Monday, March 2, 2009

I think it’s a law of nature. Soon as you starting trusting technology and being careless about backing up your work, your computer is guaranteed to crash. As mine did, with last week’s blog, photos and various documents un backed-up. Computer has been dropped off at Fatima Institute with friends there who know more than we do (John’s final advice was “hit it with a rock”). Thanks, Mom, for reminding me that I have to find another way to post!

So here goes. I’m going to type very quickly as I’m about to start on a course of anti malarial drugs that I know will completely knock me out and if I don’t post today it will be a week before I can manage. Today we inaugurated the new chiefdom “emergency” vehicle with its first trip to hospital…with me as patient! (thank you donors!!) I started treating myself for various ailments with a Nigerian medication about two weeks ago. Then, what I should have recognized as the symptoms of malaria, I put down to medication side effects. The doctor today simply laughed…telling me the drugs I was taking would have been completely ineffective in any case (I notice many laugh when I tell them my drugs come from Nigeria, and even the goat doctor was reluctant to use them on a sick goat…he did and the goat eventually died). Sometimes a little knowledge is worse than none of all. Quite interesting hospital experience. A day at the hospital with diagnoses, various tests and a slew of medications cost about $16. A pittance when compared to Canadian costs but definitely out of reach of most (I paid the full price which few patients do). As malaria kills red blood cells, my hemoglobin is down 25%, annoying but not as bad as poor little Sharif (last post was all about Sharif), whose life hung in the balance and was saved a week ago with a blood transfusion from his mom, though he’s also still in hospital. The bets were on about whether I’d be asked to stay in hospital and I was very emphatic that the answer would be no! A hospital is no place for sick people, I figure. So I’m about to embark on several days of wooziness and weakness and chances are you won’t hear from me for a while. Hopefully by the time I recover, my laptop will also have recovered and I can tell you all about Sharif.
No photo but link to an article from today on mining policy here.