I Feel it All

It is hot and needs to rain.When I asked the question if this was the beginning of dry season I was told "no", that this was in fact "the end of rainy season". So, that cleared that up.

The thing with Ango is it becomes so unbearably hot and then the sky relents and releases torrents of rain and wind flavored with thunder and lightning that keeps your eyes glued to the sky for hours on end. Though rainy season wreaks havoc on the roads here and you have to allow hours more for travel between point A and point B, it does keep you from going insane in the humid jungle heat and the monotony of soul penetrating sun which, I mist point out, is a far cry from the healing sun I always knew growing up in California. My California sun was welcoming and wrapped its arms around you. The sun here is menacing and you just do what you can to hide from it like a playground bully.

These are two different suns, without a doubt. 

What makes the sun feel even crueler is the 101F/38C fever I am running due to my immune system frantically trying to figure out what to do about my red blood cells exploding one by one. 

You go to bed feeling fine after an evening of bitching about life then laughing about it over whisky before calling it a night at 9:37 because you are all exhausted and can't believe it is only Wednesday. 

Then, you wake up at 2am with terrible stomach cramps and think again about the latest batch of homemade yogurt from powdered milk but fall back asleep... until 3am when you scramble for your headlamp and make your way in the chilly clear skyed night to the pit latrines. This pattern continues twice an hour until you have a headache and are so exhausted you just sleep in the paillot (mud hut half-way point between bed and bathroom) between the excitement. 

Around 5am Ellen is there, working. Our health projects are needing lots of report writing these days. Being the good nurse she is, she asks how I am in all sorts of other details that I will spare you.

Ellen: I'll get you some orals.

Me: I get Oreos!?!

By 11am I can't walk to the bathroom without needing to stop and rest, which is problematic considering the urgency of the situation. A rapid result malaria test says negative, but the way those work is that if it says you are positive, you are, but if it says you are negative, you might or might not be. 1pm we pricked another finger for the blood and got a clear positive result. I started on malaria meds that have just as exciting side effects as malaria itself has to offer.

I can feel each individual cell, I swear. They have all turned into tiny sandbags and I can barely move. I give up on Skyping because it is nearly impossible to lay next to my computer and exert the energy required to lift a hand and 4 fingers as typing requires one key being hit at a time and thoughts are less clearly conveyed when your hand just lays on the keyboard with the weight of a thousand sandbags. I fall asleep and wake up in the exact same position, because even my subconscious cannot move me in this state.

Woke up this morning after two heavy doses of meds feeling half way decent. Well, maybe not halfway, but I am sitting upright and typing with two hands and that is a major improvement. I even ate a piece of bread. Miraculous.


While I can no longer say I am the only one in Ango who has not gotten malaria since being here any longer, I am happy it didn't require a medevac like two of the other expats here or just straight up kill me like a lot of the population because they don't have access to the right meds. Malaria kills more people a year than AIDS. Not cool.

Of course I got to thinking of the sick people around Ango. So many of them ride with their sick family members on the back of their bikes for miles and miles to get medical treatment, often waiting till it is nearly too late because of what a hard journey it would be and the questionable treatment they could receive. Recently a story came through of a lady from Ango taking her sick husband on a bicycle to a health center that was 15km away. He died en route so she had to turn around and take his body back home to be buried. 


Its a tough life, no matter what way you look at it. 

Anyway, that's the news from Ango. 
I am never leaving my mosquito net again.