Tropical Diseases in Tropical Locales (posted late due to a tropical disease)

Last Monday started out really well. My work colleague and I called and reserved rooms on the beach for the weekend. We giggled excitedly over our respective laptops and chatted about the upcoming weekend and how long this work week would be. The next day I found out I had typhoid. Over the past weekend I had what I thought was a bout of food poisoning and believed my exhaustion was due to the heat. The lovely Irish nun who I work for gently bullied me into a truck and took me to a clinic another nun in her order ran. Arriving at the clinic with a renowned nun, Sister Mary has been in Sierra Leone for almost 40 years, allowed me the privilege of moving ahead of the overflowing waiting room and into the testing room where I gave enough blood for malaria and typhoid tests. I then returned to work hoping for the best.

Two hours later the results were in and revealed I had a small level of typhoid in my system. What immediately annoyed and disgusted me was that somehow someone’s poop had gotten into me. That’s how you get typhoid, by pretty much eating poop. I made my way back to the clinic and received six different types of pills that needed to be taken twice a day for 5 days. I then returned to work to be gently bullied back into a vehicle and taken home. Before arriving home, the driver stopped and bought me some coconuts. Drinking fresh coconut water was also on the menu of my health care plan. Whole coconuts still in the husk are sold individually. Before you get your coconut, the woman chops off the top and you sip the clear-ish water right from the fruit. When the water is gone, you can give the coconut back to the woman and she will machete the fruit out for you. One thing I quickly learned about coconuts here is that the fruit is not necessarily the dry crunchy fruit you get in the West. Many fresh coconuts have what is called “jelly” and the fruit is pretty much a slippery white floppy thing. Sounds appealing right? If you don’t have an issue with the texture of food, it’s not bad.

After our coconut stop, the driver then stopped at the grocery store so I could load up on feel good foods. This primarily consisted of a Snickers bar, juice, and a beer for Gearoid so he would leave my Snickers bar alone (this plan, unfortunately, didn’t work). I spent the next several days taking pills and naps. I still went to work but left early. Concerned co-workers wanted to rush me to the hospital (local people get really fearful when foreigners get local illnesses) but seriously the only symptom I had was exhaustion. Typhoid turned out to be a great excuse to sleep in, take naps, and eat lots of coconuts. Compared to malaria, which I had twice the last time I was in Sierra Leone, typhoid was a cakewalk (this would later prove to be wrong, but that’s another blog post) and the week which I believed would be slow flew by.

               By the end of the week, we had done enough logistical juggling and Jedi mind magic against the rainclouds to get ourselves in a van with 10 other people and left late Saturday afternoon for the beach. The 2 ½ hour drive was uneventful but the excitement we had really began to blossom when the ocean appeared on the left and the mountains on the right. Despite everything that makes this country so difficult and frustrating, it has an amazingly beautiful landscape and you often have to let go of the difficulties and frustrations to realize it. Gearoid commented himself on the ride to the beach how beautiful and green everything is in Sierra Leone after a good rain and how the last time we were in the country he was too angry and frustrated to appreciate the beauty.

We turned off the highway onto the requisite ridiculously bad road to make the last brief leg of the journey (I swear, there is a conspiracy to keep the beaches as beautiful as possible by making it almost impossible to get to them by not fixing the ludicrously bad roads that actually lead to the sand and surf) and were dismayed by the giant beach party taking place. Salonean hipsters wearing swimsuits and scarves, socks pulled up to their knees, and an assortment of other oddball accessories danced in the surf to a Rihanna song that would play no less than 20 more times on the giant oversized speakers. Beer bottles, water packets, and other trash indicated where they had partied and where they would continue to party. With disappointment on our faces, we made our way to the place we would be staying. Our host Levi, assured us the partygoers would be gone soon and dinner would be ready in 45 minutes (meaning 1.5 hours). We settled into our respective shacks, had a quick drink, and then walked along the beach as far away from the partiers as possible and took a sunset dip in the ocean. It was beautiful. Let me say- I am a complete water baby. I love the water and had planned to spend the entire weekend floating along with the waves, even contemplating forgoing dinner to stay in the surf.

               That didn’t go over well with my companions, mainly Gearoid, so I was peer-pressured out of the ocean but was rewarded with a delicious dinner of freshly caught and grilled lady fish, rice and stew, and fries. We spent the rest of the evening singing loudly to familiar tunes, having a few (or more) drinks, and enjoying each other’s company. At one point, we made the journey back to the beach and took an almost midnight swim. Parents and grandparents reading this post, please don’t get worried or upset. I wouldn’t be writing this part at all if I wasn’t safely back at work but I also fully acknowledge that it wasn’t the smartest idea any of us have ever had. It was amazingly beautiful though. We picked a stretch of beach that the party-goers had ignored. Gearoid, being less inclined to swim in the best of situations, agreed to stand on shore watching our stuff and shined a flashlight on us in the ocean. The water was calm, the sky was clear, the stars were endless, and behind Gearoid I could see the outlines of two tall impressive palm trees. In the water we noticed that our movements were igniting the phosphorescence of plankton.  It really was a tropical paradise.

               The next morning was considerably less magical. I hadn’t slept well, due to not having imbibed as much as my companions which made me cognizant enough of the fact that the mattress and pillow sucked, everything was slightly damp and sandy, and we were in a shack and an intruder could come in and steal my beloved Kindle despite the fact I was cuddling with it. It turns out I had imbibed enough to be more than slightly paranoid. The next morning, the beach had less appeal than it did in twilight. The brightness of the day showed the trash that partygoers had left, the mange on local dogs hoping for a scrap of food, and the woman taking a dump in our eye line behind some rocks we had planned on exploring later in the day. I was a less charming version of myself feeling like I was covered with grit and sand, functioning on about 2 hours of sleep, and after it took 3 hours for the host to make us a breakfast of cold toast and eggs. I escaped the group and found a couple of tables and chairs down the beach and stared at the gorgeous skyline. I swam in the ocean to clean the grit and sand away as well as my foul temperament. After a few more hours of the beach and a delicious lunch, we all became friendly again and loaded into the van to make the hot dusty journey back to Makeni. Like all experiences here, it was an adventure with both good and bad elements. Would I do it again? Definitely.