Kenya Dig It? ~ Plumber Up

[bloodyrosemccoy]

When you’re about to go to a MALARIA-ridden area, you get a lot of literature from the health clinic about it. You get the Life Cycle of the Parasite, advice for the best bug killing spray that won’t give you cancer, an obsessive list of all the symptoms, and of course the giant bottle of prophylactic pills. MALARIA was a huge threat, a horrible tropical parasitic disease that would result in a long, lingering death. “You’re going to get MALARIA!” everyone told me when I said I was going to Africa. “And even if you don’t die, it’ll never go away!”

 

So when a miserable fever and aching joints, not to mention a positive return on my unfailing Orange Test,* turned out to be MALARIA, the response people at home gave to the news was not optimistic. In fact, it seemed to be something along the lines of “RED ALERT DARKEN THE BRIDGE WE GOT MOVIE SIGN ABANDON SHIP.” I was, they were sure, going to have to be shipped home in a Hefty bag.

 

But this was a bit of a surprise to me, because by the time I actually got it, I had forgotten about this reaction.

 

Because when you actually get to a MALARIA-ridden area, you rapidly discover something: it’s a pretty straightforward disease, with a pretty straightforward treatment. Oh, so the three-year-old has malaria? Eh, poor kid. Let’s get her to the doctor; she’ll be all right in a week. Doc says you’ve got malaria? Well, are you taking your meds? Then quit whimpering. You’re embarrassing your host family.

 

Now, this is not to say that it can’t be fatal. Every family has a relative who died from it. And of course, there are places where it ravages the population, since treatments aren’t available—and that’s what people see on posters here in the US, making it seem even more horrible. But that was not the norm around my place. The norm was a week of antibiotics and painkillers, and since I didn’t get any sort of digestive symptoms (hallelujah), I basically had Victorian heroine disease—faintness, fever, achiness, and no indelicate symptoms. The worst thing I got was a mood crash, to which my host family was overwhelmingly unsympathetic. I lounged around tragically for a few days, then cowboyed up and went back to classes. Dangit, quit milking your illness. It’s just malaria, fer cryin’ out loud.

 

So my experience with this ravaging illness was largely anticlimactic.  Although I did make one interesting discovery about alternative treatments while I was there. I was lying around feeling weak and pathetic, when from out in the living room I heard one of the most familiar sequences of blips and bloops to ever embed itself in my skull.

 

The kids were playing Super Mario Bros.

 

I was up like a flash and out of my room, to find them all crammed around a game console of questionable legality, cheering on the one playing. I sat down. “Can I play?”

 

Eyes widened. “You know about Super Mario?” one said.

 

“You joking?” I said. “I grew up with this game! I know that song by heart!”

 

And then I realized that since hearing that song, I was feeling a hell of a lot better.

 

Yes.

 

The Super Mario Bros. song can alleviate malaria symptoms.

 

That discovery was worth the whole thing.

 

 

*See, I have this foolproof method for figuring out if I am about to get sick, or if a case of The Blahs I have is actually something. It’s a simple test, but it hasn’t been wrong yet. Here’s how it works: I open the fridge. There, on the top shelf, are the beverages. If the orange juice looks normal, then I am going to be okay. However, if the orange juice is under a beam of light, with choirs of angels singing around it as cherubim flit about tossing glittering confetti over it, then something is wrong. In this case, I nearly mugged the family’s maid for an orange.

Comments

[10cents.livejournal.com]

I don't think I would ever get used to/be casual about a disease where every family has a relative who's died from it, but then, I'm not good with sicknesses. You handled the situation with far more grace than I'm sure I would have (in fact, one of the reasons why I most likely Will Not Travel The World is precisely because I am terrified of even getting the cold in a foreign country--why yes, I am a wuss, thanks for noticing).

Also, yes: Super Mario Bros will cure anything. I still plug in my old NES every few months, and play that game obsessively for about a week or two, until I can get through the levels without paying the slightest bit of attention. Sometimes I can convince G to take half of the controller, so that one of us is has the directions and the other has the A/B buttons, just to shake things up.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

Seconded. Only Super Mario isn't as much of a panacea to me as Katamari Damacy. But then, I grew up in a house without video games, poor deprived child that I was.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

I wish I could still play. I played Zen Mario when I was younger - same levels over and over, just because I could.

Of oranges, and things...

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

What if they don't have orange juice in the fridge? [/obligatory devil's advocate smart-ass]

Re: Of oranges, and things...

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Well, in this case I smelled an orange while I was walking home and was overcome. But generally I still crave them even if there aren't any around, but that's not as fun to describe.

Re: Of oranges, and things...

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

I crave generic fruit when I am sick. This is probably a good thing since I appear to be allergic to grapes, apples, and oranges--and try finding fruit juice that doesn't contain one of those three and/or high-fructose corn syrup!

I shall stick to craving lemonade and see how well I manage.

[mathsnerd]

Y'know, I've been thinking. I used to be that laid-back about getting ill Abroad, never worried about drinking the water in Mexico and Honduras, figured if I get sick I'll just take anti-diarrhoeals and stay hydrated. Now, though, I'm terrified of getting sick right *here* 'cause I can't fight anything off. I half wonder what malaria might be like without an immune system proper to fight it off with. :)