Malaria + Typhoid = Worst Christmas Ever.

I've been feeling nauseas and have had a general feeling of malaise since my arrival. The smell of burning garbage is constant. There are no other forms of garbage disposal here. Everything is just burned in huge heaps on the side of the road or, if you are rich, in what looks like an old barbeque from a campground in the 70s. There is a revoltingly sweet odour that is constantly filling the air, a combination of rotten oranges, baked earth, molten plastic, and the corposes of dead lizards and dogs. It's very much the best example I've ever experienced of something that is "sickeningly sweet." It reminds me of when Alex's neighbour died and no one realized it until her body began to smell. I distinctly remember leaving his apartment one night thinking, "Hmm, someone's baking meat, smells goo-- er... smells wierd." The smell of this burning garbage has a similar familiarity. Something that smells goo-- er... smells wierd. And eventually it smells very sick, and it makes you feel very, very sick.

In addition to all the new bacteria I'm being introduced to, it's no wonder that my stomach has been feeling a little off for the last five weeks. I'm eating meat for the first time in five years, I'm covered with and injesting more bacteria than ever, and I walk around inhaling the fumes of cooked garbage. But despite being used to feeling a little unwell I hadn't been too concerned with my health until Friday, December 19th, when I realized with a very serious calm that I had malaria.

The symptoms of malaria are very distinctive. You can get sick with just about anything and everything here, but 50% of children under 5 years of age die from malaria, and many an unlucky expat spend a day (or two or four) at Choithram's Memorial Hospital moaning in pain because of some bitch mosquito. Your stomach is constantly buzzing, you're often nauseas, you're constantly wondering if you have food poisoning but never know. But malaria! when you get that, you know. There's almost an instant understanding: Once you experience piercing bone and muscle pain, when your fever drenches your entire body in sweat from the exertion of typing, when you have fierce migraine headaches that resemble an atomic explosion behind your eyeballs and you squint and mumble to coworkers that your glass of water "looks too bright," you know you have malaria.


So, very calmly, on the 19th, my last day of work, I realized that I had malaria and asked my boyfriend to get me the proper medication. A brief visit with a doctor and I spent the next five days suffering immeasurably in bed, nauseas, in pain, with a bag of medicine that included three different types of anti-malarial drugs and copious amounts of paracetamol for the unending fever. I sweat buckets, moaned and complained, and felt - I thought - the worst I'd ever felt in my life.

Then, on the 22nd, our gas went out. During the day we had no power (which means no air conditioning, no fans, no air) and we ran out of gas for the stove, which means no water (since you can't boil it) and no food (since you can't cook it.) Eating anything raw is dangerous, our refrigerator wasn't on and I was far too weak to leave the apartment to go to a restaurant. I spent several days feeling profoundly, profoundly miserable.

On the 24th, Christmas Eve, we went out for dinner where I ate three bites of my food, abruptly threw up my malaria medication and sweat profusely in the normally-freezing air-conditioned restaurant. I had actually been feeling significantly better than I had felt in previous days and this sudden vomiting and renewed fever was a cause for worry. But what were we to do? It was Christmas Eve, 10pm. No time for a hospital visit. So we went home, covered me with cold wet cloths, fed me lots of pain and fever and malaria medication and sent me to bed.

On the 25th, Christmas Day, we had no power at all, no gas, and, in the evening, the water cut out completely. No toilets worked, no water trickled from the sinks, and there was no water to cool me off with. I am lucky - I missed the water shortage because I threw up in bed all over the mattress, vomited over the side of the bed into my leather Chloe Paddington purse, and eventually into the garbage can that Mike hastily shoved in my face before I finally crawled to the toilet to barf there instead. It was Christmas Day, 9pm, but this uncontrollable vomiting was something that I hadn't been experiencing before and we had to respond to my failing health with renewed seriousness. I had actually woken feeling refreshed and pleased that the malaria was subsiding - and suddenly here I was vomiting in my bed.

My roommates drove me to Choithram's Memorial Hospital where I was placed on an IV for three hours. The man who admitted me wore jeans, suspenders, a plaid shirt and a cowboy hat. It was most un-Western-like. The hospital was better than I expected, but the bed I lay on still had dirty sheets that included a blood stain and the hospital had more mosquitos that I had seen in my entire stay here. The lab-guy who put in my IV was so unhygenic (my needles were steralized, thank god) that I hesitate to write about it because whatever cold he was suffering from was so disgusting that it makes me want to throw up again just thinking about it. He had immense difficulties administering my IV because he desperately needed to blow his nose (but didn't until I told him to, and even then used the SINK as his kleenex) and I now have an inch-wide 3-inch long bruise where the needle stuck, terribly blackened. I look like I've been in an accident.

I threw up my oral rehydration pills in the hospital and the salt burned my throat so badly that I started hyperventilating and rasping for water because the salts burned me so badly that I couldn't breathe. I felt like I was going to drown from acid being poured into my lungs. It's not really preventable, but I strongly advise you to refrain from throwing up handfuls of oral rehydration tablets.

I had endless blood tests, two injections of antibiotics, an IV of vitamins and saline solution, and two half-litre bags of some other medications. I lay on the drip for three hours through which I testily told them to hurry up with the IV because I just could NOT stay in that dirty, smelly, snotty, bloody hospital room any longer. The doctor was very competant and responded to my tantrums with good humour and I am very grateful.

Anyway, end result? Just as my malaria was being treated and I was being cured from that, I apparently came down with tyhphoid fever which was the reason for my hospitalisation. Have you ever met anyone who had both malaria and typhoid at the same time and had to be hospitalized on CHRISTMAS because of them? Yeah: Me.

Send presents.

So today: I'm healed. I have my appetite back, I don't look like I am dying, and I'm gaining back the weight I lost from a week of not-eating and vomiting and running to the bathroom. The miserable hospital visit rehydrated me and they stuck me with so many antiobiotics (that I'm still taking since I'm still a carrier of typhoid even though the malaria is gone now) that I am feeling MUCH much much better and am truly on my way back to health.

But in the end... Malaria + typhoid = Worst. Christmas. Ever.

Hope yours was better! Cheers! ;)

Il n'y a pas d'eau.

I'm having an awful lot of trouble working today. The generator is broken and our backup generator isn't strong enough to run the air-conditioner. This day has so far sucked pretty badly because of that. I have been feeling ill and nauseas for the past several days and ran out of clothes to sweat through this morning, so I figured that since I was getting a ride to an air-conditioned office it wouldn't be quite so bad if I wore my grey, long-sleeved shirt. I look pretty good in grey. It was an ok plan: short car ride, wind in my hair, air conditioned office. I can deal with a long shirt.

But nooo, the generator broke and I'm sitting in a long-sleeved shirt next to two overheating computers, suffering from a fever and drinking a warm coffee to counteract the sleep-inducing Cold & Flu tablets I've been taking. I am sure that my back is beaded with enough sweat to make my smoking fashionable outfit look like grey and black tie-dye. I am sweaty. I have a headache. My eyes hurt, my frizzy hair feels like a pound of steel wool knotted on my head, I ate a chicken burger for lunch that is totally making a beeline for my ample hips, and we've run out of water.

Do you know what it means to run out of water when you are at work in Sierra Leone? It means that the locals who work with you (the nice ones whose names you can never remember) will go down to the well to fill a huge canister full of (dirty) water and set it next to the (cracked) porcelain wc, waiting for you to toss into the toilet after doing your business. In the meantime, this water will slowly pool around the broken toilet combining with dirt and dust to create a thick red mud that will get all over your new leather sandals. This water will also make embarrassingly loud sloshing sounds when you have to pour it into the toilet after taking a wee and you will try valiantly to pour the water out of the bucket very slowly so that it doesn't sound like you are having massive diarrhea (or hope that no one will know about it, anyway) and the result will be that your wee stays in the toilet no matter how many canisters you pour down those pipes and you will end up taking a ten minute "break" that you didn't really want all because you wanted to get rid of evidence peeing. And when you come out the bathroom someone will respond to your extended visit and the sloshing water and say, "Woah, you ok?" and you, with sweat beading your upper-lip and drenching your armpits, will smile too-wide and gleefully say that you are just fine, thanks!

It wouldn't be a big deal (since we're actually lucky to have had water in the first place) but when you have already decided that you are suffering from malaria, dysentery, giardia, the flu and rabies, you're drenched in sweat and emailing your dad to ask him to Fedex boxes of ciprofloxacin to you for Christmas, no-water is, like, totally not-fun. Combine no-water with no-air and it can seriously make you even more miserable than when you first acquired five life-threatening diseases. That was bad enough, but now...

Anyway. You know that I am totally miserable and really suffering from all my new diseases if I am writing a huge paragraph about bathroom visits and the inconvenience of no-water. Of course, the truth is, I just have really bad PMS.

Baby for Sale.

Sitting on the massive balcony of our new apartment. It overlooks much of the city – little tin huts surrounded by jungle and burning garbage, ocean in the background. There is a Harmattan wind coming from the north and it sweeps the dust up over the houses and hangs there. It absorbs the humidity that normally makes life unbearable for we gringos and despite the fog-like thickness of this motionless "wind" I can watch the sun set over the ocean.

Listening to a playlist I made years ago called "Music to Inspire You." It contains some Markey, The Beatles, M, Sting, Matmatah, Manu Chao, and other intoxicated, musically-inclined geniuses who used music to command for higher responsibility from governments, preached for adequate protection of the underprivileged, and sand a whole lot of demands to the capitalist society buying their records and paying for their lobster dinners. Mixed in the list are a few love songs that croon about sad girls going both ways on a one-way street. Despite those, the list is truly uplifting and I used to listen to it when my homework overwhelmed me and I felt tempted to put up the much-awaited White Flag which, despite everything, I never did. And now here I am in my apartment in Freetown, Sierra Leone, watching the sun set over the houses and jungle and ocean, a pile of documents devoted to children's rights sitting next to me. I have been inspired by more than music but the tunes certainly make a nice backdrop for a life that I find truly inspiring.

There are down points though. There are things that I am learning to handle with difficulty. Things that people told me to expect, things that I prepared myself for, things that I researched and mentally lectured myself about prior to my trip… but that nonetheless cause me to double over with panic and nausea upon their realization. Years ago I would have kicked myself for my naiveté, for not having been adequately prepared, for not having the proper reactions thoroughly engrained in me. For being so weak and foolish. Today, instead of just acknowledging that I am an obsessively emotional person (something that has been impossible to ignore) I am actually allowing myself to just accept that and know that there are some emotions you simply can't prepare for in advance.

I could not, for example, imagine what would be my real-life reaction to be offered someone's child. Alex had warned me that it would happen, that women would try to hand me their children. I laughed and we chatted about how I would be coming back from Sierra Leone with babies in tow. Mike and I giggled in hushed tones over the phone about how many children we were going to adopt during our stay. I warned Mike that if it happened that I were offered a child he should be wary – I would say yes. We laughed, we giggled, we sighed. "That's so tragic," we would say, casually discussing the desperation of women who would do such things, and then we would change the subject. When I was actually offered the child a woman because she could not feed or house it, I actually did laugh.

She was selling bananas and asked me my name. Oh hi Anna how are you. When I would not buy bananas she turned to the baby sitting on the stone wall next to her, patted her on the head and said, "You want this?"

I guffawed. I laughed a sick, nervous titter. "Your baby?" I asked incredulously. "You want to give me your baby? No, no, I can't take your baby."

There was a crowd around us (there is always a crowd) and they also laughed. The woman insisted, gesticulating as she spoke. Putting her hand to her mouth, she explained: "No food." She clasped her palms, tipped her head to the side and placed her hands next to her ear. "No got sleep, no room." Her baby cannot eat and has nowhere to sleep.

I stood there dumb, my frozen smile fading with the strangest sense of numbness. What do you say to a woman who has a child she cannot feed and cannot house when she is asking you for help? How do you live in a house with air-conditioning and electricity (albeit sparse), walk around with a cell phone in your purse, discuss at night the idea of going to The Gambia with your boyfriend for Christmas and still say: No, I will not help you or your baby. I will not give your baby a "better home," even though the alternative is extreme poverty and a 50% chance of dying of malaria (for which I have medication in my purse right now.) I will not give your baby a chance to wear clean clothes, eat regularly, have access to health care and gain an education (since I know that your other kids don't go to school at all because the $1.33- a-month-tuition-charge is too expensive.) I will not take your baby, sorry. Thanks anyway.

I eventually mustered out these words: "I'll see what I can do." I slowly turned and went on my way. Profoundly affected by this exchange and terrified at the idea of returning and walking past the woman five minutes later with no solution, my trembling hands reached into my purse (there's no way that woman has a purse) and pulled out my cellphone (or a cellphone) and called my boyfriend to announce my change in plans. "Uh hi, yeah, I need a beer."

I had been prepared for this to happen. I know that it would even though I haven't actually heard of any of the expats here experiencing it. As a white woman I am considered a) extremely wealthy, and since I regularly play with children in the street I am apparently seen as b) somebody who would probably be an okay caretaker. I can see how a woman suffering from extreme poverty would reach such desperation that she would rather give up her child to a stranger on the street than watch it (and she herself) suffer. I just really thought that maybe I'd have some kind of solution by the time the situation arose. How's that for naivety.

Instead, I walk past her and her child every day on the way to my air-conditioned apartment, cellphone in my purse, and think about Christmas in the Gambia, miracle-solution nowhere in sight.

Kailahun.

A school, bombed. I knew that these things existed, I knew that I'd see them. I never thought the sight of a destroyed school, crumbled walls held together by a creaking tin roof would coexist with the image of laughing, smiling children. I should have felt a sense of calm pride for them – they seemed so happy, so smiley, so uplifted despite having experienced so much. I should have swelled with pride over the fact that humanity might just Make It After All.

Instead, I had a breakdown.

I was in a room with sixty children. Sixty black little bodies pushing one another to get closer to the white ladies, big smiles spreading, bambinos giggling. Their eyes were so *wide*. They laughed with so much excitement as they scattered around pushing rickety wooden benches together, the movements making awful dirty scraping sounds against the rocky mud floor. There was endless babbling amongst the kids as they got the room organized. Cliques of girls sat together and teenage boys guffawed, backwards baseball hats bobbing along with their laughs. Little tots not more than four years old crowded outside the "windows" (bomb-blasts) to see what was going on in the school, braided little heads peeking over the shards of broken stone wall. Together we had convened to discuss children's rights. Sounds pretty cute, eh?

I almost vomited.

There's that expression of "choking back tears" that we've all heard – and felt – a million times. This particular time was extremely intense. I was there to give a lecture on the Child Rights Bill so that these kids would know what their rights were. I had given a two-hour presentation that morning to the regional directors of Save the Children and discussed with them possible problems with its implantation at the district and regional levels. We had talked about the hierarchy of laws and I explained in detail how this bill would affect current national and customary laws. It was, as Charly would later say, a "brilliant" presentation. I had spent the day revamping my presentation so that I could present it to the socially-aware under-eighteen-year-olds of Kailahun, the poorest district of one of the least developed countries on the planet. I had drawn graphs and pictures to explain how legislation is passed, What Is A Constitution and What Does it Mean to Have Rights? And here I stood, staring at a school that had been bombed only a few years ago – a school that these kids had frequented prior to the blasts and still sat in every day – to talk to them about Rights. These are some of the children amongst thousands who had been abducted, drugged, armed and forced to serve as combatants. They had been raped and forced into slavery, bore the children of their rapists and were maintained as slaves after the war. They attacked civilians after being themselves tortured and drugged with cocaine. They were forced into a rebel movement whose slogan was "Operation No Living Thing." They were separated from their families and were the victims of merciless amputations and they themselves, under threat of death, murdered others.

And there I stood in my polka-dot dress with my flipchart and markers ready to explain to this group of smiling, laughing children why they won't have to go through that anymore.

You'd think that it'd be uplifting. You probably think that faced with a similar situation you would swell with pride at the chance to discuss something so positive. You would think that explaining to war-children that no Sierra Leonean child will ever be forced into combat again would be easy to voice. You probably imagine that you would stand straight and tall, launch a vibrant smile and speak with ease. Congratulations, kids! YOU'RE FREE!

I didn't, couldn't.

I choked. I hyperventilated. I panicked.

"I have to present HERE? This school has been *bombed*, Charly. Good God, are those bullet holes?"

My throat welled up with that horrible choking feeling and in my head I willed by body into dehydration just so that I would not fucking cry in front of these kids. I will not cry, I will not cry, I will not cry. I begged Charly to do her presentation first knowing that if my weak, emotional and affected little self stood in front of this group of children I would completely lose all semblance of composure. Charly herself breathed a sigh of relief – she had to get the kids organized for a conference on Sunday and they were not ready. She warned me that if she went first I might not have time to present to them. My hands flailed and my curls bobbed with eager gestures of "that's okay that's just fine no problem it's okay" because I could barely even speak. In the end, I didn't present anything.

And after many minutes of a panicked internal chant of get-your-shit-together-damnit, I finally did.

Short note on Kailahun.

My hands never feel clean. The wind is a light breeze but a constant one and the dust and dirt are copious. The combination flies around in whimsical circles scratching my sunglasses, and I walk to the office to scrub my face and hands with soap. The water runs at a trickle. The soap is cracked and dried, dusty itself. I frown. There is no water. The sink doesn't work, we have no water. The toilet doesn't work. We have internet in the office next door, I can check my email for the first time in days, but the washroom does not have water. That's ok, we have a bucket available for your needs. I am finding this tedious and no amount of dried soap or cold water gets me clean. I kick at the cruddy sink and feel guilty. Through the open window I can hear kids laughing down the street.
Lunch: The waitress is cross-eyed and very cross. She is arguing with the others (cooks? Waitresses? Owners? All of the above?) She stops her Krio yelling and violent hand-waving to take my order. After having stood for seven minutes in a mini-tornado of dust coughing and sputtering to both get the sand off my tongue and make my presence known, I am surprised when her body and voice turn in my direction. Her eyes waver, one towards her nose, one towards her left where nothing stands but the remnants of a bombed building. I am confused when she speaks (who, me?) and I am shy. She tells me that they have food and I ask to eat. She says ok, cocks her head towards the empty restaurant. I steer away from her, park my dusty whiteness down in a chair and wait.
Lunch is rice and peanut-based sauce with a chunk of overdried, heavily-salted, rock-hard fish. It is delicious and filling. It costs 83 cents.