Nasty Infection (Days 3-4)

The best part of day 3 was that I managed to drink enough water that I didn't feel dehydrated at all. I spent a lot less time running to the toilet too (although that doesn't mean that my digestive system is healthy yet). I even felt healthy enough to eat some ugali and sukumawiki for lunch.

Since I was next to the office, I tried to at least avoid falling further behind on work. Bringing my inbox back down to a manageable level took quite some time. After that, work mostly consisted of sending lots of texts in Kiswahili to some of my co-workers who are out in the field. They don't actually know that I'm sick, so they probably wonder why I've been so slow on email the past couple days. Everyone at the office knows, though, and they've mostly been really supportive. Anyway, I managed to sort everything out, although I knew that I wasn't functional enough to work on more complex tasks.

At the end of the day, it was time for Frisbee. I desperately wanted to go, but I knew that I wasn't up for it. They dropped me off at home and went off to play Ultimate (but first they had to run back home to collect the office keys that I had held on to--some days I am an absolute kleptomaniac). I ate 5 oranges and sat immobile on the couch (at least we had some old episodes of Family Guy to keep me entertained) until the power went out. I decided I should run and try to find something a little more filling, so I bought some bread and avocado and made avocado sandwiches. Jodie came home shortly after and ate leftovers and when Reuben came home, he made pasta and finished off some tomato sauce in the fridge. It was funny that the three Americans in our office barely batted an eye as Thanksgiving came and went (although there's supposed to be a get-together on Saturday, which is much more convenient, and there may even be turkey).

I took my evening pill and crashed. For a little less than two hours. A bit before midnight, I was awake again. I discovered that I couldn't fall back asleep on my bed, on my floor, or on the couch. I couldn't sleep with the windows closed and a relatively low population of mosquitoes, and I couldn't sleep with a nice breeze coming through the window as I lay under a mosquito net. No matter where I was, I felt both hot and cold, while simultaneously being slightly suffocated. Finally, at 2:30 in the morning, I opted for a desperate solution. I climbed into the back of the car (a small sedan) with my pillow and a sheet and curled up. I soon shifted the driver's seat down to form a sort of L-shaped bed. It wasn't pretty, but I mustered nearly four hours on it.

In the morning we were cleaning the house and yard (Jodie was rather surprised to see me in the back of the car in my pajamas at 7 in the morning) for a potluck that we had discussed but never really planned (mostly a rather delayed housewarming party). We decided that if we kept putting it off, it would never happen. I reminded everyone that I would take a very minor role in putting everything together and after picking up for about ten minutes, I went to lie down again.

We were a little late heading to the office, but I needed to send some messages from my phone first thing, so I put in 30 productive minutes before concluding that my brain had been reduced to soup and retreating back to my room behind the office. I rested there most of the day without doing much at all (there was no internet at the office either, so that didn't help matters). The exception was to go buy some ginger ale and peanuts. We were having rice and beans at the office today, so I asked for rice plain and added my peanuts to it (a trick I learned in India). Unfortunately, the rice was pretty oily (it's steamed rice, but rather than steam it in water alone, many people here add oil to it) so the taste stuck in my mouth most of the day. After that, I went to town to send salaries to our sales staff around the country.

It was nice to go to town. It was not so nice to have a few different people come up to me asking for money and assuring me that I was not in fact, broke like them (you see, as one so candidly explained "White people always have money. Show me your skin. You must have money.") A healthy me would have gone for a humorous deflection (while I certainly have a comfortable salary by Tanzanian standards and likely earn more money than those who were asking, at the end of the day, my pockets are rather light), but in my light-headed state, I just brushed past them and avoided muttering how I really felt. I was just thankful that the worst of the infection was behind me and that it was the end of the day on Friday.