Well lots and lots has happened since my last blog post. One, we changed continents. Goodbye Europe, hello Africa. For month 6 of the World Race my team was placed in Sumbuwanga, Tanzania. A small town on the Western side of the country, a few hours from the Republic of Congo border. It took my team 4 buses and over 36 hours on a bus, (10 of which were on a dirt road) to arrive at our home for the month. My team was paired with another team and we had the privilege to have a few college students join us from the States for the month as an exposure trip to the World Race. Our ministry was to be door to door evangelism and open air preaching in the afternoons. I was a bit apprehensive about the whole endeavor, this was something I was totally new to and the only experience I have had with door to door evangelism was with Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses. Not exactly my style. So when the first day of ministry came, I tossed up a prayer that went something like, “So, please don’t let me come across as a big mean-ie, upitty, rich white person who thinks she is superior to everyone, can I just come across as me-Kelly form Happy Valley who happen to love Jesus and wants to share so that others will know You too?” And turns out, everything went just fine and it wasn’t scary or pushy at all. Thanks God.
I started not feeling well a couple days into the month, but I thought it could have been a multitude of things, different food, exhaustion, maybe even a cold. There were 6 of us who went to the clinic to get checked out. All 6 of us came back positive for Malaria. Well crap. I only had THREE mosquito bites! THREE! While waiting for our prescription I glared at all three with major disdain.
Our medication made us sicker then the actual Malaria. But when you have 5 other friends who are in the same room as you laying in bed and complaining together, it really takes the sting out of it all. Throughout the day, you could hear us saying,
“Does it make you feel like you’re head is going to fall off too? And that your body is sinking into your sleeping pad?”
“Yes,”
“Well, Thank goodness I’m not alone in this!”
So instead of me being miserable all by myself at least there was 5 others with me, which in my mind is a party. (I’ll really take any reason to celebrate though). During this time, I read a lot of historical novels and played more solitaire then I have in my whole life and when those two things weren’t happening I talked to God about anything and everything. Serious stuff: asking for divine revelation about the Trinity and understanding of the Word and not so serious stuff: Does he mind that I LOVE historical novels and could daydream about Mr. Darcy for hours?
A week went by and we all trekked back to get re-tested. A couple girls still had parasites; poor Brittany has had one for so long that we loving named it “The Beast”. And I was the ONLY ONE who still had Malaria. I am SO SPECIAL that I am the 1.5% of the population that this medication didn’t work for. Oh Joy. At first I didn’t think it was so bad, I didn’t really feel that sick (even though Alys, my team member thought I looked green…gee thanks Alys J ) but then the Doctor let me know that the Malaria had increased in its severity and that he was going skip a few levels of medication and just give me the highest form of anti-malaria meds out there. Which I had three options of how to take it-I could go to the hospital for 3 days and get it through an IV (um, no thank you) I could get a shot once a day for 4 days but would have the skin tissue around the shot area DIE (um, heck no) oooorrrr I could take it orally 3 times a day every 8 hours for 5 days (ding ding ding. Winner.) Ok-whatever, no big right? I’ll be fine.
Once we were out in the waiting room my friend Nurse Julie broke it down for me. This high of a dosage of Quinine was going to make me sick. Really, really sick. It is going to kill almost all of my red blood cells and it takes a full 120 days for those cells to regenerate. Side effects were nausea, diarrhea, loss of appetite ringing in the ears, blurred vision, dizziness, headache and body shakes. And then it came,
“I think that you need to extend the week you were going to take to go home for the wedding and take the whole month to recover.”
At which point I broke down in the middle of the clinic and cried my eyes out.
Look for Part 2 of Malaria Happens….
