Time had dragged on in Dowayoland. My own metabolic processes seemed to have adapted to a slower pace of life. Outsiders who appeared seemed to flash across the horizon at indecent speed. I rose, ate, drank, excreted, talked. Time passed. Most of the day was spent with a local healer who had accepted me as a pupil. We went out together, discussed illnesses. (How do you know it is this illness? Is this just a sign of another illness or an illness itself?) I became skilled in the art of diagnosis. I learned how to rub slices of zepto together, like the healers, to divine whether the ultimate cause of disease was ancestral displeasure, witchcraft, a violated interdiction, contact with polluted people and so on. I learned herbal remedies. I learned how to bleed a woman suffering from excess of blood owing to exposure to sunlight. My tutor was as sagacious, gentle and rigorous as my tutor at Oxford had been.

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