Extract!
I’ve been somehow a bit (just a wee bit) resentful of my healthiness here in Cameroon. I chalk most of it up to being on Doxycycline, an antibiotic, daily for malaria. I call it my superdrug. But I’m amazed at how the least little bit of weakness and I’m ready to be laid up all day. Last night I had a bit of stomach issues (one of those where you’re not sure which end of your body to aim at the toilet… pretty, huh?) and I was ‘bout ready to die. Then my drugs kicked in and I was OK by the morning. I hopped on a bus to Yaounde and arrived with really sore joints. I honestly don’t know how most Cameroonians function when quite a bit of the time they have some sort of illness. (Although I’ve seen plenty of examples where my office is nearly empty because everyone has some sort of something and can’t work)
I haven’t had nearly enough exotic parasites to brag about when I’m back home. But I can say I’m experienced with them. In the last 2 weeks I have diagnosed, extracted, supported, or warned about 5 different people about mango flies. A friend in Buea got real intimate real fast when I had to check her backside for whether the 10 (!) welts were mango flies or not. Another volunteer (who will remain nameless) had one in her back and I wasn’t sure if it was a mango fly or not (one never is… it could just be a nasty zit). Mango flies are flies that lay eggs on clothes drying outside then if you don’t iron clothes or wait 4 days for the larvae to die, they enter your skin and a small worm starts growing. You gotta squeeze it out. The tricky thing with it is that you can control YOUR clothes but you can’t really guarantee at a hotel. So I extracted the tiny larvae while being very calm (it’s a gross thought). Then later on, I watched the extraction process for chiggers. I’m proud of being a true NC girl and knowing all ‘bout chiggers but Cameroonian chiggers are a different game. They live in dust/mud often with animal feces and they lay eggs in your feet, often near your nails. You gotta dig the egg sack out. I’ve seen it done 3 times now and …it’s still gross.
And speaking of things that inspire me (I thought that was a reasonable transition…), I did paper mache this week. At the slight mention that I should make a pinata for July 4th, suddenly I was up and tearing strips of newspaper. I do believe that paper mache might just be miraculous. It’s profound. I’d started a mask project with Lucy earlier but she wasn’t really motivated since she’d never seen the glory. Once she saw mine with a layer of the hardened paper on it, she got really enthusiastic. So there we were, squatting on my concrete floor late into the night as I gently tried to steer her away from drowning her mask in paste.
And then! Oh sweet miracles! How would we ever get these artful affairs dry in Buea, the land of damp? A DEHUMIDIFIER! On loan from Bill’s office (Bill I promise I’ll bring it back at the end of rainy season), it’s exactly what every citizen of Buea needs. My clothes aren’t growing as moldy and my paper mache dries over night. It’s pure joy. Things you don’t think you’ll need in Africa…
The way the rainy season works is that meetings are sort of inconsistent because the rain holds people up, kids are in flux because some kids go on vacation to bigger cities while village kids come to Buea since it IS the bigger city, and it RAINS. So my work’s been a bit slower. But I’m finding motivation in an art therapy workshop I want to hold with secondary school girls in October. After nearly 2 years, this is what I’ve learned about my work style: I’m not great when there’s little structure but I need to set goals for myself that are fun. Sounds a bit like common sense, huh?
