Fictionalized Letter to Ochiogu

June 11th 1982 Vom, Nigeria

Dear Ochiogu,

For the past six days the rain has been relentless; it is as though every ounce of land has been saturated by it. The monsoon season has transformed dirt into the shifty state of mud and even the wings of flies are weighed down by heavy droplets that are seemingly suspended in the thick, humid air. The sun, which only weeks ago was relentless in its effort to warm each surface with yellow light is currently obscured by amorphous grey clouds that, while not ominous, shroud the sky with uncertainty: ​will the rain ever let up? ​Not surprisingly, this weather has been beneficial for my work, as there is little incentive to leave the laboratory. Gone are the days of galavanting lazily in the sun, the dry heat numbing any lurking thoughts of approaching deadlines and experiments if only for a few moments. Nigerian summer, with its brightness, stuns my cells into a lax state and my motivation into oblivion. And then suddenly, as though nature itself was saying “Now you shall work,” the incremental spin of the world’s axis  shifted me into a space of concentration, wherein the lab became my refuge from the damp, darkening world outside these windows. The lab, with its white floors and overhead incandescent lights, has become a sort of homebase. Here, the smell of the animals is ever present; the malted smell of their feed, the sour tinge of urine tainted bedding. Even in the graduate student center, where I am writing this now, the smell of the guinea pigs looms over me, eliciting images of their blank beady eyes and rotund faces.The smell, it seems, is an ever present beconning for me to get back to work. Food cannot be enjoyed amidst this pungent air, nor can conversation, or any leisure. So, I go back to work as soon as possible, observing, studying, and taking notes on these creatures while a small flame of resentment towards them grows alongside a blooming sense of familiarity.

As you know, my stay at the National Veterinary Institute is a temporary one. I am studying a recent outbreak among an experimental cohort of guinea pigs here, so for the past few weeks the incessant sound of scuttling and squeaking- beings longing to be released from a sort of caged hell- has been fixed alongside the stench. The sick animals seem oddly soulful in their suffering. Looking at the small bodies, hair matted and eyes a deep resin, I cannot help but feel that if animals could despair, perhaps they would look like this. But my job is not to write about compassionate caregiving in experimental rodents. As my colleagues at the institute Ezenne and Obinaira have joked “the veterinarian in me comes out” whenever I start to see these animals as more than manifestations of microbial pathology. A few days ago the sickest of the animals were killed and just yesterday I went to the path lab to do the tissue fixture. Thin slices of lung were almost beautiful on the glass slides, the spongy tissue porous and brilliantly purple. At times it feels like the stilled preservation of tissue is another life for these transient creatures, a fixed eternity in formaldehyde. I wonder how different being caged between the glass of a tissue slide is from the lives that they live now. It is obvious that these animals live a life behind bars, their bodies fleshy vessels for the extraction and deposition of clear, viscous fluids dripping almost lavishly from a syringe. Their life, in short, feels meaningless which may be the cruelest part because that meaninglessness cannot be mindlessly explored in the dense jungles of freedom. Despite the tragedy of their lives, I cannot help but feel a swell of joy when a quarantined individual responds to treatment, a tentative regaining of nose twitches and eye blinking emerging from the animal. ​They have been saved, but from what? ​After all, they will spend the rest of their lives here in this institute, a rotating fixture of gloved hands ushering them through their eternity of one or two more years. I hope at least, that my palms can be warm and gentle, compassionate despite the sterile boundary of latex.

Suffering, I now see, is a festering thing not unlike an infection. It can be treated, but for most the body is indelibly altered by the event. The trauma is locked within and an inoperable understanding of distress stays entangled within the synapses. I think about this idea often as I slice the tissue of the deceased animals for analysis, the stink of biological rot in conflict with the overpowering smell of disinfectant. Sterility and decay, an empirical world versus an emotional one. I feel changed by my time in Vom and I am not sure whether that is a good thing. After I have collected my samples, I plan on heading back to Ibadan to do culturing and characterization of the microbes. I feel certain that only once I leave Vom I can escape the images of these creatures and the question of their meaningless existence. Only once the ever present smell of their feed is gone can I breathe deeply and forget the beady eyes, the gnawing incisors, and the emerging questions of morality that I feel are best left to philosophers.

Yours truly, Chike