Story for performance #104
webcast from Sydney at 05:58PM, 02 Oct 05

In Niger the sun rises about five hours before it shows its face in Paris, yet in Niger people lift their heads from their straw mats about the same time as the people in Paris lift theirs from soft pillows and mattresses. In Niger, the women leave their huts at daybreak to walk the entire morning to collect water. They then return at about the same time Parisians sit down for coffee and croissant.

About the same time that Dr Cohen, expert in global water rights took his first sip of his morning coffee, Anna’s mother, back in Niger took a sip of the precious water she had walked all morning to collect. She only took a little because she knew there wouldn’t be a trip tomorrow. The pains had returned and she knew that in a few hours, they would take hold of her so badly that she would spend the rest of the day and night heaving out the disease that she had been stupid enough to catch.

Some people say that all our realities are intertwined; one’s water is another’s thirst. Some people say that when a man beats his wife in the Northern seas, a storm will begin rocking the boat of another man in the Southern seas. They also say that when he beats her again, the boat will crack, when he beats her a third time, the boat will sink and its passengers drown. Anna’s father used to say ‘don’t kick another man’s dog, because one day he’ll come back to kill your child.’


No, Dr Cohen wasn’t the first hotel guest Lucille bedded, nor would he be the last. Besides the fact that she didn’t mind sex with strangers, besides the fact that she actually preferred it, Lucille liked these encounters. They lifted the heaviness from life, gave her spirit back a bit of lightness—lightness which had been robbed of her when that weak excuse for a husband had left her, left her with the two kids, no money and a head full of lost hopes.

After leaving Dr Cohen’s room, Lucille walked back to the House Staff Supervisor’s room. She ran her hand up to her panty line where the Doctor had left her the money. Anna needn’t know about that, Lucille said to herself, that’s got nothing to do with her, she affirmed silently.

Anna Kendeh had been her supervisor from day one. She had a reputation for taking pity on hard-done-by and immigrant women and Lucille being both, had been hired instantly. Three months ago, Lucille had been caught having sex with one of the guests. Instead of firing her, Anna let her do it again, but not straightaway, Lucille was to do it with somebody of Anna’s choosing.

Although the day had started off like any other, when Lucille had arrived at work and found Anna waiting for her, she knew the time had come.

‘I don’t care what you do with him, you can screw him three times over, just make sure he drinks his coffee’, said Anna, pushing Doctor Cohen’s breakfast tray into Lucille’s open hands.

‘Pas de problème Madame’ said Lucille and walked off to Dr Cohen’s room.

After Lucille had told Anna she had done the job and then left her office, Anna closed the door behind, leaned her back against it and then slid down the length of it, letting herself fall heavily into a sobbing heap on the floor.

‘Finally’, she cried, ‘finally.’

Although it had been five years since they were gone, not a day had passed where she hadn’t woken with the feeling of dread and disbelief in her heart. Five years since she had watched them all, all but her mother perish. They had come, promising vaccinations; pure, clean water; latrines; wells: instead they used them as guinea pigs and one by one they had died. The lot of them, close to 500. She remembered what the team of medical saviours had said to the World Health Organisation and other authorities, who in turn reported to the world through western news outlets: ‘A typhoid epidemic has wiped out almost all of the inhabitants of an Eastern Niger village.’

Not a single one of them had died of typhoid, yet every single last one of them had received an injection.

She also remembers what her sister had said to the Doctor, a nice smelling, good-looking man. She had almost mistaken him for a woman when she had first seen him, smiling at her younger sister, trying to find a vein in her skinny arm.

‘My father used to work out here occasionally’, had said the Doctor.

‘I only ever remember one Doctor coming through this village’, had said my sister, ‘he told me that I would never talk, never walk and look at me now.’

He laughed and stuck the needle in her arm as well.


As Doctor Maurice Cohen marched towards his destiny, a strange pain started in his lower abdomen which quickly rose up to his stomach multiplying in intensity. He took hold of a street post and breathed deeply, a feeling of sick rose in his stomach and he quickly put his hand to his mouth to cover it. The lingering smell of over-perfumed soap on his fingers coupled, with the rising vomit did him no good.

As Doctor Maurice Cohen lay dying on rue du Montparnasse in Paris, Anna’s mother back in Niger, suddenly started to feel better, better than she had ever felt before.

Adapted for performance by Barbara Campbell from a story by Mira Cuturilo.