While my brother was here, I got sick. It was bad. On one day I pretty much could not sit up. The next day, my brother got sick. After a day of lying in bed motionless for hours, he started hallucinating. It was probably about 12:30 at night. I called Tom, my driver. He showed up in 5 minutes.

Hallucinations can be a symptom of Malaria, so I figured he should probably have a malaria test. “Should we go to MSF (Doctors Without Borders)?” I asked Tom. “No,” he said, “All the white doctors go home at night. We should go to SOS.”

So we drove 20 minutes out of town to the International SOS clinic. This is one of the most expensive clinics in Monrovia, so I figured it would provide reasonable care. Tom drove the entire way with his hazard lights on. “This is how people know that there is someone sick in the car,” Tom explained. A make-shift Liberian ambulance, I thought. As we started driving through a checkpoint where we always tend to get hassled at night, we were ushered right through. I couldn’t help think how easy it would be for someone to get arms into town just by putting hazard lights on.

The SOS clinic was empty. A security guard took us inside and started looking for a health professional. I use the phrase health professional because I have no clue what types of qualifications the people working at SOS have. Finally a guy in a white lab coat came out to the lobby. He had clearly just woken up.

“This is my friend,” I said, pointing to my brother, “He’s sick.” I told the guy his symptoms. The guy looked dazed. He looked at my brother, he looked at the wall, he looked at me, he looked back at the wall.

“I could,” long pause, “check him out,” the “doctor” said.

“Ok,” I said, “what would checking him out involve?”

There was another long pause. The guy looked at the wall, back at my brother, back at me. “I could check his heart rate,” he said, not decisively.

I turned to Jonathan and mumbled quickly under my breath, “Letsgetoutofhere.”

We left. We went to the Catholic hospital, which is also supposed to be good. The receptionist was asleep. We walked into a large room. A physicians assistant was in scrubs, and several nuns were hanging out with him in the room. He was professional, but I just got the sense he was repeating two paragraphs he had read in a medical text book. After consult, the PA decided my brother’s temperature should be taken. One of the nun’s picked up a thermometer and went to put it in my brother’s mouth. The PA stopped her quickly, “No, no,” he said, “It goes under his arm.”

I smirked visibly, and quickly regretted it. But I was just amazed that the “nurse” did not know how to use the thermometer they had.

The PA told me he had a temperature of 99 degrees. “See, he has a fever, he has malaria.”

“Well,” I said, “That’s not really a fever. Isn’t it possible he is just dehydrated?” The PA said no. He needed a malaria test. I declined. I didn’t want someone who didn’t know how to use a thermometer poking him with a needle. We went home. My brother went to sleep and woke up pretty much fine.

My first reaction during all this was to laugh. The medical care at night (I hear it’s better during the day) was so inadequate it was funny. My second reaction was to be afraid for my brother. My third reaction was to be afraid for Liberians. If a Liberian has a heart attack in the middle of the night, they’re screwed. Tom said that many of his relatives have died because they got sick at night and there was no one available to give them adequate care.