09 November 2007

day 9 :: still no internet time (i type this nonsense offline, ya'll)

This morning I woke up with pink eye. At first I thought I just rubbed something into my eye, but it got worse instead of better and then I got my mirror and looked in it and there was nothing there and my eye was completely pink and I remembered that pink eye starts with a feeling like something is in your eye. It’s been going around here, lately. I’ve been so rude as to not shake hands with people after a few too many experiences in which I shook someone’s hand and said, “How are you?” and they answered, “Well, I have this eye problem.” It was too early to go to the hospital, so I just lay there and thought about how much it was going to suck to have to wear my glasses, which make me slightly dizzy, for days at a time. Finally I squinched my eye closed, because it hurt less that way, and tried to go back to sleep.

Obviously the eye was fine the next time I woke up.

Remember how I’ve recently gotten all brave and gone to the latrine in the middle of the night? Yeah, that’s over. Last night I went to a party at the compound of the European NGO that runs the hospital and was informed that all the women there have little buckets that they keep in their rooms because “almost all the snake bite victims we treat are women who had to go out in the night to wee.”

Little bucket it is.

And no, don’t ask about the logistics of that. I will say that it’s very nice not to have to actually get out of bed, find clothes, put them on, go to the latrine, come back, take the clothes off, and get back into bed. By the time I’ve done all of that, it’s usually impossible to get back to sleep. So the little bucket is quite nice.

I also met someone at the party who, after hearing what my next plans are, five minutes after meeting me, just looked at me and laughed and said, “You’re not going to make it in [Reasonably Big City in the Western Half of the US]. It’s going to make you crazy with boredom. You’ll be back in Africa within a year.”

Hmph.

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