Malarone!

One of the very first things that happened when I arrived in Senegal was that I started taking anti-malarial medication. People who grow up in areas where malaria is endemic can acquire some degree of resistance to malaria infections, but PCVs definitely don't have any sort of immunity. While there are a places in northern Senegal where malaria is practically non-existent (mosquitoes can't live without water and it's the desert up there) it exists on an epic scale down here in Kedougou, particularly during the rapidly approaching rainy season. 

The go-to malaria prevention drugs in West Africa are doxycycline (doxy, as we call it)and mefloquine (AKA Mephaquin, Lariam). Doxy is an antibiotic, sometimes prescribed to people in America for acne. You have to take it every day and it has mostly mild side effects, like upsetting your stomach and making you more sensitive to the sun, but most PCVs here tolerate it well and for a few it's even helped keep their complexions clear. However, due to an allergic reaction I once had to a medication in the same -cycline family of drugs the Med Office (quite rightly) decided that it was off-limits for me and I was put on mefloquine. 

Mefloquine (one of the generic versions of the much-maligned Lariam) is made of a chemical that disrupts the development of malaria parasites. It doesn't tend to upset your stomach, you only have to take it once a week, and, like doxy, it's pretty cheap. However, in some people it can cause things like extremely vivid dreams, insomnia, anxiety and/or depression. More rarely it can cause hallucinations, odd behavior, and self-destructive thoughts. My first few months on Mefloquine I had bizarre, incredibly vivid dreams (all of Peace Corps in a strange pageant at an Under-the-Sea-themed middle school formal; being menaced by lazy, helmeted urban dinosaurs, etc etc) but that was pretty much it and I didn't mind. 

Then, as the weeks went by, I started getting weirder. Slowly, like the proverbial frog, I went on with my life as a tight, angsty knot began lacing itself around my sternum. Back in America I wasn't exactly an carefree ray of twenty-four-hour sunshine, but I also didn't get all squirrely about making eye contact with my neighbors. It took awhile for me to decide that the anxiety I was feeling wasn't justified (from scary transport to aggravating cat-callers,  there are so many anxiety-making things here) but eventually I listened to other PCVs and gave Med call. It didn't take long for them to decide that I shouldn't be taking mefloquine anymore and (because my -cycline allergy ruled out taking doxy) they set about getting authorization from the Washington, D.C. Medical Office to switch me to Malarone. 

The most valuable thing in my hut. 

They needed official permission from D.C. because Malarone costs a lot of money. The Cadillac of Chloroquine-resistant malaria prohylaxsis medications, it's known for having almost no side-effects, and also for being crazy expensive. Because it's a generic drug Mefloquine is pretty cheap (I think brand-name Lariam can be more expensive) and an entire month's worth of doxy only costs about $10 USD, but Malarone costs about $5 USD per pill, or about $185 USD per month. That's considerable, particularly at a time when budgets are getting slashed left and right. In any case, they sent me a bottle of Malarone, I stopped taking Mefloquine, and after a couple weeks the big ball of anxiety in my chest started to loosen. It took a couple more months for me to really feel like I was getting back to normal, but it happened eventually and life is much better now. There are still plenty of stressful things (student loans, rainy season transport, project funding, garage weirdos, government paperwork...) but they no longer feel like they're consuming me, and I have a new appreciation for what people who struggle with serious anxiety issues have to deal with. 

Also, I was sitting in my hut the other day and realized that the bottle of Malarone I was holding probably cost about five hundred dollars, making it the most expensive thing currently in my possession, worth more than my netbook and my iPod put together.

Fête Noël

I spent Christmas in Popenguine, a little beach town just south of Dakar, it was wonderful, and here are a few of the highlights. 

Home Away From Home

When I walk from my hut to get water (or go to the boutique, or buy a bean sandwich) I usually walk through this field, next to the Sofidetex shed where they store cotton-related stuff, and, especially with the palm tree, the view always strikes me as being very Northern California-esque, like the foothills around Mount Hamilton. 

More Notes on Camp

The radio show This American Life has an excellent episode called Notes on Camp, and it's totally work a listen.

Here are a few more photos from youth camp:

Tatiana running a Marketing activity for selling
 locally made bug repellent and the weekly village market.

Host Sisters: Mariama Gaulo and Adama

Eric & I, exhausted from teaching First Aid. 

Also, doorways here tend to be really low, and everyone hits their heads pretty frequently. One evening Patrick, one of my Peace Corps neighbors, hit his head one time too many (he had a couple scrapes on his scalp that were actually bleeding a little bit) and went and got his bike helmet. That night was also spaghetti night, and they ran out of utensils at dinner (usually we'd get spoons to eat with) so some of us wound up eating with our hands. It was a total mess, and also almost pants-wettingly funny. Almost.

Patrick, Meghan, & Tatiana

Meghan and me, eating spaghetti with our hands

Tatiana and Patrick on Spaghetti Night

You can tell who sat where by how much pasta
 was left on the floor afterwards. (Those are my toes.)

All in all, I'm lucky to be in a region with such awesome and entertaining people; even when things got hectic and confusing (which happens a lot when cultures and schedules and languages collide) we still managed to have a lot of fun.

Also, just for the record, my summer camp, Camp Unalayee, is still the best summer camp of all time.

Packages!

My birthday was over a month ago, but with all the power outs, flooded roads, and finicky cell phone reseau it's been hard to get online lately, so I haven't had a chance to gush about all the great mail I got last month.

I got an amazing package from Switzerland!

The girls I used to nanny for made me some beautiful drawings and a really wonderful calendar -- it was a lovely gift, and it's going to be great to have all these photos up in my hut:

I got some pretty sweet cards and letters. 

My American family sent me this fantastic package...

... and this lovely new sunhat!

I was particularly excited about the hat, the fruit leathers, and the gel pen that was filled with glue. A glue pen! So good! It works really well, too.

This package from Troll wasn't technically birthday related,
but it was really, really awesome. 

Ah Hab A Code.

It's a gray and rainy day here in Kédougou. It's so chilly that I put on a long-sleeved t-shirt, even. The wet season is starting and I have a little bit of a cold, so the other under-the-weather volunteers and I are hanging out in the library hut, sniffling and drinking lovely green tea and rooibos from my Tekoe stash.

(Actually, I am drinking out of an old mayonnaise jar.)

Happy Belated 4th of July!

We hosted the Peace Corps/Senegal American Independence Day party at the Kédougou Regional house. About a hundred people came and all in all it was a pretty great party. 

Meera and I improvised facepaints

I got to see Emma and Cady again!

David and I made vats of potato salad...

... and coleslaw

The Ice Cream guy set up shop in the yard

Everyone got all America-ed out!

Delorian Dreams

Just for the record, the preventative malaria medication that I'm taking does indeed cause surreal dreams. Not nightmares, just weirdly vivid dreams that I would probably confuse with reality except for that they've all been ridiculous.

All my Lariam dreams so far have taken place entirely at night, even the one that I had during my afternoon nap. For instance, last night in my dream I remembered that I forgot my toothbrush and some notebooks, so I ran home to California get them. I tried to hop a flight back, but San Francisco International Airport was being remodeled to look like a Japanese restaurant from the 70s, so it was really hard to find the right elevator... and so on like that.