Sorry, this one's a bit long...

Last week Ice came to me and said that she felt like she had a fever. I asked her if she felt like she might have malaria. People who’ve lived here a really long time, including expats, can usually just tell when they have malaria. She kind of hummed and hawed. So I asked her if she would get her blood tested and give me the receipt. Two days later her neice was at the door at 7:30am with the results. Positive for malaria. Now, if you’ll remember, the last time she had malaria I gave her a bag of 12 pills and a schedule tell her when to take them and she took all but 5 of them… (if you don’t treat malaria properly, you just keep getting it…) So I called up the only expat nurse around right now and she told me that we could treat this type of malaria with chloroquin and fansidar on day two. We can always use quinine but the side effects are nasty. You can have quite a ringing or traffic sounds in your ears for a week or more. So I went out and got the medication. What’s kind of funny is that chloroquin actually works better when you take it with an antihistamine. I bought 10 chloroquin pills, three fansidar and a box of antihistamine (about 15 pills) for $3.50. The chloroquin was .25 cents, the antihistamine was about .11 cents and the fansidar was the pricey one at just over a dollar a pill. I thought this time I’d be smart and go to her house each time she needed to take some pills and watch her swallow them. Day one went fine, had to go two times. Day two she had to take the fansidar after the chloroquin at 10:30am. One of the pills got stuck in her throat and instead of swallowing it down with lots of water she just sat there gagging and then threw up. So I gave her two more chloroquin and told her to take them within the next half hour or so when she was feeling more like swallowing again and that I’d come back later with some new fansidar. So later in the day at 3:00 I went to her house to give her the fanisdar. I asked her if she’d taken the chloroquin and she said she hadn’t. I got a bit ripped at her and told her that if she doesn’t take it on schedule it doesn’t do a proper job. She took the pills and I told her I’d be back the next morning with her last dose. She then tells me that the malaria is already gone but her body just feels weak yet. I explained to her that the malaria was just in the process of being killed but it wasn’t done yet. It seems like no matter how many times I explain how medicine works, it doesn’t seem to sink in! We may actually give her a round of another drug which will eradicate the malaria parasites from her liver. We’ll have to see if that is necessary.
Sunday afternoon I went to our guards house to take photos of him with his family. I told them I’d be there at 3:00. So I was there at 3:00 and he was sleeping and his wife was washing clothes… Anyways, they got themselves together and dressed up. While his family was getting ready I had a little talk with him. He is in the process of preparing the land beside his house so that he can make his house a little wider. Right now he is living there with his wife and five kids and his brother and wife. It is possible that his younger unmarried brother is also living there. It is such a small house that I can’t imagine there is any privacy at all. I asked Pak Nios how they lived before he worked for us. He said that they ate sweet potatoes and taro root and that his wife had a garden but now that God opened the door for him to work for us his wife doesn’t need to have a garden anymore and she can just stay home with the kids and wash the clothes. He said that the night before his wife had asked him what will happen if we (Hugo and I) move back to Canada and then Pak Nios won’t have a job anymore. I assured him that Lord willing we will be here until February 2010 and then we will go home for furlough during which time we still need a night guard and then we hope to come back again. It is quite humbling to realize that this family is very dependant on us for their lively hood. It is said that the average worker here supports about 10 people and that is the case in this situation! Although Pak Nios’ brother often helps him out or takes a turn guarding at night. They are quite thrilled now as we have a little hut in our back yard around the well pump that they can sit in while guarding. It has a light and a place for them to sit or lay. Before they always laid or sat on top of our sand box which is against the back of the house.

The first photo is of the family in front of their house. They really wanted a photo with us too. And of course Nios wanted one with him and Hugo. They didn't really know how to act for pictures. I really had to encourage them to smile. BTW the baby has a name now, Nelfika but they call her Nel. During the "photo session" Nel got hungry and mom popped out a breast. There was no, I need to sit down and get my nursing cape on and let the baby drink. Nope, this all happened while we were walking to the next location...