some parts of my being. I’ve experienced this momentary awareness before in meditation, though not in the same manner.

As Charles Fritz notes in his book, Disasters and Mental Health, “Disasters provide a temporary liberation from the worries, inhibitions, and anxieties associated with the past and future because they force people to concentrate their full attention on immediate moment-to-moment, day-to-day needs within the context of the present realities.”

So does illness. Going on being – surviving – was completely captivating, as it was the task at hand.

As the illness weakened, I found that it made me more intense – less willing to waste time and more insistent about what was relevant. As the Nicaraguan poet Gioconda Belli said after the 1972 Managua earthquake, “You realize that life has to be lived well or is not worth living. It’s a very profound transformation that takes place during catastrophes. It’s like a near-death experience but lived collectively.”

I am touched by the many kindnesses I received from strangers. In Uganda, my host family treated me as one of their own and later e-mailed me from across the miles. In Kampala, a Canadian neighbor at a guesthouse where I stayed bought me yogurt during the time I was sick. Their attention and empathy contributed to my physical and emotional resilience. Everyday life was made a little bit better.

I am confident that the bonds of love that formed during this experience will always be present. At one point, I wished that life could always be like this. But later, I realized I didn’t need such loving, attentive care all the time, because it is always implicitly there. It means a great deal to think that the same subtle treatment exists in society at large—not consistently, but in very important ways.

Varsha Mathrani is a native of Queens, NY and has been involved in public service in places like Alaska, Thailand, India, and Uganda. She has degrees in biology and environmental health. Varsha recently returned to the US after serving in the Peace Corps, and is looking for a job in the broad field of her interest.

Her passion includes positive social change, equity and justice for all. Varsha has more than seven years of work experience with nonprofit, non-governmental and international organizations, such as Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Project GreenHands, the United Nations Environment Program, ServiceSpace and as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uganda. She hopes to contribute her skills in research, writing and advocacy and employ her values and ideals in finding fulfilling employment aligning with her service values. She was a 2009 Fulbright Scholar and a 2011 intern with the Millennium Villages Project, a project of Columbia University’s Earth Institute and the United Nations Development Program.

Varsha is artistic and creative with calligraphy, origami (including micro-origami), beading, and jewelry making. She’s also an avid volunteer. You can contact her at varsha.mathrani@gmail.com.