Un petit palu

I may have mentioned that the day I did my Peace Corps application was a rare sunny day in Metz and that I felt inspired by some friends' wonderful pictures of PC life and statuses about digestive issues. I actually looked forward to having the shits in exotic places.

I now feel like a legitimate volunteer. I had an explosive time in a latrine with no door at a bar. Afterwards I did crowd control for Kalene's HIV/AIDS mural project. The crowd control involved story time in French (made the blunder of telling Snow White...) and doing the spaghetti dance.

Because my explosively good times continued for a few days with little relief (from being sick and the guilt of not being useful with the mural project), I called PCMO and went to the hospital for some tests. 'Hospital' is a scary word, but it's just where they keep the doctors. I got a malaria test yesterday and took over a cup o' poop over this morning. The lab was closed, when I got there, so I dropped my "sample" in through the window (it was in a jar!). I immediately had to admit what I did, because just after I let go, the proprietor arrived. Oops.

I came back a few hours later thinking that I probably had giardia (the "joining the club" illness) and found out that I had malaria instead.

I'm taking Coartem to treat it and shouldn't have any long term effects. I've only really had one 'spell' so far of feeling really tired and sweating for no reason. I have what Cameroonians call "un petit palu" or just a little malaria.

They use "le palu" the same way we would talk about a bug or a cold. Because the symptoms of malaria are all-encompassing, you really could say that you have the palu every time you're sick.

You have a headache? It's palu. You have a fever? It's palu. You're feeling sore all over? Palu. Digestive problems? Probably the old palu-d.

Ca va aller.