The Bad Air

Carrie had malaria! Plasmodium Falciparum; Fortunately she is already cured. Well, she took her last dose of Coartem yesterday, so she’s malaria free today. We confirmed the malaria with an expired chromatography quick-test. It was a little scary in the beginning, lots of sweating, weakness, and a little delirium. Funny how it was cyclic too. Really bad in the afternoon, then she was mostly functional at night. After a day and a half on Coartem she was on the mend though. Funny how I, who haven’t been taking any prophylaxis, still haven’t come down with it yet.

I still have a second degree African “red badge of courage”. I got a tumbu/bot fly about 3 days ago! I had a really bad itch on my right thigh for a while. Then one night I woke up cause it itched so badly. I shined my headlamp on it and could discern a bit of grey within the swelling. They say if you suspect having one of these larva in your skin (which come from eggs laid on clothing that is left to dry outside) to smother it in Vaseline, then they are supposed to back out of the hole drilled in your skin for air, then you pull them out with tweezers. Well, it was taking too long, so I had to excavate with a safety pin. Pulled out a tiny little worm with tiny little hooks on it. Gross.

So we are in Serenje because of Peace Corps policy on malaria (you have to come into town then call, then you’re supposed to go to Lusaka to get a blood test to make sure you have no parasites left), but they just told her to take her Coartem and stay here. I’m leaving today to go back to Mpelembe.

The last time we were in Lusaka (not long ago), we bought two trees. One is a Lichi (delicious, grape-like, tropical fruit in a thin red peel), and the other is supposedly a pear. The thing is I can’t imagine it gets cold enough in Zambia to satisfy the “chilling requirement” of pears. Temperate fruit trees need a certain period of cold weather (i.e. Winter) to induce further growth and fruiting. We’ll see – or rather the 3rd PC volunteer at Carrie’s site will see (several more years until they bear fruit).

We finally got our roof repaired by Jameson Kunda and what Carrie termed “Team Zambia” (his kids and a nephew). They threw up bundles of thatch and just laid it on all the open spots. I guess we didn’t actually need any expertise, though we don’t have a Zam-ladder (some long sticks with short sticks tied/nailed on as rungs).

We’ve been doing a bit of mushroom hunting since rainy season started. In fact we were supposed to go with Justin and Brenda today. It’s a very popular past-time in rural Zambia. Kids and women usually go out in the morning or afternoon and comb the forest for tasty fungal treats. There are soooo many different mushrooms. Most you can’t eat naturally. We have brought along the neighbor-kids to help us discern which mushrooms are edible. The most abundant types are not very flavorful naturally. There are medium-sized grey ones with a flat cap that are tasteless. Then there are stringy little white ones (musafya?) that are ok. There are also some rounded red-capped ones witch all look exactly the same, but the kids only let us pick some (all inedible/unknown things are described as posing mortal peril to any foolish consumers. [picking up a mushroom and showing it to a kid] Question: “ici?”(this?) Answer “awe – ukufwa” (no – to die).) The best ones are incidentally the most interesting. They are these brown-fading-to-white very rounded puffy mushrooms with a smooth almost slimy coating called ‘Telya’. You find them encased in a white ‘cacoon’ emerging from the ground. You pull up the cacoon and peel it back to find the tasty little mushroom within. At this stage they look exactly like ‘amabuns’ (the buns they sell in Mpelembe and Serenje). Later they look more like normal mushrooms, but usually are found before that stage. Finally there are the gigantic white mushrooms that are 2 to 3 feet across. Haven’t eaten those. It’s almost impossible to get mushrooms without a bunch of dirt, so most mushroom dishes are crunchy.

I believe we’ve written about the terrible neighbor rooster with no feathers on its neck or head (which I was recently told is due to inbreeding). Well we decided to buy our own rooster (Abraham) so that it would mate with our hens so we could have cute little baby chicks instead of “headless” ones. Unfortunately neighbor rooster is the hugest rooster ever and beat the two roosters we tried to bring in. Because of pecking order the winner of the cockfight (neighbor rooster) still gets primary mating rights with our hens. Which of course means he keeps hanging out in our yard, crowing terribly and loudly at all hours of the day. We kept our loser rooster anyway because it’s really quite pretty. We hope that he’ll mate with the hens as much as possible behind the neighbor rooster’s back. The neighbors also brought back their white rooster (who has all his feathers), but he’s so old that the other neighbor rooster scares him off all the time. Our rooster beat the white rooster. I try to chase off the neighbor ‘headless’ rooster pretty frequently so our rooster has a chance to mate, but the enemy rooster comes back within 5 minutes or so.

One day I was so frustrated with the sight, sound, and sexual prowess of the enemy neighbor rooster that I devised a plan to trap him. I herded our three hens into the garden, then started chasing the enemy rooster around. Knowing that there were distressed hens in the garden, it was pretty easy to chase him in there as well. Using the garden fence to corner him, I managed to capture him after much sweat was shed. With the ugly bastard in my grasp, I bound his legs, put him in a cage, and stuck him in the icimbusu all day. At the end of the day he escaped with the tie still around one leg. I wonder what the neighbors made of that. Hmmm. We might resort to the plan of buying the rooster and giving it to Justin or someone to just eat. It’s that bad. You’d have to be here to understand.

In 2 months, Carrie and I will have each eaten more mangoes than most everyone in the States eats in a lifetime. Awesome.

Mom! Thank you for your extremely thoughtful package! We’ve devoured almost all of the chocolate. It’s a good thing that you sent 2 nutellas, because we were each able to have our own, avoiding civil warfare. The containers are perfect for our modest tea collection. I put up the little statue by the door. Believe it or not, I’ve even started reading one of the books you sent! ‘The Quantum and the Lotus’. Almost done. To date, the windchimes haven’t been stolen, so that’s good news. They sound nice. Oh, the magazines were excellent. I was very excited to read about homesteading et cetera. Thank Dave for me. I think I’ll just request Mother Earth News at the library when I get home.

John! Thank you for your contribution to our food supply. I hid the M&Ms from Carrie so we could ration them.

Bonnibelle and Bill! Thank you for the books! I definitely look forward to reading them, especially ‘Hen and the Art of Chicken Maintainance’.

People are watching a movie now, so I’m signing off. Love you all, Doug.