Friday, September 30, 2011

Why I DON'T Need a Dog

1) I am only here 18 more months
2) Harder to get away for a few days
3) Feeding them (I barely feed myself)
4) Flea and tick meds, long way to get them and $$
5) Housebreaking is never fun no matter what hemisphere you are in
6) Less time for you
7) I already have a cat (Squiggles and she is really really cute!!!)
And on….
And on……..
And on…………....
I have list at home that is a lot longer, I just didn’t bring it to the boma today.  And I stand by it.  Dogs are nice in the States.  I know breeds, I know what to expect of these breeds.  The village dogs are pretty feral and can be unpredictable. I know volunteers who, for the first time in their lives got a dog, I do not recommend that! You start out with a shelter dog or something that is already trained, preferably a Labrador.  Something easy, you don’t walk into the math department and say, “I want to take advanced differential calculus because I saw someone else do it and it looked like fun!”  (If you are doing that may I seriously suggest you have your head examined.)
But they did it anyway and I have become the Dog Whisperer via text messaging.  It’s fun though, you get to hear about what is going on, how the dogs are, you get a feel for what works and what doesn’t.  I will say this, the dogs here are highly food motivated.  People keep asking me why I don’t get a dog if I love them so much and I give them the list.  Sometimes though, despite our best efforts things slip though the cracks.
So I would like to introduce you all to my puppy.  She doesn’t have a name yet.  Benson (my neighbor) has a dog, Tiger and back in early August she had a litter of 5 puppies.  Everything was going really well, 2 boys are on hold for Erin, until they hit about 6 weeks old.  This little girl suddenly got sick, really sick.  At first I thought she was blind, she would stumble around, walk into things, walk off of things (like a porch), wasn’t eating well, was extremely dehydrated, the whole smash.  So I started giving her milk in a syringe, oral rehydration solution, antibiotics, and she did get a little better.  Then I went off to IST, got back and found her a mess.  Apparently she fell down a chim (pit toilet) for two days, eeeewwwwwww. So she got a bath, more fluids and more antibiotics.  She still walks funny but not as bad as before.  She holds her neck out straight, still wobbles and occasionally runs into things.  I think she had a bacterial infection that went to her brain or inner ears. 
And here is the kicker, she stopped growing.  At 9-10 weeks she is the same size she was at 7-6, her brothers are huge, maybe a foot at the shoulder and she is still a tiny 9”.  Maybe the infection took out her pituitary gland and she stopped growing? I don’t know, I’m out of guesses for this dog.  
So long term diagnosis; who knows. I now have a kitten who barely leaves the house and a puppy who can hardly sit straight with little bladder control (name to consider; Puddles).
Mary’s Home for Wayward Animals: Africa is now open, our newest branch office is located just outside Nkhotakota in rural Malawi, please no Mambas. 

Saturday, September 17, 2011

IST and IV

Well IST (Inter Service Training) is done with.  We arrived on Sunday, two weeks ago and went to visit the Nordins at Never Ending Food, they are really nice people and have an amazing set up with perma culture gardening everywhere.  It was really nice to see.  Then for the next few days it was a lot of evaluations about previous trainings, things we would like to see improved for future groups, etc.

Counterparts arrived on Wednesday.  I brought Ponsiano from the Parks and Wildlife office in Nkhotakota.  He is an extension worker so since he is in multiple villages it seemed like a way to have the training benefit a lot of people beyond my reach. 

On Sunday the Health volunteers arrived.  IST is a total of 3 weeks long with the middle week being a combined training for both our sectors and the outlier weeks being individual sectors training.  I think it worked well, the combined training week had a lot to do with administrative stuff so this way they don't have to repeat themselves. 

While all this was going on people were dropping like flies.  I don't know what happened but some horrible bug was going around.  That first week, I ran out of stomach meds so many people were sick.  There are two kinds of people, those who came prepared and those who know someone else came prepared and thus didn't even bring pain killers.  So thats how I ran out of meds. 

I took my turn with the bug for almost the entire second week.  I was feeling pretty good by Wednesday morning when the medical office came out to do our final vaccinations, go figure.  Thursday I was off, I went back to bed at about 11am and some nice volunteers brought me lunch.  Friday I didn't even bother, it wasn't worth it to get up.  I talked to the medical office and they were going to send Amoxicillin the next day.  I kept feeling worse. 

Later that day we actually looked in my throat...eeeeewwwwww, tonsils covered in pus, for those of you eating, I'm sorry, but you shouldn't have food at a computer anyway, so it serves you right. After that I was on transport for Lilongwe so fast, I think it actually did make my head spin.  But considering how miserable I was, it is pretty amazing my head was still attached.

In Lilongewe I streched out on a table for a solid hour or so, and Dr. Max hooked me up to an IV drip;
Dr. Max- Pepani (sorry) Mary, this is gonna hurt
Me- uuuhhhhhh
Dr. Max- your gonna feel a pinch
Me- uuuhhhhhh
Long story short, I didn't feel much of that, thank goodness, I have a bad track record with needles.

So after that, Dr. Max drove me to Korea Garden Lodge where I have been staying.  This morning he came over to do more IV antibiotics.  I couldn't help but think about how it looked.  I mean think about it, in a devloping country, IV bag hanging from a coat rack, little vials spread out on the bed, usually these stories end with someone waking up in a bathtub of ice with a note saying "Call a Doctor".  But seriously, Dr. Max is awesome and is coming to check on me again tomorrow.   

Malawi is funny, I have been sick more here in the past 6 months than I have in the last year living in the States and I've been on 2 IV drips in as many days, I don't think I have ever been on one.  Africa is rough on you if you don't know what to expect. 

(BTW- Mom the IV ABX is Ceftriaxone and they gave me 2 g yesterday and today)