NEWSFLASH!! MALARIA!!

JUST IN: An anonymous poem. The writer has told me that it was written in a near-state of hysteria (that will explain much), and while the names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved, the story is entirely true:

"The Lovely Parasite"

Saralia has malaria.

Her skin's on fire,

Her head is throbbing,

Her limbs are achy,

She feels like sobbing.

Will she live?

Or will she die?

Her liver hurts,

She wants to cry.

I'm okay now that I'm writing,

But last night was really sucky;

I really thought it was the end,

So now I feel lucky.

(that I didn't die.)

And hadn't I ended my last email "malaria free"? And then my mother said to me, "Well don't end your next email with 'thphoid free'--you never know what might happen!" She was joking, so when I went back to the hospital yesterday and the doctor told me I might also have typhoid, I laughed. Here's what else happened at the hospital. I recorded it shortly thereafter, so I will simply copy from my real-life journal now:

"Your blood is very thick and your veins are very thin and collapse," Lydia the blood snatcher said. At least she was a very competent one and was using needles instead of nails, like they had done at the clinic when I was first diagnosed with malaria.

"It means I am a good person," I replied.

But by the time the baby needle (it was a children's hospital) had wriggled around the insides of both my arms looking for veins, I began seeing spots and my ears drums shut down and I knew what was coming next --

"Stop," I say. "I'm going to pass out."

They put me in a wheelchair--

[I'm just going to take a break because I'm curious to know how many of my dear friends--you know who you are--are rolling your eyes and saying, "Wow, there goes our drama queen in action." Let me just tell you...I REALLY was going to pass out. I'll bet none of you have collapsing, rolling veins. And your blood is certainly not as thick as mine. So you don't know what I suffer.]

--and began wheeling me to a bed. I began to fall deeper and deeper into a relaxing comotose state when SUDDENLY hydrolics (diarrhea) kicked back in and I had to make a quick decision. A faint voice in the back of my head called me back to my senses:

"Saaaarah.....Saaaaaarah....would you rather pass out and make a huge embarassing mess here in the chair? Or would you rather wake up, go to the toilet, and keep your pretty skirt clean?"

I thought for a moment, kinda subconsciously cuz on the outside all I was saying was "I'm gonna pass out, I'm gonna pass out, I need to lie down, I need to lie down.", and then I magically came-to, out of my groaning and nonsense, and I got up out of that chair, mustered the right words and said loudly and clearly (note my good use of adverbs), "I need a bathroom. I'd rather go to the bathroom than pass out."

Ahhh, the power of diarrhea.

Then I was fine. I told the doctor that I did not need a blood culture and that I would simply take the medicine for typhoid anyways. It's just cipro (Thanks, Carolyn!) and that helps with a number of different things anyways and I'm sure that I've got a number of different things.

First of all, do not worry--I am totally fine. I little malaria never killed anyone. (sorry, bad joke) Malaria is really just like a bad case of the flu. I had a really, really, really high fever. The first night I had a fever of 104'F, but only because that is was the highest the thermomer went. The next night it went down to 103'F, the next to 101'F, and last night I was a low 100'F. This morning I am normal. The worst part of everything was the headaches. I couldn't think and i couldn't move, and now I can--I hope that is evident. All I can say is, thank God I was taking those super expensive malaria pills b/c otherwise it would've been a lot worse. And there's really not much more to tell. I just laid in bed all day and groaned. And I got some nice phone calls which, while always cheered me up, also totally exhausted me and drained me, so sometimes I got in trouble for getting so excited on the phone. Oh, and let me not forget Chaya's greatest gift of all--a toilet within 5-step walking distance from my bed.

Second of all, do not worry--I was very well taken care of. Madame Chaya, the lead volunteer, (there are 4 of us total, you know the other 3), let me and for some nights Holly and Molly too, move into her little rented home in town. She bought an extra mattress and 'squito nets and towels and food and let me stay on her big bed in front of the fan the whole time. She even made me grilled cheese in the sandwich maker. And of course Holly and Molly were amazing too. The morning (i believe it was day 3) that I woke up crying that I hated this country and was ready to go home, they went out about bought me apple juice and cocoa puffs and other american things. (Though the cocoa puff "cocoamotives" taste like cardboard here.) And when I was sweating bullets, they cooled me down with wet towels. And they read to me almost the entire book, The Princess Diaries III, Princess in Love. And when I yelled crazy things at night while i was trying to sleep, they didn't remind me about it the next morning.

And lots of community members came to visit me. Including a lot of the community leaders and some high school girls.

Wow-- I feel like I'm talking about myself quite a bit here. I will take a break and share with you a song that I have written about the country of Uganda. It is sung to the tune of...well, you'll see:

O' Beautiful, for spacious skies,

And lush green fields of corn.

For super high mountains,

Like Mt. Elgon,

And the mosquito infested Lake Victoria.

Uganda! Uganda!

God shed (PLEASE!) His grace on thee.

And destroy the mosquitos

For giving me malaria,

From one end of the Nile to the o-ther.

But in all fairness, there is a better chance that I got my malaria (awww, I'm getting so personal with my disease) in Kenya rather than in Uganda. The incubation period is 10-12 days and I had just been in Uganda for 10 days. But we will never know, will we? Just like we will never know if I have typhoid.

And today, if all goes as planned, I will return to the Hadassah Infant School. I am very excited because I feel like I have totally been wasting my time in bed. There are only so many times you can listen to Phantom of the Opera and there's only so long you can feel bad for yourself and wish you were in your own bed, or better yet, on the guestroom bed in front of the TV. And anyways, a little birdie told me that the kids miss me.

Before I end, I just want to publicly answer some questions that I have gotten from a bunch of you. If you or your communities are interested in giving any sort of donation (monetary or otherwise) to the Abayudaya community, you should check out the Kulanu website (www.kulanu.org) to find out what its specific needs are. They can probably also advise you as to how shipment works and details like that. As of right now, it looks like there will be many volunteers coming here over the summer and I'm sure they will have room to bring stuff as well. But I just don't know how any of that works.

Even if you are not (yet) interested in sending a donation, you should still check out Kulanu b/c they do a lot of good work and have helped me a lot in planning and funding my trip here. The same goes for American Jewish World Services (www.ajws.org). I would probably still be in Uganda without Kulanu and AJWS, but I would be, no doubt, completely lost, disorganized, and broke. And, while I certainly did not intend to get into all these thank yous now, I would also like to thank two of my good friends, Levi Bergavoy and Tiff (I don't even know her last name) for giving me a "stipend" and a "discretionary fund", respectively. And to my parents for giving birth to me and raising me and doing my taxes for me. And most of all to God for creating a beautiful world.

And to the Academy....

Cheers,

Sarah