I am not a Guava

Colby the Colobus - Part Two

That night Colby cuddled in my arms and fell asleep. I gave him tree climbing lessons, walked him around, fed him various fruits and generally spent too much time thinking about how awesome this was.

He would turn when I called his name, run to me when I knelt down and climb on me when I held out my hands.

I loved him.

So, Monday we met and Tuesday I was feeding Colby a guava when it fell out of my hand and he bit the next available thing... me. I immediately put him on his tree stump and started squeezing the space between my thumb and pointer finger. At first, it did not seem he had broken the skin. I had this perfect little arch of purple pressure marks and as I washed with soap and water, two of the little marks began to bleed.

Dang it.

I kept squeezing it, hoping to purge anything that might be trying to invade my blood stream. I went to our medical office, which was sparsely populated with medical staff, but one of our supervisors was there to administer iodine. I had already raided one of my co-worker's rooms for an alcohol wipe from her first aid kit, but I was feeling ultra paranoid. Monkey bites are nothing to mess with.

As iodine was administered to my now barely bleeding hand, I was told not to worry, that anything that could be carried by the monkey could not be helped with any medication. AIDS, Ebola, etc.

Clearly, I needed a second opinion.

So, I emailed our 24/7 on call doctors at InterHealth. Dr. Claire got back to me so quickly and with fantastic advice. All of the first aid intuition I had administered was right on, including squeezing the bajeepers out of my hand. So, yay me. I also needed strong antibiotics and antivirals and post exposure rabies vaccinations... all as soon as possible. Antibiotics we had, but the rest would require a logistical miracle. So, I started making some radio calls, and when they did not work, it was time to bust out the SATphone.

The earliest I could get the vaccinations and myself in the same place was Friday.
That was later than the 48 hours recommended, but that's what I get for living in Ango.

I could wait.

Wednesday morning I woke up to a dying Colby. 

                                By 11:30am he was dead.

I could not wait.

By 2:20pm I was on a MAF plane that was chartered just for me, on my way to Bunia. By Thursday afternoon I was in Kampala at The Surgery getting my post exposure vaccs and various other preventative tablets.

Hour 47 of the 48 hour window. Thank God for an amazing team and good health insurance.

The doctor requested I stay in Kampala for at least a week, to be sure I do not come down with a fever or any other worrying symptoms. So, here I have remained. Pretty bored, missing Ango and really feeling like I have not worked much in the last month.

Though I have had no fever, I have felt sick all week and so lethargic. I am told by wikipedia that this is rather common when taking 34 pills a day of heavy-wide-spectrum antibiotics and antivirals. It has been hard to focus on working from here, even though I had high hopes. I just feel like vomiting and laying down all the time.

Hopefully these side effects will subside now that I am only on one of them. I want to go back to work, I want to fix some recent mistakes I have made there. I want to never have a pet monkey without a local vet.

It was fun while it lasted. It makes for a very dramatic story, though at no time did it actually feel dramatic.

In the end, I made it into our country program's monthly Situation Report that gets sent to HQ:

"Courtney Brandt was bitten by a monkey on 19^th July and medivaced to Kampala for preventative treatment. She arrived at the Surgery in Kampala 47 hours after the accident."


And onto InterHealth's website for World Rabies Day:

"At InterHealth we often come across weird and wonderful cases of infections, and rabies is no different... An aid worker in rural Democratic Republic of Congo had been vaccinated against rabies. She encountered a cute baby colobus monkey half way through her project. Unfortunately, the baby monkey playfully nipped her. She wasn't close to medical facilities and required a semi-urgent medevac to complete the post-exposure treatment."

                                                                                                                      So, that's something.

Ango Awesome

Monkey See, Monkey...

Colby the Colobus – Part One

I was walking from the base to my office when I noticed a bit of movement in the grass. A baby colobus monkey was tied to a tree behind the Medair Camion that had just come in from Isiro. Hassan, our camion driver, caught me looking at it and said it was not mean. Indeed it was not, when I moved closer, it jumped on my knee and clung to my t-shirt, hopped to Hassan and stole the paper from his hand.

Hassan said he bought the monkey on the road after its mother had been killed for bush meat. He thought it would make a good alarm at night. You see, driving from Isiro to Ango, takes about a week, with a good driver. The roads are difficult to maneuver, when it rains you can be stuck easily, there are rivers to cross, you cannot drive at night… the list goes on and on. So, a driver is camping out by the truck every night, and in LRA territory, having a monkey wake you up before anything else might, is a pretty darn good idea.

That night, the monkey did not stay in the truck, but in a basket in our base. I fed it and played with it all night. It was so young, still working on its coordination, but it clung to my arms and cuddled on my shoulder, then fell asleep. I was in love.

In the morning, I was up at 6am, skyping with Colby (his new name) to California. A great start to the day. I took some token photos and ate my breakfast.

On the way to the office, Hassan stopped me and asked if I wanted to keep Colby. I laughed, then I thought how flipping rad it would be to have a pet monkey. I consulted a half a dozen locals, a baby monkey care website and, of course, Wikipedia. By all accounts, the colobus monkey is docile, kind and a lot of people in these parts keep them as pets. I was torn, as I thought it was too young to survive without its mother, but with its mother dead it was either me or the drivers. I made the executive decision that my womanly instincts would serve little Colby better and we waved goodbye to the Medair Camion.

To be continued…