Malaria Daze
I have to start by saying that I am very sorry for this rather long silence, I am swamped with stories to tell, midsummer/midwinter nights dreams to relate, depending on your hemisphere. Since I last wrote I have been lucky enough to explore some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world, I have also entered my 33 year which gives me again the terrible sensation that life, and time is slipping away like sand in an hourglass.
The unfortunate coinciding with all this auspiciousness of my first bout of malaria is probably the reason that I have been particularly lacking in creative energy to blog a bit. Now I have had my ‘African Baptism’ aka the Kananga Cocktail (a rather alarming diagnosis of Malaria with Typhoid Fever) I am almost back on form again.
That which does not kill us, makes us stronger… in a kitchen in Cotham, Bristol my mother is ruefully notching up the list of tropical diseases suffered by her eldest boy. Nothing so far compares to Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever in Sri Lanka, but I don’t want to talk about my peculiar morbidities today…what a freak show must reside within my internal organs!
So Malaria daze strongly correlated to cyber silence.
I think I have had malaria for possibly as long as two months, but denial is a powerful thing (not just a river in Egypt). I procrastinated utterly about my symptoms, convincing myself that uncomfortable sweating, feelings utter miserable loneliness and chronic fatigue was down to being bored in my job, being a celibate thirty something and most of all due to consuming the rather vile local brew in Kananga: Skol. I spent a miserable exhausted birthday Sunday, without any human contact. Convinced all my friends had forsaken me until almost my entire office arrived to take me out for beer and kebabs and then I spite of feelings of utter depletion on into the night at Equinox, a night club equally as tacky as its namesake in Leicester Sq, only a thousandth the size with a great many more underage prostitutes.
For my Birthday I added to the menagerie, two pigeons and a cat with a kitten. The cat has subsequently devoured one of the pigeons, so the remaining pigeon I have named Crispin and the cat has been banished to hunt rodents in the office. The final important livestock news is that three lady ducks are now sitting on eggs, very broody. Ducklings anticipated in 3 weeks. Confit de Canard and Pate de Fois gras in 6 weeks.
Hang on, though there are greater things to write about. We travelled with the team on an expedition to Lac Mucamba, a lake about 100km from Kananga toward Mbuji Mayi. Mucamba is a vast fresh water lake with a fresh water spring in its centre. I have never been so breath taken with a place of natural beauty before. Its by far the most beautiful lake I have ever seen, (and I am somewhat of a lake lover: from our very own little lake at Henleaze to the mighty alpine lakes in Switzerland and Austria, I have done lakes!). Mucamba is in the form of a human body when viewed from the air, with a head, arms and legs clearly visible. A very happy outing, impressing upon me again the huge natural wealth of the Congo and a huge potential for tourism, unfortunately I was already suffering with the fatigue of malaria, but I plan a weekend by the lake to do some sub aqua investigations very soon.
Otherwise life in Kananga goes on in a calm and methodical manner. I am scarred about the volume of work in the next few years, our project has some pretty ambitious targets. To achieve them is going to be nothing short of a miracle; but its in the small faltering steps that we will ultimately achieve our great victories.
The unfortunate coinciding with all this auspiciousness of my first bout of malaria is probably the reason that I have been particularly lacking in creative energy to blog a bit. Now I have had my ‘African Baptism’ aka the Kananga Cocktail (a rather alarming diagnosis of Malaria with Typhoid Fever) I am almost back on form again.
That which does not kill us, makes us stronger… in a kitchen in Cotham, Bristol my mother is ruefully notching up the list of tropical diseases suffered by her eldest boy. Nothing so far compares to Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever in Sri Lanka, but I don’t want to talk about my peculiar morbidities today…what a freak show must reside within my internal organs!
So Malaria daze strongly correlated to cyber silence.
I think I have had malaria for possibly as long as two months, but denial is a powerful thing (not just a river in Egypt). I procrastinated utterly about my symptoms, convincing myself that uncomfortable sweating, feelings utter miserable loneliness and chronic fatigue was down to being bored in my job, being a celibate thirty something and most of all due to consuming the rather vile local brew in Kananga: Skol. I spent a miserable exhausted birthday Sunday, without any human contact. Convinced all my friends had forsaken me until almost my entire office arrived to take me out for beer and kebabs and then I spite of feelings of utter depletion on into the night at Equinox, a night club equally as tacky as its namesake in Leicester Sq, only a thousandth the size with a great many more underage prostitutes.
For my Birthday I added to the menagerie, two pigeons and a cat with a kitten. The cat has subsequently devoured one of the pigeons, so the remaining pigeon I have named Crispin and the cat has been banished to hunt rodents in the office. The final important livestock news is that three lady ducks are now sitting on eggs, very broody. Ducklings anticipated in 3 weeks. Confit de Canard and Pate de Fois gras in 6 weeks.
Hang on, though there are greater things to write about. We travelled with the team on an expedition to Lac Mucamba, a lake about 100km from Kananga toward Mbuji Mayi. Mucamba is a vast fresh water lake with a fresh water spring in its centre. I have never been so breath taken with a place of natural beauty before. Its by far the most beautiful lake I have ever seen, (and I am somewhat of a lake lover: from our very own little lake at Henleaze to the mighty alpine lakes in Switzerland and Austria, I have done lakes!). Mucamba is in the form of a human body when viewed from the air, with a head, arms and legs clearly visible. A very happy outing, impressing upon me again the huge natural wealth of the Congo and a huge potential for tourism, unfortunately I was already suffering with the fatigue of malaria, but I plan a weekend by the lake to do some sub aqua investigations very soon.
Otherwise life in Kananga goes on in a calm and methodical manner. I am scarred about the volume of work in the next few years, our project has some pretty ambitious targets. To achieve them is going to be nothing short of a miracle; but its in the small faltering steps that we will ultimately achieve our great victories.
posted by Gabriello Princip at 7:16 AM
1 comments
