Sick of the Sciness. Sick of being sick. Sick of Sickining for you. For you All.

This is a edited version of an email to someone but I thought it would be interesting for those following to understand my state of mind right now.

forgive the grammar, swearing....i want to convey actually how i feel.

Let me give you a run down of the past couple days:

Sunday

Travelled to Ndola to meet up with patrick.

I packed up and travelled to visit patrick because he was coming off a malaria run and i wanted to make sure he was doing better. As i caught a shared taxi i was feeling pretty weak but i accounted that towards not eating yet. As the taxi arrived into Ndola (about 35min later) I was feeling pretty dizzy but i managed to meet patrick and we traveled to Bani's pizza at 9am to get veggy burgers which ended up being alright but after i finished mine i was feeling like shitttttttttttt.

We caught a taxi back to his place, before arriving there we stoped at a chemist (pharmacy) and got some malaria treatment because my symptoms were rather similar to those i had a few weeks prior ( i use this word and i think...what the fuck made me say prior...anyway...i feel like some dude with his head up his ass....im going to keep it for fun...but i dont mean it). We get back to his pad and I take some of the drugs thinking that it would be a great idea to combat whatever i had...why not i thought...my symptoms were: chills, fever, pains, weak, dizzy.....ok i did not have chills or fever before but they are classic malaria symptoms. after i take the drugs i pass out for 5 hours. what a great day...

as i wake up i checked my temperature again....38.8...pretty fucking hot....and not the kate middleton kind....

patrick calls me a cab to get back to the bus terminal where i planned to catch a ride back to kitwe. the cab arrives and i can barely talk, im delirious, not making any sense to the cabby he stops talking to me after a few minutes.

we get to the terminal. i pay the guy and i start to walk around this crowded bus terminal which has about 100 mini buses and 300 people yelling different town names which is their way of advertizing their bus direction. i was not in a great mood. i find some guy who is rounding up people for kitwe and i hop on with a burning fever and the perception of a spinning world.
taxis take about 30-40 to get from kitwe to ndola and vice versabusses take about 1-2 hours.
i dont know how long it took because i kept slipping in and out of conciouness (ok, just sleep but i am going to be even more dramatic hahaha). i feel bad for the woman beside me because i looked like i was going to die, i kept moaning, slurring non sense and drooling during my sleep. i have to emphasize how close we are to each other, there is 35 people in a bus that would sit normaly 15 in canada. it is tight.

we arrive just outside of town here my compound is, wuzakili meseshi, and i get dropped off on the opposite side of the highway and about 600m from my house.

challenge number 1)
cross the highway.....usually pretty easy, just wait for a break in traffic then boot it.....delirious (not the eddie murphy kind) and feverish did not help me.(..........oh i forgot to mention this whole time about the diareah....but i took imodium for that so it did not really slow me down but it comes in play later on....) after about two failed attempts to make for a break in the traffic i get through to the other side...easy part was done....

if the remedy i needed was one of diesel and dust i would have been fine....this highway is full of black smoke and dust that makes the air look red. my lungs will never be the same.
challenge number 2)

making it from the highway to my house.usually i can get past the "hecklers" (people who yell things to me in bemba that i have no understanding, they could be nice things or not so nice things....at first i thought it was alright but now its the same people everyday who just keep yelling....i figure a 6 weeks of niceness is good enough....if you want to keep yelling at me after that long i am just going to stop responding...am i being a jerk?) with ease with simple bemba greetings while the drunks i just brush off with a hello. in the state i am in....not so easy.
of course there were the yellers and the nice people too (thankfully) but all i was capable of doing was some sort of a moaning and a hand wave as a slowly staggered towards my house. this walk takes about 4 minutes usually, this time...more than 10...i know what i feels like to be a zombie...i could easily play one as an extra in a movie sometime.

finally making it back to my house i stumble through the gate. greeted by my host mother i mutter, " i have malaria again...." and hop into the house and fall to my bed. i told her i took some malaria medication but she was pissed because i did not go see a doctor...i was thinking "oh well im tough, i have been through this before..pfff"

as i lay on my bed twisting in back pains and moaning from my fever my host mom starts to pray in tounge at 100% volume.....this did not help how i was feeling. i tried having my arms and hissing "shhhh" but it got nowhere...this was something striaght out of a horror movie...i wish i would have recorded this.....anyway the prayer last for 20minutes before she left and i passed out at 6pm.

the rest of the night contained fucked up dreams of white and red noise that appeared as paint splatter against tile. i dont know how i know this in detail but i do. this was a constant dream that last until 8am the next day.

Monday

I wake up at 8am.No fever. Still weak.But no fever.I take another round of the malaria meds and get ready for work. No way am I going to miss even more work.I get dressed and manage to eat some rice that my host mom prepared but i had no appetite (this was the first thing i ate since that veggy burger on sunday morning).

Thankfully i am not as fucked up as i was and getting to the highway to catch a minibus to work was relatively easy.As i get to the office i find no one else has yet to arrive which gave me time to clean the place up a bit and read some wikipedia pages that i downloaded on saturday (did you know the renaissance started in florance?? ok, you took art history you probably did......)
My co workers arrive and i am stoked to work...but they are not....my host mom called them (she is good friends with my boss) and informed them on how sick i was.We had a informal meeting to discuss the events of the week (it is a killer week, the guys from freshpikt are here to explain the contract change to the farmers face to face so i was pretty pissed to miss that)Then I got sent home....fucking bummer.

It was probably the best idea because i got home i feel right back asleep although that did not last too long. I woke up shortly after with strong stomach pains that fluctuated throughout the entire day. This is when I started to call people to ask about clinics and hospitals....i know malaria does not cause stomach pains.....

After finding out a reliable clinic from my friend Marrisa (shes the co founder of the NGO who is building a school 3 hours from here....im glad she had reception then because its been about a month since i last spoke to her and was the last person i could contact that knew anything about international clinics in kitwe) my host mom and i took a taxi to the clinic. Arriving to the clinic i was put through the regular buisness (i supose anyway...also found out my weight...204lbs hahaha im going to be less than 200 by the time i get back) and the then the doctor visited me.
We chit chatted for a bit then he pushed around some areas of my stomach to find the pain he determined it was in my bowels and it was probably a bowel infection and not malaria. soo...taking that malaria medication....bad idea....should have gone to a doctor first....he gives me some details on the drugs and anti biotics i will be taking and then sends me off.

I get set up in a room with bbc worldnews and a IV in my hand.... i swear to god i never want to have another one of those again it was the most uncomfortable experiences in my life....i cant get over the idea of a tube in my hand.

For some reason I feel as if I am not myself when I am writting this. I feel incredibly down right now. Maybe its just the situation i am in......all this time apart is really getting to me. Everyday i miss you more and more. Right now my chest hurts when i think of you. fuck. im down. i just want to come home.

anyway i must continue.

well you know what. that was about it. the rest of the time there was me sitting in a bed. falling in and out of sleep until the anti biotics did their magic and i got better.
i am now at home, another day off. it is wenesday morning as i write this. i hope to go back to work tomrorow. still a little weak, thinner than before thanks to no real food intake since sunday. i hope today will be different. i have a had full of pills to take for the next five days.
but yea.

thats it.

i feel like i ended poorly but maybe thats just the way it goes.

i cant seem to concentrate.

i cant remember what i could have ate that made me sick.i think this is just my body reacting to not being around you for so long. i am starting to fall apart.