Malarial boredom

Well, as Tom said in his blog, I have officially won the Kenyan Infectious Disease Lottery. I am the first of the four volunteers to come down with Malaria. Now, before any of you reading this become too worried, I’m really doing fine. Mostly, I'm just getting a little bored with all this bed rest. I’ve been out of work this week and went to the doctor on Monday. After a very brief consultation with the clinician, I was sent to the Lab to have my finger pricked for a blood smear. When I got to the lab, the man who was working was a man Sr. Joy had introduced me to on a previous visit to the hospital. Ironically enough, the only other time I have been to the Malava district hospital was with Sr. Joy to find a speaker for St. Julie parents on the prevention on malaria. But anyways, it was good to have an in with the lab man. There were lots of people wait (outside I might add…b/c the waiting rooms at this hospital is outside on the grass) but he saw me right away. I took my little book that the lab guy had written in back to the clinician. He started to ask me all these questions, without telling me what the lab result was. But when I stopped to ask, he assured me it was malaria. I have to say, although it might sound strange, I was a little relieved. I would have had to go to another hospital in Kakamega to see another doctor had it not been malaria, and I was honestly too tired to think about doing that. Assured that it was in fact malaria, I have spent the last two days in bed, watching movies graciously lent to me by Tom and reading. I’m getting a little bored and feeling almost all the way better. But I’m still pretty run down, so I’m going to wait at least one more day before I go back to work. But for my first time with malaria, it was a very light case. I’ll be back to myself in a few days, so any of you who might be worrying…there’s no need. It’s like a rite of passage in Africa.

Also, with all this time to just lie around, I’m officially on book #20. I’ve read 19 books in almost 9 weeks. I love all the time to read, I can’t remember I had this much.

Well other that this little illness, life here has been fairly routine. Work is starting to slow down a little bit b/c (finally!) the rainy season has begun. Many people are at home getting their fields ready for planting and don’t have time to bring their kids into the center. The others at the center have said this will continue for a while and we should get used to having more time on our hands. I can’t imagine having more time that we already have, but we’ll wait and see. I talked to Sr. Jane last week (she’s our site director here in Kenya) and I explained some of my frustrations with down time. I love working at St. Julie’s and love having a lot of free time, but I’ve been struggling to feel productive. When I go to Nairobi for retreat in April we’re going to talk about finding supplemental for me to do…maybe working in one of the schools around here. I think it will be nice to have something to do a few afternoons each week. I’m looking forward to it. In the meantime, I went back to Sabatia eye clinic with Sr. Katherine on this past Friday. Going out in the field, whether it’s during home visits or going to clinics has become my favorite part of working for St. Julie’s.

A short anecdote: we were driving to Sabatia on Friday and we were almost there when we saw an accident in the road. There looked to be a petrol tanker in the road leaking something and a lorry (a little semi) turned on its side. There were people scraping gooey black stuff from the outside of the tanker into cans while the police stood off to the side doing nothing. Well I was outraged. I thought that the tanker was spilling crude oil which people were scraping with their bare hands. It may not have reached the American news, but about a month ago, an oil tanker overturned near a town called Molo. People came out to collect it and the news sources have said that the police, rather than keeping people away from such a dangerous scene, were charging people to collect the petrol. The newspaper said that someone who was angry b/c they didn’t have any money lit a match. Needless to say, the entire thing exploded and more than 120 people were killed. Well after that terrible tragedy, I couldn’t imagine that the police would just stand by and do nothing, not even help direct the quickly piling traffic around the wreck. As we got closer and closer I got angrier and more scared. After all, we had a bunch of children with us. This anger last until we got closer and I saw that one of the children had the black gunk all over his face and was licking it from his fingers. It was not oil, but molasses, that was for some reason being transported in a petrol tanker. The Lorry had turned on its side b/c it slipped in molasses. I was still a little annoyed that the police weren’t directing traffic, but the whole thing was pretty funny.

View of the hillside from the orphanage

Hide and Seek

Violet with Doro (L) and Ruth (R)

Madam Susan with some new friends

Saturday Jean and I headed to the orphanage that is run by the same woman who runs the school where Jean works. We spent the whole afternoon there, eating lunch, playing hide and seek and stud. We taught them to play jenga and they drew pictures of school and Madam Jean and Mr. Michael (our volunteers who are their teachers). The whole day was really wonderful. The best word I can think of for these kids is charming. We had a blast and it was really nice to spend a day with kids who are healthy. Don’t get me wrong, I love the kids at St. Julie’s, but it was nice to spend the day running around in the sun with these kids.

Two other good points of good news; the first package to Malava reached us last week. Michael received a package with books and supplies for his school. It took just about 3 weeks. I’ve been thinking that packages will take 3-6 weeks. I’m expecting a package from home and I hope it comes as quickly. That gives all you birthday well wishers just about 7 weeks. Letters have been coming much more quickly. All the small padded envelopes and letters have come in 10 days-two weeks, although one of Tom’s letters took a month. I also finally got a new power cord for my computer last week! It’s nice to be able to watch movie and use the internet on my own computer again. It came just in time, I can’t imagine how bored I would have been if I didn’t have movies during my bed rest over these last couple days.

Well that’s about all the news for now. Thanks for keep up with my stories!