Jungle Fever

Honestly, every time I think to myself, "Boy, I really don't have anything interesting to write about in my blog this week," I end up having some kind of nightmarish experience that proves to be more far more "interesting" than anything else that's gone on in the past few months. This time around, I got malaria. No joke.

Now, before coming to Africa, I knew all about the precautions one should take to prevent getting malaria:

• take anti-malarial medication (check - I'm on doxycycline, a pill that I take once a day)
• sleep under a mosquito net (check)
• cover your skin while outside after sundown to prevent mosquito bites (check - plus, I don't spend a lot of time outdoors after dark anyway)

While I was on home leave, I made sure to keep taking my pills just in case malaria symptoms showed up, and to also keep the medication levels in my blood at a high enough level so it wouldn't take time to build back them up again when I returned to Bamako.

So, when I had a mild headache last Thursday morning and felt not quite myself, I figured I had eaten some food that was slightly off, which is not an uncommon occurrence. Or maybe I had caught some little flu bug that was going around. I took my temperature throughout the day and it was hovering between 99 and 100, which really isn't that high, and it didn't seem to be going up. Later that day, after a nap, I felt better and whatever trace of a fever I had was gone.

The same thing happened on Friday. Woke up, didn't feel right, had a tiny bit of a fever, just a hint of nausea, a few aches and pains, but that was it. They never seemed to get worse, and the temperature would come and go. My wife strongly encouraged me to go to get tested for malaria, but I thought that if I had malaria, the symptoms would present themselves and get worse. Instead I felt like I was being teased by them. Again, by the afternoon the symptoms were gone. I was on the medication, I'm taking all the steps to prevent getting bitten, so what did I have to worry about?

On Saturday and Sunday, I felt fine. Totally fine. "Well, whatever that was, I'm glad it's over with," I thought. That Sunday night, though, I started having terrible headaches. They were so strong that they would wake me up. Now I started to wonder if something was up because I almost never get headaches, especially ones so bad they wake me up.

So, Monday morning I headed off to the clinic to get tested for malaria. My wife met me there and helped with translating since I was having a hard time thinking straight due to these headaches. The clinic was clean and relatively modern - after a bit of a wait, they brought me into an exam room and took a tiny blood sample to run the test. The nurse asked me all kinds of questions and took my temperature. I didn't have any of the usual symptoms such as the chills, high fever, digestive problems, cough, runny nose, etc. It takes about a half hour for them to do the test, so I met with the doctor while I was waiting.

He was very nice and spoke excellent English which was a blessing. He, too, didn't see many symptoms and was wondering if my eyeglasses were bad, or if there was some other reason why I would be having headaches. While he went to get the test results, I asked my wife if she seriously thought I had malaria. She said no, and I said I didn't think so either. How could I have gotten it? We haven't been back here that long, I take the pills every day, I don't remember being bitten at all in the past few weeks... it didn't add up.

So, you can imagine our surprise when the doctor came back and said that yes indeed, I tested positive. I guess the anti-malarial medication was keeping my symptoms at a minimum, but it was definitely in my blood. He wrote me a prescription for some medicine to take care of the malaria, told me to take Tylenol and Advil for the headaches, and said I should come back on Friday for another test to see if I still have it.

As soon as that night, I started feeling better. I finished taking the medicine last night and after getting up this morning and not taking anything, the only effects I still feel are that my eyeballs are a little sore. Otherwise I feel fine. Normal appetite, no headaches, fever, chills, etc.

What's so strange is that here, malaria isn't treated as a big deal. 500 million people a year are infected with it and one million of those go on to die from it, so it's not some unknown disease. Yet when people in Africa talk about having it, it seems to be regarded about the same as getting chicken pox. I suppose that's because it's so common here and it's so easy to get treatment for it. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm incredibly lucky because under different circumstances, I could be in the hospital or worse right now. I'm very fortunate that things didn't get any more serious for me and the cure is as simple as taking some pills twice a day for a few days.

At any rate, I'm feeling much better, and I guess that years from now when I'm seated in my wingback chair, filling my pipe with tobacco, and getting ready to regale my visitors with tales from my life, I can get a faraway look in my eye and say, "Back when I had malaria in west Africa..."

Back from home leave

After a little over a month away, I'm back in Bamako. While surprisingly stressful at times, my home leave was great. I ate a lot of food, did a lot of shopping, and was busy with various social engagements for almost the entirety of the trip.

My wife and I went to Munich for almost a week before heading back to the states. Munich is a fantastic place to visit. The city is very walkable, there's plenty of public transportation available, and lots of people speak English which is pretty handy. We had a nice hotel near the city center and spent a lot of time walking around the city, seeing the sights and enjoying some nice weather. We rented bikes one day and rode around most of Munich which was cool, and we took a train up into the mountains to stay in a small town for a night. After living in Africa for a year, it was a trip to go someplace where everything worked, ran on schedule, and the streets were clean, clean, clean.

After Munich, we spent a night in Paris which was... okay. I've never been super excited about visiting Paris so I guess I had low expectations going into my time there. I saw all the things you're supposed to see like the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Arc De Triumph, etc, but it was kind of like seeing Washington DC; having seen it all, I don't feel a need to ever go back to see it again. There were also a million tourists there and admission to everything was really expensive. It felt more like visiting an amusement park instead of one of the world's great cities. Later that night we went to Montmarte and had dinner in a less touristy area of the city which was better, but still - I wasn't as entranced by Paris the way that so many other people are.

A week after leaving Bamako, we headed back to the states. There were doctors to visit, mail to open, shopping to do, friends to see, and food to eat. Boy, did I eat. I gained ten pounds in the last month which is no small feat for me. Yes, I had White Castle (thanks, Nora, for bringing me some on Saturday) as well as a lot of other trashy food. It was really good. Even things like Cheerios, ice cream, or PB&J on wheat bread tasted amazing.

Other highlights from my time at home, in no particular order:

• going to a White Sox game (thanks Kevin)
• playing hockey a handful of times
• spending some time with my wife in downtown Chicago
• going sailing with my in-laws
• seeing my old house in Chicago - it's been foreclosed on! Whoa.
• enjoying sub-70F temperatures
• scoring a ton of great shirts for cheap at Village Discount in Chicago

And, of course, it was great to talk to and spend time with everyone that I did. Sorry to those that I didn't get to see or spend a lot of time with while I was home. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I was busy just about every waking moment while in Chicago.

We're looking to come back home this Christmas, and the next time we're back I hope to do a better job of setting up times to visit people so my time can be more relaxing than stressful.

If you'll excuse me, I think it's nap time. Getting over this jet lag can be rough.

Random Thoughts Before Embarking

We leave tomorrow night for our home leave, and my wife and I are pretty jazzed. Mali has been a great place to be these past three months but we're both looking forward to time in Europe and the US. We've both been online shopping up a storm, purchasing things we need (and want) so they'll be waiting for us when we arrive back home in just over a week.

What follows are the thoughts and experiences I've had over the past two-ish weeks:

• Last Friday was my last meeting with the students from the YES program. I was working intensively with a few kids who needed help with their English and we focused on lots of reading and listening exercises. It was cool to get to know them a little more personally over the past few weeks. It's possible that I'll see all of the students in the airport since they're flying out to the US on the same day that I return from home leave.
  


• I've begun experimenting with making my own pad thai. There's lots of Asian food to be found in the grocery stores here - key ingredients such as fish sauce, rice noodles, and tamarind aren't too tough to locate. I bought a cheap wok for around $10 from the Chinese supermarket located downtown. The first batch of pad thai I made almost killed my wife and I. We both lapsed into sodium-overdose comas about twenty minutes after we ate and I drank enough water to drown a fish once I woke up. The next batch was better, but I still have a ways to go before I'll go around telling people that I can whip up a mean pad thai.
  


• In other food-related news, a Vietnamese sandwich stand has opened up not too far from our house. For 500cfa (about $1), I can get a pretty tasty sandwich. It's made on French bread and has a little ground beef, a few cold cuts, some lettuce, tomato, and onion, and it's seasoned with ketchup, soy sauce, hot sauce, and a few other ingredients that I can't readily identify. For a buck, it's pretty filling and I have it at least once a week for lunch.
  


• On Saturday my wife and I went on a canoe trip down the Niger River with a few friends. It was nice to get out of the city and the heat wasn't too oppressive. One stretch of the river has some rapids which were fun to navigate our way through. Lots of locals said hi and waved as we passed by. Man, most everyone we meet in Mali is super nice. It's great.
  


• The dry season is winding down here - it seems like it rains at least every other day and the dirt roads are getting pretty rough. Hopefully by the time we get back from our home leave, we'll have missed out on the humidity of the dry-season-to-rainy-season transition.

Counting down the days

Things have been pretty slow for me the past few weeks in Bamako. I don't have much in the way of exciting news to report - sorry. I'm still trying to find full-time work out here. I was hoping to find work at the US Embassy but they're in a time of transition this summer. From what I understand, US foreign service workers change their posts every two to three years and the way the schedules have worked out here, there's a turnover of 70% of the embassy employees. They're all leaving for new posts soon or have already left. That means that lots of programs are finishing up and no new ones are starting. Most departing employees I talk to say that there will be positions opening up in the next few months once the new staff arrives and settles in. If nothing comes through at the embassy, I'm also looking seriously into working remotely doing contract tech writing, web design, instructional design, etc. The web connection here has been solid and the speeds are good enough that I would feel comfortable working with customers on some projects.

In the meantime, I've been spending some time working with a group of Youth Exchange and Study (YES) students. The YES program is run by the US State Department and offers students from significantly Muslim countries such as Mali the chance to study in America for a year. Almost every Saturday for the past few months, I'll talk with the 15 or so students who have been chosen for the program about life in America and what they can expect when they arrive in the US in August.

It's been pretty cool. All of the students will be in the US for their junior year of high school and they're all bright kids. Their English is excellent, to the point where I'd never guess that some of them weren't native speakers. So far we've talked about food and restaurants, sports, life in high school, American cities, as well as going off on countless tangents. There isn't a set curriculum that I'm teaching from - I'm more providing them with the opportunity to ask questions about America and get used to listening to an American speak in English for a few hours at a time.

This Saturday I'm going to talk with them about music in America and what happens when kids "go out" with their friends on the weekend. Starting next week, I'll meet with the students three times a week and in addition to covering the nuances of American culture, I'll go over basic American history and government. There was a good documentary out last year called "American Teen" that was shot in Warsaw, Indiana. I'd like to show them parts of that so they can get one (very Midwestern) perspective on what high school in America is like.

In the back of my mind, though, my wife and I are thinking about our upcoming home leave. We've finalized our travel schedule and will be spending a week in Munich, a night in Paris, and then heading back home for several weeks. There's shopping lists to put together, doctor and dentist appointments to be made, and dining options to be considered. Will I go to White Castle just once, or multiple times? Will Buona beef taste even better than I remembered it? Will my body go into shock from ingesting so much trashy food? In a little over four weeks, I'll find out.

Mail call

Not much in the way of big news to report these days. The highlight of the past week was that we have successfully received a package through the mail here in Bamako. My family sent us a small flat-rate box that arrived here after being in transit for about two weeks. It included such necessities as an oven thermometer, Ziploc bags, cleaner for my electric razor, and some packages of Kraft macaroni and cheese sauce. Exciting stuff, I know. If anyone would like our mailing address here, send me an email and I'll pass it along. After not being able to get any packages while we were in Kinshasa, this is pretty exciting for us.

It's hard to believe that we'll be going on vacation in just over a month. We're spending a week in Europe before we go home, and are strongly leaning towards spending several days in Munich. Anyone have recommendations of places to visit in or around Munich? After our time in Europe, we'll be in the states for a few weeks.

Finally, in lieu of taking a million pictures of our house we shot a few quickie videos instead and put them up on YouTube. Send me an email and I can pass along the link if you'd like to see them.

A trip to the suburbs

Last Sunday, my wife and I made the hour-long drive out of town to her manager's village outside Bamako. There was a memorial service that day for his aunt which was being held in his village and he graciously invited us to attend. In Muslim countries, there's a tradition where forty days after someone is buried there's a sacrifice and prayer, and then everyone stays to eat the sacrifice. In this case, there were two cows and some goats which were sacrificed, which was kind of a big deal. My wife said that in two years in a village in Senegal, she never saw anything more than a goat being sacrificed for this kind of thing.


We got on the road early Sunday morning before it started to get too hot and made it to the village without incident. The roads here in Mali have been fantastic, by the way - so much better than what we saw in Kinshasa. We averaged around 60 mph most of the way. I don't think I was ever able to go that fast in DRC thanks to all the potholes and traffic snarls.


Once arriving at the village, we were welcomed warmly by my wife's manager and his extended family. His father had four wives, and this service was for one of his wives, though the deceased was not the birth mother of my wife's manager. More like a stepmother, I guess, though he referred to her as his aunt. I hope that all makes sense. The mood was far from somber. It felt more like an Irish wake, though without all the booze (these people are Muslim, after all). There were groups of people sitting everywhere, and I can't count how many hands I shook and greetings I exchanged with them. Everyone was incredibly kind and welcoming, and I didn't feel out of place or like an outsider at all.


We spent most of the day sitting around in the shade. The primary focus of our energy was moving our chairs from shady spot to shady spot as the sun made its way across the sky. While the men sat and talked, the children looked after each other and played, and the women prepared the food which was rice and meat from the animals killed earlier that day. People were also eating rice and beans, and there was lots of strong tea being served througout the day. I was up late the night before and must have had five cups of tea. Despite the heat, my wife and I both had a great time. The food and the company were both top-notch, and it was refreshing to get out of the city and be a part of what most of the country of Mali is really like.


We had to be careful when we took out our camera because all the kids would come running over and want to have their picture taken. This never got old to them. We did get a few shots of the rest of the goings-on that day.


Here's some of the women cutting up onions for the meal...




and cooking up giant pots of rice...





and here's some of the meat, cooking in a pot (note the spare parts at the top of the picture).





Most people sat under a large tarp that offered protection from the sun...





while a few fortunate souls were able to cool off in a bucket.





We took a short walk around the village where I helped a girl pull water from the well...





and showed off my rippling muscles.





And finally, here's a shot of my wife with her many adoring fans.

Furnishing

I think we're just about done getting the things we need for the house. We still need some curtains, but I bought a rolling computer chair while walking around downtown this morning, and on Sunday we picked up a living room set. We opted to buy it from a roadside stand rather than a regular furniture store. These are all over Bamako - someone sets up a little stand on the side of the road and starts building and selling furniture.

Here's one selling wicker furniture...

And another with tables and wardrobes...

Most of the furniture that these places sell isn't anything that stunning, but we did our best to find something that was reasonably comfortable and not covered in animal-print upholstery. We settled on a four-piece black pleather set (two chairs, a loveseat, and a couch) for the princely sum of 230,000 CFA (about $475). The salesman encouraged us to go for the white pleather over the black, noting that the white would match the beautiful white of our own skin (his words). A good point, but we ended up going with black since the white would have lent our living room a Miami Vice sort of look. The price even included delivery, which was the most exciting part of the transaction.

As you might suspect, a low-fi roadside operation such as this didn't have their own fancy delivery truck. Instead, all four pieces were piled on top of a beat-up taxi that resembled a 1988 Ford Escort. All four pieces of the furniture set were roped into place, and we guided the driver and the furniture salesmen to our house which was about a mile and a half away.

Here they are, posing in front of our house. The salesman is on the left, and the taxi driver is on the right. The taxi driver was a pretty tall dude.

And here they are again, posing again from a different angle...

The furniture isn't too bad - I've already logged a couple naps on the couch. If we get two years out of it, I'll be happy.

No luck in finding any furniture at the embassy garage sale a few weeks back, although we had some major scores such as an ironing board, a few sets of bedsheets, a toaster, and a brand new pair of Levi's 501 jeans in 31/32, which is a size I can never find in America, let alone at a garage sale in Africa. That toaster was key - there are no toasters to be found around Bamako. Don't people want toast with their eggs in the morning? Or a tuna salad sandwich on toast?

Once we get some curtains up in the next week or so, we'll have pictures of the house.