Friday, July 11, 2008

Beaver Fever

I am in town for the day to drop off paperwork, pick up paperwork, enjoy internet and air-conditioning and just escape the complete emptiness of village.

One of the great things about being a PCV is being terribly ill from a gastrointestinal infection.

I took a short trip up to Dori a few weeks ago, just to check it out and say goodbye to PCVs who are COSing and going back stateside. It was pretty fun, we crossed two flooded barrages in a bus (think tour bus-sized). Got to eat some really darned good pork (shout out to JL). Did not really see much of the city.

The day after I got back to my village, I ended up being terribly sick with giardia (aka, beaver fever, and not the good kind like those good old college days... go beavers!). Unfortunately, I did not know I had giardia and was rather miserable for the first few days trying to do the standard treatment for diarrhea (which didn't work), stabbing stomach pains, and mild fever (101-102ish). Needless to say, one MIF kit later, it was confirmed that I had giardia.

Now, I have not had problems with sending things TO Ouaga via my transport, but getting things from my transport has been a miracle recently. The last few times I spent days biking up and down my road stopping every car in Yaba and finally found out that my medication was sent back to Ouaga from Toma and then when it was re-sent it ended up in Toma again and a friend had to pick it up. Clearly, not a viable option for someone who practically lived in a latrine for ten days (since biking takes me somewhere between 30 to 60 minutes and all of my friends were gone from village when the prescription came through, also not buyable in village). So, I decided the best thing to do would be to commission someone in a large city who was on their way back to my village to pay for my meds and give them to me. Luckily, it worked out much better than the transport method (i.e. I got my meds as expected, took them and now actually have an appetite!).

Two weeks ago, I was at a solid 68 kg (just shy of 150 lbs), now I don't even dare weigh myself. I am at pinky to thumb ratio of skinniness on my wrist. And as we all know, I have rather small hands for my size, and a very short pinky.

Yes, I know this should be a much more exciting update of how I have been vacationing/cultivating/volunteering now that the school year is out, but realistically I have just been downright miserably sick in village and everyone is out farming the fields. I've got some projects in mind, and will be doing a training on HIV/AIDS and Life Skills in a few weeks. So, now that I am back up to healthy (sort of). I am going to head back to village and get more appropriate forms signed and hopefully the ball rolling in a good direction as opposed to in a circle.

Here is a fun little song I composed while being sick and in the rain (it hasn't rained all that much at all at my village, literally the clouds stop raining at my village and continue afterwards)...

Rain, Rain come today
Come again for many days
Burkinabe want to eat
Rain, Rain come today