The Cold Has Always Bothered Me Anyway..

7/1/14

I have spent the last few nights at a Peace Corps transit house near the capital of The Gambia.  This place is decked-out with everything from running water, electricity, filtered water on tap, to freaking wifi and air-conditioning.  Each of the nineteen people in the house has been awakened by being so bone-chillingly cold that they woke up in order to pile random things on top of themselves for warmth.  This is not real life...starting tomorrow. Tomorrow, we are being bussed up country to our training villages, where we will reside for the next 2 months while going through intensive language classes, learning to survive without any modern conveniences, and sweating profusely through and onto any and all things within a 10 foot proximity of our bodies. 

We have been getting slowly eased into this new country; Its culture, food, languages, and landscape are all becoming more familiar, and as of today, I have finally stopped waking up with that panicked "where in the F am I?" pounding in my chest.  HOWEVER, I can't say that I feel prepared for what lies ahead in the coming weeks.  While I feel prepared to sleep alone and have my own space, I am nervous.  I am nervous for being alone, for trying to bond with people through a language I can't speak, for actually knowing what 120 degrees feel like, and above all else, I'm nervous for running into something furry in the dark.  I relive this moment over and over again in my head, hoping that the fear will somehow dissipate and that my new sense of strength or independence or whatever will overpower my fears, but mostly my visions end with me screaming, peeing my pants, and crying in front of my new host family. 

The last week has been filled with all sorts of classes.  From eight to five, we sit in a classroom at Peace Corps headquarters in Banjul.  We listen to various people tell us about the culture, we eat the lunches with failed attempts to use only our right hands, and we get shot up with just about every vaccination known to man. I even sat through a presentation on how to successfully defecate into a hole. Three days ago, after getting shot up with Hepatitis A and Meningitis, we received our Malaria prophylaxis along with explicit instructions on how to use them. Feeling confident in my ability to follow simple instructions, I went home with my bag of pills.  For the next three days, I felt accomplished; I woke up at six, exercised, showered, ate breakfast and took my prescribed medications.  In addition to my daily cocktail of vitamins and pain relievers, I added in the mix a Mefloquin and one Doxycycline to prevent Malaria.  As the days went on, I felt an increased level of bizarre.  An intense dizziness peppered with nausea, a slower-than-normal heart rate, and a general feeling that I had recently chugged 300 beers was overtaking me, and I was not sure what to do.  After seeing the doctor, resting, and drinking my body weight in water, I came back to the PC house to pack up my things.  It was then that I realized I had been taking the Mefloquin- a WEEKLY medication-EVERY DAY for the last three days.  Thankfully, I am still alive and also apparently quite resistant to Malaria.  I decided to ride out my strange feeling by going to watch the World Cup and imbibing in a couple of the local beers...I mean...if I feel drunk, I had better damn well be enjoying myself. 
 
Aside from my medicinal mishap, most things are going well.  I couldn't have hoped for a better group of people and I've been able to swim in the ocean and relax into my new environment.  I don't know when the next time is that I will have access to internet or electricity.  Until that time comes, I hope for nothing more than a cool breeze, a nice family to live with, and for all the rodents in the whole of Gambia to spontaneously keel over and die.

Here's hoping.