Elective 12. The washing...

What a dull title for a day in an elective blog, but it unfortunately this reflects the most exciting event today.

While today was a big day, this stream of nothingness worked well for me. I had problems sleeping last night as I felt too hot. I then woke with a fever today, about 40 degrees, though the hospital thermometers are not to be trusted... Throughout the day, I was feeling so cold I had to wrap up in the emergency hoodie I had bought with be, even though I was in the sun. Ever the hypochondriac medical student, I was fearing malaria, especially seeing as every second person in the hospital that we did a B/S on (malaria test - a blood  smear) was positive. Despite this, I felt no need to do one of these tests on myself, perhaps partly influenced by the fact the lab is normally closed at weekends, and to do one would mean calling up the lab tech (Mr Choc) and telling him an emergency had arisen, and he would need to come to the lab. This definitely wasn't an emergency, and I could ride it out. Anyway, I had been taking my anti-malarial tablets religiously, and also had large submandibulur lymph nodes, and throat pain. These suggested that it was perhaps more likely I just had a throat infection, or even worse, Man flu...

Because of this man flu, I was happy to mope around for much of the day. Finishing the 700 page Archer book (not impressed, why do people read his books!) and starting on 'You Got Nothing Coming' a prison memoir with a warning written on the inside cover by the person who had left it here. This warning said that it was an awful book, and told me not to start reading it. There is little more they could have written to make me more interested in it. It is like putting a 'wet paint' sign on a fence...

Anyway. The purpose of this blog  is not a book review. That would just bring back memories of my english essay failures at school. But when the other option is telling how I washed my clothes in two buckets of precious water, and how grey the water turned, I do not know which is the lesser of two evils.

My amazing washing, out the back of the house. One bucket to wash, one to rinse. The main problem was not having any pegs to help with hanging up the clothes, and wherever I put them, they would fall into the dust in minutes, making the wash pointless...

On the subject of water. The village pump is now fixed so in future the water I wash in shouldn't be as green as the picture below. I hope I have not caught anything severe yet. The pump is still a good walk away from the house and only delivers 1500L a day; hardly enough for the hospital, let alone the Village, so I will keep on being careful with the water, unless I want to wash in mineral water.

The water from the lake, that I need to wash in.

I had a deluge of visitors today: Choc asking if I wanted to go into town (too ill); Dr Bike hoping that the europeans were OK, after the news reported an accident elsewhere in Tanzania, then asking if I wanted to go for a drink later (too ill); then finally the friendly and informal head of the hospital (Chief). Why did all my Social appointments for the month seem to happen when I (felt like I) was suffering from malaria. When Chief visited he bought along his Cat. I had told him I had a good number of rats living in the roof, so when he Came for a chat about about the day, He bought his pet lanky, scrawny- born-to-hunt Cat. No time for these fluffy cuddley cats in Tanzania. This Cat was still affectionate (kinda), but also caught a rat in less than 5 mins of being bought into the house. It saw it climbing down the malaria netting and chased it around the house with Chief and I following in a Benny Hill manner. We ended up in Sporty's old bedroom, where the cat was chasing the rat around the bed, when we had closed the door to stop it escaping. Chief was taking a kick at the rat (in sandals) every time it came past us and punting it across the room. It was so cruel, yet still so funny. I was not going to be kicking that rat in my shoes - who knew what it had! The night after the cat arrived, the house was silent for the first time since I arrives, with no scrabbling from the roof. A very effective cat indeed, it seems to have scared all the rats away!