HERE I AM!

Good to be alive. I’m now feeling like a real African because I’ve battled and survived Malaria. On Monday of this past week I biked to Shibanze despite feeling really quite badly because I had to meet with a parent about a child who has epilepsy. After that meeting I told teacher Emily that I was really really not at all feeling right. But…… an older man had insisted that I go to survey his home because I’d promised to do it the week before and had run out of time. So… I said Ok, I’ll go just to this one home and then leave because something is really not right. He brought me on the back of his bike which was painful itself as this man was quite elderly and almost falling over with me and the bike repeatedly along the way. We stopped at a small market because I needed some water and this is when the illness really hit me. I ran behind a building and started vomiting. Not fun at all. What makes it worse about being sick if Africa is that everyone’s eyes are already on you as the mzungu so I had an audience while I was getting sick. I’m sure it was quite entertaining to them all. After that I still managed to go and complete the survey but by the end the man insisted I go to the area hospital so back on his bike I got. I was now in an area called Khalaba which turned out to be a lot further from Shibanze than I’d expected. He took me to a hospital nearby which consisted of maybe 4 rooms. One maternity ward, a lab, a doctors office and another which I couldn’t quite figure out. I was barely able to stand up by this point so they gave me a hospital bed to lay on. I could feel that the breeze going through the room was really cool yet I was sweating so much that the sheets were soaked. I’ve never felt such bad pains in my body. When malaria hits you badly enough your joints ache and the pains in your stomach are unbelievable. After the lab results came back they told me that I must have contracted the disease about 1 week prior because there were so many parasites present. They diagnose moderate malaria as having 3 or 4 parasites per field under a microscope but I was having more than 10. If I wasn’t’ otherwise healthy they would have admitted me but I’m really glad they didn’t because I don’t know how I could have handled sleeping in that little hospital in the middle of nowhere. After a few hours of the doctor watching me I was sent away and went back to the old man’s house. I couldn’t bare the heat at that point in the afternoon as it was close to forty degrees so decided I needed to rest there until the sun started to go down in order to get back to Kabula to home. Resting wasn’t really possible because I was surrounded by people. The man’s house was very small. He’d lost his wife a few months ago and was caring for his 3 year old daughter, Sharifa, alone. Again, another example of a man of maybe 70 years marrying a woman of 31 (what her death certificate said). This had been wife number 2 for him and he said he was looking for a new young wife. I don’t know why he felt the need to tell me this but I sure wasn’t about to marry him!!!!!! Anyways, after sitting on a couple of chicken eggs that had been buried under the chair cover I had just started to close my eyes when I heard giggling outside the door. I had small children peaking in and then running away on me. Eventually some were brave enough to enter to see what sort of strange creature was in this home while other small ones were crying in hysterics because the older ones were trying to drag them closer to me! By the time I left that place the entire home was so full of people that had come to see me that they were sitting on chairs and even standing outside looking in the windows. My mom called me while I was there and I put her on loud speaker. They couldn’t believe that they were talking on the phone to someone in Canada! At that point I was very very ill so I wasn’t really able to form sentences properly and of course silly mother thought I was going to die in that little hut. But too bad for her, I’m still alive and will be back to torment them! I took A LOT of pills over the last few days and was not able to eat so sleeping was impossible at night and I had no energy but yesterday I kept food down and finished the medicine and am up and running today again! So, enough about my malaria – no need to worry! Just another African experience. Good news. Baby Layla fully recovered. On Monday morning before I left Shibanze sick I saw her run by me and didn’t even recognize her till I saw her mother. I wasn’t even aware that she could walk! I knew she was two years old but she is so tiny for her age because of being malnourished. She was eating and laughing and it made me so so so happy to see that. She’s the most adorable little girl and now that she’s full of life again she can do anything any other two year old can! Last week on Friday I also brought another child to a hospital. His name was baby Issah. He is coming from a family of one mother and sister. I wrote about them before and said that I’d told them that he could come to the school when he was big enough but to start collecting porridge mix now. Anyways, I’d gone back to see if they had taken him to the hospital which they hadn’t so I was frusturated with the irresponsibility of the extended family and took him myself. We went to a different hospital which is actually the one responsible for Shibanze called Butere District Hospital in a bigger town like Bungoma called Mumia’s. I expected it to be closer and cheaper than Bungoma hospital but it was quite the journey to get there. The baby was given medicine for both pneumonia and malaria and sent home. Although I haven’t been able to check on him because I’ve been sick I’m told he has been seen out playing with other children, so that is good news. I’ll check on him myself tomorrow. That reminds me about the woman I brought to Bungoma with baby Layla. I saw her when I visited the home of the epileptic child and her leg was not at all better. Her ankle was swollen and she was in even more pain despite finishing the antibiotics. I’ll need to bring her back for futher testing. So many things to do! Tomorrow will be an interesting day for me because the women in the community will be coming to mud the third classroom. The structure is built and ready to go for the newcomers that will start in May for term 2. I’m told that this will be quite the experience to see and I plan on doing some mudding myself. Good news from a couple of friends!!! Christa and Chris at teachers college at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay have been busy! They’ve fundraised about 1500 CAD so we are going to be able to finish building desks for both classes, getting more kitchen supplies, finishing the well, putting proper locks on the doors and bars on the windows etc. So much will be accomplished with that money! It goes such a long way! We will even cement the mud walls so that the rains will not destroy them. Hopefully I will even buy some paint and let the kids put their handprints on the outside to decorate! I found out that the last volunteer left as mall video camera behind so I’m going to take it tomorrow to tape the mudding and some of the kids and hopefully figure out how to put the video on my blog! You’ve been complaining about my lack of pictures but a video will be that much better!!!! So that’s all for now because I want to try to prepare for my women’s group seminar which I wasn’t going to do this week since I was sick but I think I can still pull it off this afternoon! Talk to you all soon!!!!!!!!!!!! CIAO