Get Over It

                So last week I pretty much spent the week taking care of myself. It was quite the process at times. I would usually break out in the morning and the evening. That meant it took me a long time to get ready in the morning and a long time to get ready for bed because I had to put calamine all over my body and on top of all of that, sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night because I was itchy! Not fun!

The calamine I got from the hospital/clinic lasted me three days so the next morning, Nicolle and I trekked out to the hospital to get more but this time we didn’t have a local with us so we didn’t really know what to do. There were some benches and some women were sitting on them so we figured it must be a waiting room and we took a seat. Then Nicolle and I tried to figure out which door we were supposed to knock on and who we were supposed to talk to because it didn’t look like anybody was leaving the “waiting room”. I really had no idea because when I went last time it was so fast because Chimano just popped us in and out. Nicolle saved the day at recognized somebody from when she picked up the height board for her anthropometric measurements and asked him and he pointed out the guy that could help us. I got more calamine and we had fun just sitting at the clinic.

That night, Chimango became my doctor. She told me that she used to get this rash a lot when she was little so I asked her how long it usually lasts and she said three days. That was the night of day four and it was still bad. She told me that I need to take a bath and helped me warm up some water. I had to take it in a bucket because there wasn’t any running water in the shower so I filled up a bucket from the sink. She warmed some up for me and I was a little apprehensive about taking a bath from a bucket but the warm water felt so good and it felt wonderful to be clean again. It really wasn’t bad at all.

On Saturday I ran out of calamine again but we weren’t sure if the clinic was open on the weekends. At lunch we asked someone and she said they were so after lunch, Whitney and Nicolle hiked with me to the clinic again. It was hot and long (it takes about 25min each way). When we got there we found out that the clinic wasn’t even open. Shoot. That was a bum deal but we shrugged it off and started our walk back.

The reason we didn’t take the van was because the van was occupied all week with so Camille and the interviewers could go do their surveys. They had some help from Chimango, Akim and a couple of students from Bunda. Anyway, on our walk back they found us on the road and gave us a ride back to SAFI. On the ride back, Chimango decided that she should take me to a private clinic in Lilongwe. It was perfect timing because we had to drop the Bunda students off and pick up Emily anyway. Thus started my day trip to Lilongwe.

The doctor in Lilongwe told me it was an allergic reaction. I have no idea what to but that’s just let’s hope I don’t run into it again. I got some cortisone and some piritor to help with my rash then we took the natives shopping, picked up Emily, got some water/food for the ride home and tried to sleep the rest of the way back. I opted out of a bath that night because it was so late and I really just wanted to sleep. So I did.

The next morning, I felt so much better. There was a little bit of a rash on my write but that has been the worst of what I’ve seen since Saturday night. It all literally disappeared overnight.

 I spent all day Sunday sleeping with a little bit of reading and eating. Nobody went to breakfast because we all just wanted to enjoy our day off. We all stayed at SAFI because we couldn’t get a ride to church in Lilongwe. Sunday was just a chill day.

This week we are getting ready for Nuskin Japan to come. When they get here we are pretty much just following them around and telling them how everything’s going on our end. We should all probably take a shower before they show up.