Many of our friends were not well last week: stubborn coughs and headaches and sore throats and stomach troubles. By Thursday, it was our turn. For a few days, Duncan cycled through hours of fever and body aches and ended up testing himself for malaria three times, all negative. I was hit with several inexplicable symptoms: persistent headaches, stomach pain and rashes that made me want to scratch entire limbs off.
We feel almost back to normal now, thankfully. Sickness is such a regular part of life here that our friends and Tanzanian colleagues are wonderfully empathetic. The Tanzanians, especially, are eager to offer up all kinds of free medical advice: To avoid malaria (even after we’ve insisted that we don’t have malaria), simply drink lots of water. Lots. Take plenty of honey. Eat boiled cassava leaves. Or aloe vera.
We think of how upset we would get (and still do, though maybe a bit less) whenever we got sick in the US. What a pain! Now our workout schedule is all out of whack! Now everyone at work will think we're slackers! We’d rack our brains trying to figure out just how we let this happen, and draw up plans to avoid it again for all time. And we still do. So it's not so bad a thing to be regularly reminded that as hard as we try to avoid getting sick, in the end, whether we’re here in Mwanza, or anywhere else, it’s impossible to control or understand all the variables. We just hope to handle it with as much grace and humor as we can muster! Good DVDs and good tea with good honey go a long way.
No comments:
Post a Comment