“It’s better if you go to the doctor!” Henrike insisted, as she was preparing to present her conference talk, “A Missing African Peace?”, at the Peace History Society. I really did not want to miss her talk, yet the condition of my body was seriously starting to get to my head. Henrike gave me her phone in case , and I left for the hospital. At the emergency department, I described what I had been dealing with over the past week: how my joints had felt paralysed, my mind split open as if by a sledgehammer, and the constant feverish highs and lows. “It must be malaria” I heard one of the doctors whisper. Internally, I shook my head. The whole situation felt a bit absurd, as it seemed they were there to make me undergo as many medical procedures as possible (for example, an X-ray, which I politely declined) for the sake of “broad screening.” Aside from the astronomical prices, this broken medical system also appeared not to have heard of Dengue or Chikungunya… Though they could not test for what I was hoping for, the results still brought relief. The only things they found were food-poisoning bacteria and broken-down muscle tissue.

I went back to the conference, joined the keynote talk, and afterwards we drove back to our place in Georgia. Every day we made the same drive back and forth to the conference at Berry College. On the way back to our place, we always knew exactly which turn to take because there was a raccoon lying by the roadside in permanent rigor mortis.

The next day, Carolien, Daniele, and I were scheduled to speak in the afternoon. Despite the sickness, I felt a stubborn desire to present my paper. I had come so far from Uruli Kanchan and prepared it, why not do it? The three of us were on the same panel, with Michael Clinton from Gwynedd as chair and commenter. Carolien introduced our project and spoke about Gandhigram, the India–China Friendship March of 1963, and others that highlighted the global character of the peace movement. Daniele gave a talk on peace and decolonization in the Maghreb, focusing on the role of trade unionists, the Comité tunisien pour la défense de la paix, and the (attempted) unity between nationalists and communists. I was content with my own talk too.

That evening, an enormous sense of relief came over me, both because of the hospital test results and because the talk was behind me. We celebrated by having dinner at a Thai place, with a lovely and funny lady behind the counter, and then going to a screening at the international film festival in Rome: Coroner to the Stars.

With the conference behind us, we were meant to make our way to the Swarthmore Peace Collection in Philadelphia. Upon arriving at Atlanta airport, Henrike and I discovered that our flights had been canceled due to the government shutdown. With a rapid change of plans, we managed to get onto another flight and ran to its final boarding call, this one was heading to Baltimore. From there, we took a train to Philadelphia.

As we walked toward Swarthmore College next morning, with the crisp air blowing into my face, I vividly remember how much I enjoyed being in the USA with our team. The next few days mostly consisted of walking to the archive, working through materials at the Swarthmore Peace Collection, and walking back again. Most days I walked and chatted with Pratika, we share a similar walking speed and sense of humor. On the archive, our entire team agreed that this was probably the most well-organized and well-prepared one any of us had worked in. On the second day, we had a lunch in Swarthmore’s main dining hall (so many options!) together with members of the Swarthmore Archives. Since Daniele and I were heading to Washington DC that Saturday, we decided to visit Philadelphia on a weekday evening. Pratika joined us, and we took a long stroll through the city, followed by a delicious dinner at a Korean restaurant. One evening we also went out to eat with Michael Clinton and Scott Bennett at a Chinese restaurant, then, we ended the night at a cozy jazz café. Finally, a favorite part of the trip was playing Punto with our team in the evening. 🙂