The Best American Travel Writing 2013

Jason Wilson

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780547810096
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

Number-one New York Times best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed: A Love Story, Elizabeth Gilbert transports readers to far-flung locales with this collection of the year's lushest and most inspiring travel writing.

JESSE DUKES

Babu on the Bad Road

FROM Virginia Quarterly Review

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God.

—Revelation 22:1

ON JANUARY 10, 1991, Ambilikile Mwasapila dreamed a cure for AIDS. A woman appeared to him, a woman he knew to be infected with HIV, and God sent him into the bush for a cure. It was only a dream, and at the time, Mwasapila, a Lutheran pastor in the remote northern Tanzanian ward of Loliondo, was not sure what it meant. He continued to work in Wasso, an outpost town surrounded by dry and dusty plains occupied by the cattle-herding Masai, and earned a reputation as honest and upright, humble and kind. In 2001, he retired from the ministry and considered moving back to the more populous Babati, where he had lived as a young man. But he heard the same voice, God’s voice, in dreams, telling him to stay, for there was work for him in Loliondo.

Mwasapila remained, and the voice returned many times in the next few years, sometimes when he slept and sometimes when he just closed his eyes. He saw a recurring vision of a multitude gathered under a ridge. He saw tents, cars, and even security guards. In 2006, he moved to a small house in the village of Samunge, at the base of the ridge he had envisioned. One night, he dreamed of a ladder stretching across the sky from the west to the east, colored red as blood. The ladder stopped directly above him. Then, in 2009, God’s voice returned with specific instructions. God told him to climb into the hills to find the bark and root of the tree the local Sonjo people call mugariga. There was a woman in the village whispered to be HIV positive, and on May 25, he gave her a cup of liquid made from boiling the bark. Three weeks later, God’s voice told him the woman was now cured. Later, doctors from the Wasso Hospital tested the woman—and she was shown to be HIV negative.

Mwasapila continued to give the cup of liquid to people with HIV/AIDS, telling them that, after seven days, God would seal the mouths of the viruses inside them. Unable to feed, the virus would die within weeks. In 2010, God told him to give the same medicine to patients with cancer, and later with diabetes, asthma, and epilepsy. In October, the word had spread so that Mwasapila had visitors nearly every day, some traveling a day or more to see him.

In November, a newspaper journalist named Charles Ngereza happened to be traveling from Lake Victoria to Arusha. In the small town of Mto wa Mbu, 200 kilometers south of Samunge on a major route, he saw crowds of people waiting for a bus to take them north, to the middle of the bush. He joined the crowd to see where they were going, met Mwasapila, and interviewed several people who claimed to have been healed by drinking the cup of liquid. The story ran in the national papers.

In January 2011, a contingent of church officials from the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Mwasapila’s former employer, visited Samunge to satisfy themselves that he was not a witch doctor. They returned convinced, traveling to different congregations to bring the news of a new gift from God. More people came to drink a cup of the cure, and there was now a constant queue of vehicles in the road leading into the village.

By March, Mwasapila’s earlier vision had come true. The line of cars and buses to Samunge reached over 20 kilometers on a road that was usually rarely traveled. People waited for days to see Mwasapila and drink a cup of the liquid. Tanzanians took to calling him “Babu”—meaning “Grandfather”—an appellation of respect and affection for any old man. People with chronic illnesses spent small fortunes hiring transportation and traveled for days, using whatever conveyance they could afford. Anybody who owned a car or bus could earn money packing it full of pilgrims seeking Babu’s cure. Entrepreneurs brought trucks with supplies and sold them off the backs of motorcycles for three times their normal value. Travelers slept on the ground, washed in the river, and defecated in the bush. Dozens died waiting to see Mwasapila.

To many Tanzanians, Babu’s medicine was a miracle, a one-step cure. To expatriate tour operators or visitors, it presented a puzzle: how could the locals believe drinking a cup of liquid once would cure a slew of diseases? To many doctors and health professionals—expats and Tanzanians—it was a terrible setback. HIV/AIDS, diabetes, and high blood pressure could all be controlled effectively with modern medicine. Years of effort had gone into developing effective medications and soliciting aid for East Africa, and years more went into convincing Tanzanian patients to submit to HIV testing and maintain the proper regimen of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs). Now many hundreds of people were abandoning ARV therapy, believing themselves cured. Some doctors, respectful of their patients’ beliefs, quietly advised them to continue taking medications, no matter what they were told at Samunge. A few openly predicted disaster.

“It’s just a little farther; we are almost to Digo Digo,” Simon softly calls from the back of the Land Rover. It’s 4 A.M. on June 29, very dark, and I’m driving over a dirt track with photographer Sarah Elliott and Simon, a Masai guide and translator. We woke up a little after midnight to travel from Ngare Sero village, hoping to make Samunge by dawn. The plan came together at the last minute, and without inquiring about the proper paperwork we gambled that if we just showed up at Samunge, I could talk my way into an interview with Mwasapila.² We are taking a route the map calls merely “Bad Road,” ascending the Gregory Rift escarpment in a series of tight turns through hills and canyons. It’s the same road the government plans to turn into a highway that will cross the Serengeti National Park, joining the large city of Arusha with communities on Lake Victoria.

We’ve already been stopped twice in the small hours, and both times, Simon has had to crawl from the back of the overstuffed car and argue with armed police, who used our lack of papers as an excuse to shake him down for a “fine.”³ After the second shakedown, the newly appeased guards made the friendly suggestion that we take an alternate route to Samunge, through a nearby village called Digo Digo. That route stays clear for emergencies and allows supplies and VIPs to enter Samunge without waiting in the queue. Unfortunately, the way is not so well-worn, and we take a wrong turn—rumbling by small settlements and farms, and sliding in sand and fording rivers before Simon finally admits we’re lost.

He crawls out of his car to knock on the door of a mud house. By the light of a kerosene lantern, a woman gives him new directions and, now confident, we drive for another hour, joining better roads, and enter Samunge, just as the sun rises. Samunge is stark and beautiful; the soil is a red clay and, perhaps because it’s in a river valley, the vegetation seems more green and vital than the drier highlands nearby. The narrow Sanjan River flows southeast through the soda flats below, entering the alkaloid Lake Natron. Along the way, it crosses the rift where two great tectonic plates slammed together and have been pulling away from each other for the last 40 million years, forming the Great Rift highlands, volcanoes, and the African Great Lakes, and slowly revealing humanity’s origins in the nearby Olduvai Gorge. Mwasapila’s new Eden is less than a hundred kilometers from our most famous early ancestors.

Samunge lies at the base of a three-peaked range of hills that looks like the Southern California chaparral. Most of the houses are small, framed with sticks, and fleshed with mud. Dirt roads are lined with drab tents and makeshift tarps. The village slowly fills with people seeking medical help, brought by rickety vehicles. The whole scene strangely resembles the set for M*A*S*H. A disembodied, Swahili-speaking Radar O’Reilly shouts instructions through a tinny bullhorn somewhere. People are to gather in a half-hour to hear Babu speak.

Simon goes off to inform officials of our arrival. A crowd is forming at a widening in the main road. People are walking from their cars parked several hundred meters away. Some look obviously unwell, limping or shuffling, helped by relatives. One woman’s foot is twisted 180 degrees from her ankle. Simon returns with a bleary man in striped pajamas; he claims to be an immigration official and asks our business. I explain we are journalists who have come a long way to learn about Babu. “Do you have a permit?” he asks. This is the first I’ve heard of any such thing; I tell him no.

He nods and politely directs us to sit and wait at a small open-air café. A young soldier in green fatigues with a dinged-up assault rifle stands a few meters away. We begin to hear Swahili over the tinny speaker again, and Simon says it’s one of Babu’s assistants explaining how the medicine will be dispensed. Simon has brought other Westerners here before—Americans or Europeans on safari who wished to see the faith healer. He says they usually pay a small fee and then they get to see Mwasapila. But 10 minutes later, the formerly bleary man returns wearing an immigration uniform. Now significantly more imposing, he explains that I will have to “fulfill a process” to get permission to speak to Mwasapila. I ask if I can fulfill the process on the spot. He sighs regretfully and says it’s not within his power to help me. Simon pleads on my behalf, hinting we might pay an informal fee, but, to Simon’s surprise, this has no effect. Apparently, journalists are not as welcome as tourists.

The immigration officer disappears, and Simon tells me the voice we now hear over the speaker is Mwasapila. The voice is crisp, medium-pitched, and slightly nasal, and we hear him list the diseases the medicine will cure: diabetes (“sugar,” as Tanzanians say), hypertension (“blood”), cancer, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS. The officer returns saying I need to travel to Wasso to speak to the district administrator, who will help me obtain the proper papers. “When you walk to your car, you may just peek at Babu over there.” A man in a tie standing nearby objects in Swahili, and Simon tells me not to peek at Babu after all. I obediently look away, hopeful that I will get a chance at a better look later.

Wasso is a 90-minute drive away, and the district administrator is much less patient than the immigration officer, and equally unbudgeable. I have to return to Arusha, the largest city in the north, immediately, and I may conduct no interviews. We leave at first light the next day, and after driving an hour, we spot a minivan from Kenya on the side of the road, its passengers milling around. I pull over and speak to a man who tells me he has just taken a cup of the medicine to cure his diabetes. His eyes are bright, and he says with excitement, “Already, my headache is completely gone.” He says he will stop taking insulin in a week if he continues to feel better.

Another slight man with pale skin approaches the Land Rover. He says, “Excuse me,” in formal English, his voice high and weak. “I have stomach cancer and diabetes.” His belly is distended to the size of a watermelon, and his feet are extraordinarily swollen. “This bus is very cramped, and I very uncomfortable. May I ride in your car to Arusha?” He says his doctor told him he has a month to live, but he is now hopeful the cancer will vanish. I explain our car is full, apologize, and wish him good luck.

After several hours, we descend from the highlands to Ngare Sero on the plain, where Simon makes his home. He introduces me to a man who says his stomach ulcers and indigestion have vastly improved since he visited Samunge last February. This man heard about Mwasapila when Lutheran bishop Thomas Laizer came to his remote village in the Ngorongoro Highlands with word of a miracle cure. As we talk, the young village chairman grabs Simon’s elbow. The Loliondo administrator has sent word by radio that an American journalist might come through the village, and he must not be allowed to conduct interviews. The chairman turns to me and says in English, “If you had come here first, there would be no problem, but now, we have heard the word from Loliondo.” We say a hasty goodbye to Simon and make the five-hour drive back to Arusha.

In 2006, Francis Tesha tested positive for HIV. He lived in Wasso, the outpost town where Ambilikile Mwasapila had been a Lutheran pastor before his retirement. Francis was about 40, married, and had a job at a local hunting lodge partly owned by the royal family of Abu Dhabi. His employers liked him so much that they brought him with them to Abu Dhabi to work for months at a time. When they heard about his diagnosis, he was fired and sent back to Wasso. His wife died a few months later—of malaria. Their neighbors believed the shock weakened her and that she may have also had HIV, but she refused to be tested or take medication.

Francis did accept ARV therapy and took the pills every day. He joined the HIV support group in Wasso and became its secretary. He was gregarious and well liked. In October 2010, he heard reports of a healer in Samunge who could cure HIV. Although Francis felt healthy, he figured if he killed the viruses in his body, he could be certified HIV negative, allowing him to get his old job back. On October 2, he took a bus from Wasso to Samunge, drank the liquid, and spoke with Mwasapila, who assured him that after 21 days, the virus would be gone from his body. Francis returned to Wasso in high spirits, telling his friends at the HIV support group that Babu could free them of the virus and the ARVs.

Francis stayed off the ARVs for three weeks as instructed, and then excitedly went to the hospital for an HIV test. To his dismay, he was still HIV positive, and in fact, his CD4 count had diminished.⁴ He reluctantly began taking ARVs again, but now he felt much more vulnerable to side effects, becoming dizzy and nauseated when he took the drugs. To settle his stomach, he occasionally skipped his ARVs. In February, he was hospitalized for a secondary infection and, when he got out a few days later, started saying he no longer believed in Mwasapila’s medicine. His neighbors whispered that Francis had a new girlfriend with whom he had sex with no condom. Babu had cured him, they reasoned, but he allowed himself to become reinfected.

Despite Francis Tesha’s faint warnings, by February of last year, Babu was a national phenomenon, and the BBC reported 6,000 people in line at his clinic. Unlike Francis, many people returned from Loliondo with powerful testimonials. Diabetics swore their blood sugar had normalized and they could drink sodas and eat bread again. Stomach ulcers subsided, and aches and pains vanished. Newspapers reported the woman Babu treated in 2009 was confirmed HIV negative, and people excitedly related stories of cousins or neighbors who were cured of HIV/AIDS.

The Tanzanian government seemed internally conflicted about how to respond to Mwasapila. In March, the Ministry of Health announced they were ordering the healer to cease his activities. At the same time, ministers from other parts of the government enthusiastically made the trip to Samunge. Dr. Salash Toure, the Arusha regional health officer, declared publicly that his hospital had tested dozens of people who claimed to be cured of HIV, and all had tested positive. However, the influential Lutheran bishop Thomas Laizer lobbied on Mwasapila’s behalf, calling the liquid “a gift from God.” The lines at Samunge grew.

On March 25, the government reversed course, announcing that the herbal concoction was safe to drink and that they would take no action to stop people from visiting Samunge to take the cure, but would start registering vehicles and providing basic services like first aid and toilets to the overtaxed village. The Ministry of Health appointed a team of doctors to study the effects of the liquid. In April, the government acknowledged 87 people had died while in transit to Samunge.

Kati Regan, the American managing director of Support for International Change (SIC), felt compelled to go directly to the Ministry of Health to clarify government policy toward Mwasapila. The NGO provides treatment and counseling to people with HIV, and she estimates 20 percent of their clients abandoned ARV therapy in March or April. Some of her Tanzanian colleagues told her Mwasapila’s cure worked, and she had to fend off HIV patients who wanted to borrow the organization’s truck to make the trip. For Regan, this was a huge setback. “You never want to see someone going off treatment, especially when you’ve worked for years to have it be part of their routine,” she said. But Regan still refrained from offering an opinion of Mwasapila’s liquid out of respect for her clients’ beliefs. “I didn’t want to offend someone who decided to go, and I sympathize with someone who wants a cure.”

Not all health workers were as circumspect. Pat Patten was especially blunt: “I don’t believe in faith healing; I think this is a deception. And I’m a Catholic priest.” Patten is also a pilot and the director of Flying Medical Service. He has lived and worked in Tanzania for over 30 years. A Spiritan priest, he wears secular jeans and T-shirts while flying bush planes to remote settlements, providing regular rotating clinics, and flying emergency evacuations. “I’m open to a powerful placebo effect, but placebo effects only relieve the symptoms, never the root of the problem.”

He remembers the shock of flying over Mwasapila’s village in February, looking out the window of his Cessna 206 to see a traffic jam. Now, after talking to doctors throughout the region, he is convinced Mwasapila’s treatment has led to disaster. “What we’re seeing is a lot of AIDS patients dying in hospitals because they’ve stopped taking medicine. Diabetics are now going blind, suffering kidney failure, experiencing swelling in their hands and feet, and getting diabetic sores on their extremities.” He worries about an outbreak of drug-resistant tuberculosis and adds, “These are all unnecessary deaths, all of them.”

And the famous story of Mwasapila’s first patient, Patten claims, was a lie. He spoke to doctors familiar with the case who said the woman had never tested positive before taking Babu’s cure, that she only feared she might be infected—but, Patten says, “the damage has been done.”

And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse.

—Revelation 22:2–3

Back in Arusha, after my first failed trip to meet Mwasapila, I spend the day in government offices, talking...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Introduction
• A Prison, a Paradise
• The Bull Passes Through
• The Way I’ve Come
• Blot Out
• The Year I Didn’t
• Tea and Kidnapping
• The Paid Piper
• Dentists Without Borders
• Confessions of a Packing Maximalist
• Summerland
• The Wild Dogs of Istanbul
• Bombing Sarajevo
• Vietnam’s Bowl of Secrets
• Babu on the Bad Road
• The Pippiest Place on Earth
• Dreaming of El Dorado
• Caliph of the Tricksters
• A Farewell to Yarns
• Pirate City
• Contributors’ Notes
• Notable Travel Writing of 2012
• Read More from The Best American Series®
• About the Editor
• Footnotes