Of Malaria and other such Infectious Stuff

After three years in Niger, the whole family had come down with malaria to some degree. Except for me. I am also the most careless when it comes to trying to prevent getting it. I never wear insect repellent when outside at night. Foolish, yes. But I couldn't care less! I had finally convinced myself that I was invincible. Sure, I get bites all the time. But the disease would never, could never, penetrate my indestructible defenses.

What an idiot. You know what happens when you get cocky?

It's three weeks before we leave Maradi, right? Three weeks.

I wake up one morning, go about my daily non-school-infested stuff. Then I'm sitting at my computer (trying to configure this blog, as it were) and it hits. Not getting into specific details, I felt some funny stuff going on somewhere down inside me and I was off to a place which you have to refer to indirectly when talking to Americans and/or other people not so laid-back and not-easily-offended as those down under. But don't let me loose this post to some unimportant bunny who decided to have a go at running away with it down his trail by getting me into culturally related stuff, cos I could go on for hours and days and weeks and months and years and... you get the point. As irrelevant as that point may be.

Where were we again? Ah, yes. Funny stuff. Or rather, not so funny. I end up lying in bed, partly cos I didn't feel so good, and partly cos I was fairly cold. I am not one to get cold easily. But as I had been swimming that morning (oh, yeah, did I happen to mention that this was the same morning, just a couple of hours later, as my previous post about nuttiness? Well, it was) I guess that may have added to the effect caused by the what would later be known as sickness I had.

Now we'll skip to later that afternoon. When I went to bed earlier (yes, I do realise I just jumped back to before my last sentence) I started reading a new book. Meaning an old book, but I just started it, to be clarifical. (I like making up new words: Get over it.) Well, jumping forward again, later that afternoon, when I was about halfway through this new old book commonly referred to as Artemis Fowl, which I was re-reading, having read it before, my mum decided to take me to the clinic to check if I had this freakishly sounding disease called Malaria. (Click to see what it is if you are ignorant of this particular thing.) The results came back positive++, whatever the heck that was supposed to mean.

To put it simply, my defenses had finally fallen.

So for three days I was down with this, pumped full of an assortment of drugs. Two and a half Artemis Fowl books later, I had finally ditched this dreaded disease (I think) and am now only stuck with one lasting side affect of details which you do not need to know.

I can think of nothing else important except for the food I missed out on by not being able to go to some friends' place for Thai and some other gathering where there was lots of desert. Almost enough to make you cry, that is, missing out on such good food.

Yeah. That's about it. What I have been up to recently, in black and white and other colours. I think my daily dose of blogness has worn thin now. Till next time!