Les prénoms congolais sont sensiblement différents des prénoms francophones auxquels je suis habituée. Je ne parle pas des noms d’origine swahili ou kiluba – les Muzinga, les Sopo, les Moké, les Dhiam – ceux-là, on s’y attend. Non, les noms qui m’intéressent et que je trouve gentiment insolites sont ceux qui dénotent une trace d’ancien français.
En voici quelques-uns, certains apparemment d’une étymologie biblique éloignée.
- Apolline, discutée auparavant
- Nestor
- Prospérine et Prosper, ou devrait-ce être Prospère?
- Adressé
- Placide
- Généreuse
- Marcellin
- Bienvenu (il y en a deux à la base)
- Héritier
- Pharaon
- Célestine
- Nessila
- Athanase (c’est un homme)
- Costasie (c’est une femme)
- Fulgence (c’est un homme)
- Prudence (c’est une femme)
- et mon préféré: Potiphar, prénom d'origine biblique selon certains et égyptienne selon d'autres.
Ne sont-ils pas pittoresques? Je me demande si je pourrais en ramener au Québec. Ça pourrait partir une nouvelle mode pour la prochaine génération: les Célestine et les Adressé feraient suite aux Emma et Charlie en vogue chez nous présentement...
Aussi, quelques expressions congolaises que je trouve jolies trahissent leurs origines dans un français d’une autre époque ou une langue africaine imagée:
- ne fût-ce que
- bon service! (mots prononcés pour clore une réunion)
- j’aimerais soulever quelques préoccupations (quelques questions)
- il n’y a pas de souci (sans problème)
- une fièvre vespérale (le soir seulement)
- une constipation opiniâtre
C’est donc avec raison que le Larousse accepte maintenant toutes les variantes du français depuis quelques années, que ce soit du québécois ou du congolais. Ça fait plaisir que de voir que notre belle langue demeure bien vivante.
* * *
An ancient disease
Most pathologies seen by MSF workers revolve around malnutrition, tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS. They are the same everywhere because we work in tropical countries where poverty and malnutrition are rampant. On my arrival, the most common diagnoses in the ward were fever in children and obstetric complications. We had cases of diabetes and hypertensive strokes, odd in this context. Then I started going through some reading handed down to me by another MSF faithful, Rags, and thought, hmmm, strange, I haven’t seen much tuberculosis or malnutrition. They should really be the bane of a population like ours. Where did they go? More importantly, am I missing the diagnoses?
Well, ask and you shall receive. With a bang! After a nadir of nine patients in the ward last week, tuberculosis walked in with bells and whistles. We now have five children with recalcitrant cervical adenopathy, a woman with impressive ascites, a teenager who is all skin and bones, and a few adults with weight loss and chronic cough. Now half the ward is likely tuberculosis. And a few pediatric pneumonias that haven’t responded well to regular antibiotics are probably also tuberculosis. If they are complicated by HIV, well, there is no way to find out because there is no laboratory here yet. Which also makes my life more difficult because sputums have to be sent out to Dubie for examination – Ziehl-Neelsen staining. In the meantime, I must follow protocol by treating with regular antibiotics for two weeks to prove that they don’t work before starting antituberculosis medications. We have regrouped all the coughing patients in one tent, faraway from the newborns – no such things as duck masks or negative pressure ventilation out here! (And yes indeed, I’ll need a chest X-Ray when I get back home; the isoniazid regimen is planned; thankfully, I don’t drink much to start with).
Tuberculosis, or TB in medical jargon, is an ancient disease well adapted to humankind. It was found in the bones of Egyptian mummies and in Chinese tombs, so it’s been living with us for millenia. The bacterium causing it, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, also referred to as Bacille de Koch, has developed such resistance that it now requires three simultaneous antibiotics for six months to be eradicated. M. tuberculosis fares well in dark, overcrowded environments and weak, malnourished patients. It is killed with heat, sunlight, chlorine or javel, and the long course of antituberculosis drugs. The disease was the ‘consumption’ of centuries ago for which sanatoriums were invented. It chiefly consists of a protracted chronic process of wasting away. Young healthy people are usually asymptomatic carriers. Back home, the internal medicine people get all excited about it because the disease has become so rare. They love to discuss all its pathologies and different organ involvements. Medical students must learn that TB is at the bottom of nearly every differential diagnosis. I’m now seeing it in all its forms: lymphadenopathy, ascites, pulmonary, arthritis and cold abscesses. An internist’s delight, straight out of Harrison’s textbook. I find myself walking around mumbling ‘scrofula’, ‘scrofula’, which is the name for tuberculosis neck ganglions. (Call me weird). Of course, regrouping all the coughing patients in one warm tent with no air circulation is far from ideal. But it’s as good as it gets out here. Our sickest patient is the teenager who probably has had TB for quite a while. He was unconscious so his brother strapped on a bicycle and brought him in from a village 20 km away. His prognosis remains reserved at this point in time.
The "ambulance" that brought him:
On another note, the lady with the Bible uterus walked out today, and so did the seizing lady who had lost her firstborn. A man who presented with coma and seizures for a few days woke up today and spat out his oral airway, requesting manioc and the presence of his sons. So far, we’ve had amazing outcomes given the in extremis presentations and very few means of treatment: no oxygen, no monitors, no IV pumps, not even IV poles – the bags are hung on strings from the tent ceiling, next to the bednets. It’s a far cry from my university teaching centre practice back home, and yet, patients do get better. Human resilience does not cease to surprise me.
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