Free The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years by Sonia Shah Page A

Calzada. Panama prides itself on being one of just a handful of tropical developing countries to have tamed its mosquitoes and nearly conquered malaria. American military engineers built a canal through Panama in the early 1900s, and forced malaria to retreat to the remote fringes of the country. Since then it has stagnated, primarily in its most benign incarnation, vivax malaria, which is rarely fatal.
    But things have changed in recent years, and Calzada has agreed to show me some obscure signs. He emerges from the imposing Gorgas Memorial Institute, Panama’s sole health research center. Clean-shaven and trim, Calzada has a slightly worried look in his eyes that is offset by high cheekbones suggesting a perpetual half-smile. I wait while he meticulously changes out of his work clothes—button-down oxford shirt and slacks—and into a T-shirt and jeans. Climbing into my diminutive white rental car and tossing a baseball cap on top of his backpack in the backseat, he patiently directs me out of the labyrinthine metropolis. Navigating Panama City’s congested streets, past shiny skyscrapers and packed cafés, is a task that challenges even my well-honed Boston driving skills.
    After twenty minutes heading east out of the city, the road turns quiet. It’s a lovely drive, with hills in the distance, verdant pasture and scrub unbroken save for a few elaborately gated houses set far back from the road. Colombian drug lords, Calzada says, by way ofexplanation. Another hour passes, and the road rises, a glittering lake coming into view, just visible through a tangle of jungle. As we near the water, the pavement ends, and we pull over.
    Here, at the end of the road, is the town of Chepo. From what I can see, it consists of a wooden lean-to facing a sleepy roadside café. Two police officers amble out of the lean-to, which turns out to be a checkpoint. They take my passport and vanish, leaving Calzada and me to buy a cold drink at the near-empty café. As we sit, I can just make them out in the murk within the lean-to, inspecting the blue passport with great care, turning it over and over in their hands as if for clues to some baffling mystery.
    Inspection completed, Calzada leads us on foot behind the road. The hillside is green and lush, with a slick red clay track leading to the crest. He heads up and I follow gingerly.
    At the top of the hill lies an improbable settlement. Packed together, not ten feet apart, are dozens of hand-built ranchos, their thatched roofs sitting on top of roughly hewn wooden poles. More arbor than hut, some of the structures rest on concrete slabs, with airy wooden-slat walls on three sides, but most are fully open-air, situated directly on the packed dirt. Inside the ranchos, smoldering fires are encircled by battered metal cooking vats, parrots sit on overturned baskets, and hammocks sway from high rafters.
    From the road, Chepo seems abandoned, but in fact, three hundred of Panama’s indigenous Kuna people live here, tucked away.
    It starts to rain, and we duck under the eaves of a rancho. Women pass to and fro in bright puffed-sleeve cotton blouses with patterned
molas
tied around their waists and elaborate beaded anklets that reach up to their calves. They are cutting plantains, carrying plump naked children. One puts out a giant metal vat to collect the rainwater sliding off the thatch. A rooster strides by purposefully.
    A half-dozen boys clad in saggy cotton underwear and wearing shell necklaces happily kick a deflated green soccer ball. One boy, around eight years old and wearing cracked red plastic flip-flops, gnaws on a green mango pit while absentmindedly pulling on hispenis. A little girl walks by holding a baby covered in a rash, whom she hands to me easily. It is a tranquil scene, earthy and ripe, this hidden place at the end of the road.
    It is soon apparent that most of the residents are in one of the larger ranchos, sitting around a smoky fire. Peeking in, we see them singing softly