You remember--the stories about all the bright-eyed kids before you who also wanted to be missionaries. Then they went overseas and oh! the misery and pestilence with which they were stricken!
Now the last thing I want to be is the next scare story used to frighten kids away from the mission field. (Did you hear about the last girl who decided to go to Africa?) So lest this occur, please allow me to describe from first hand experience what it's like to BE the "last kid who went."
(Please click "Read More" if you dare.)
When we left for our weekend trip to Jinja, you may recall that I "hadn't been feeling 100% physically." Beyond that, I didn't know there was anything terribly wrong with me. Mostly I was just annoyed that while my mind still wanted to go out and do stuff, the rest of me wasn't feeling up to cooperating. At one point, when I exhibited a lack of blood glucose, one of our party arranged for a visit from the on-call doctor. I quickly found myself being spoken to exclusively in the third person: "She's like this!" or "She did this!" So this is what it feels like to be a patient with people working over you! I decided.
The Dr. took me back to my cottage and opened a small, silver package. I barely had enough time to read the foreboding words "finger lancet" on the package before I felt a cotton ball being pressed against one unfortunate digit. The test, very similar to the ones used for checking blood type or sugar levels, indicated that I had a mild case of malaria. (Even when taking antimalariants, like I had been doing, you can still get bit by a resistant strain of mosquito.) Thankfully we caught it early, so I'm told, and the doctor told me I'd be fine within a few days. But first, a trip to the clinic...
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| My view of the ceiling and drip line |
I found the following hours to be, more than anything else, intriguing. I just waited in a small, clean, orange and white room in the back of a little clinic while the nurses gave me an IV and a dish of watermelon. Thus I sat, a drip line in one hand and a fork in the other, and pondered the novelty of the situation.
The next day, Saturday, went much the same way. I just hung out and waited for the IV to drip down, reading, writing, eating candy and watching veggie tales movies on my phone to pass the time. Under other circumstances, it actually would have been rather fun!
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| All day, on the corner of the ceiling, sat a spider which Andrea named "Spike" for me. |
By Sunday morning I was able to go with the others on a boat trip to where Lake Victoria flows into the Victorian Nile. I'll have lots of time to blog all about it these next few days, as I'm not supposed to do very much except rest and try to drink re-hydration salts without grimacing from the taste. So instead of preaching with animal balloons or teaching preschoolers how to write their names, I now spend my time eating microwave popcorn and watching Charlie Brown movies. How's that supposed to scare kids away from the mission field?!
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