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)