I Am Temporarily Lactose Intolerant

Thank god I already have a boyfriend…

Physically, I probably look like I’ve aged ten years since I’ve come here. My feet are not just dirty, they’re dry and cracked. I am growing fungus on my side. I thought it was just a mosquito bite. My skin has little lines in it, I believe some of them are called wrinkles, but the rest of them are just from the dryness. [Note to Readers: If you need an idea for a care package, Bath & Body Works lotion works miracles. It’s the only thing that does. Just make sure not to get bug-friendly scents.]

I also went through four months of strange stomach illnesses. I sent in a sample to the lab to be tested, and unlike the 24-hour turnaround that I was used to in Bolivia, here we have to send things to the U.S. to be tested, and I have been waiting since Thanksgiving to hear my results. I thought I had amoebas, giardia, or other horrific parasites. My stomach was incredibly swollen and I had stomach cramps and spent many nights on the latrine. Then a doctor comes along from the States to help out at our med unit. Previously we had two RN’s, who did great work, but could not diagnose my illness.

So the doc comes and tests me at a local lab and all results come up negative, except for the presence of white blood cells in the sample, but she seemed unconcerned. Her diagnosis: “Intestinal mucosa [has been] altered by the initial infection, by the altered motility due to the infection, and by the antibiotic therapy. Normalization of the mucosal lining takes weeks or longer. During this time, you may be lactose intolerant.”

In laymens terms, I can’t drink milk or eat milk products because my stomach is wrecked. By too many rounds of Cipro, too many rapid changes in diet, by new foreign foods, and by my former stomach ailments. What I need to do is let my digestive track heal and regenerate, but for the time being, since I have a defective digestive system, I am now temporarily lactose intolerant. Who ever heard of that???

Makes sense though, since after several months here I felt so malnourished I decided I needed milk. I then proceeded to put powdered milk in my tea, in my coffee, and in my cereal. Then I ate cheese like it was my job. I ate containers of yogurt thinking perhaps the bacterial would help my intestinal track. And there is this little delight known as chakary, which is coos mixed with sour milk and sugar. It tastes like yogurt with granola. A little stand sells it in my village and I was working towards being a regular. That just came to a screeching halt.

Doctor suggested I lay off milk products. Done. She suggested I boil water. Gas is too expensive for that. She suggested I stop eating oily and spicy foods. My food bowl is full of oil and so spicy I have to do that suck-in-the-air-thing-thru-your-teeth as I eat. She also suggested I have my family boil the veggies instead of fry them. She does not realize there are no veggies. It’s not her fault though, she had only been in country 2 days. How would she know??

So, I tried to listen. And I guess it was ok. But then I started getting that sneaking suspicion that maybe the doc didn’t know what she was talking about. So I tested her theory. I drank a glass of hot chocolate even though the packet read “CONTAINS MILK.” I also had a tiny bit of cheese in a tomato, ham, and cheese whole-wheat sliced bread airplane sandwich that was given to me by the Dutch folks who work at my garden. A sandwich with sliced bread!?!? I just couldn’t resist!

I should have tried harder. I really should have. Because I paid for that little bit of milk in the hot chocolate and that miniscule piece of cheese I ate. I paid for it and I paid for it. BIG time. All day and all night.

I now concede. Doc is right. I am lactose intolerant and I am calling the med unit to request some Lactaid. After all, I gotta stay healthy somehow, don’t I?

P.S. Thank you to all who inquired after my health. I did not realize my last post sounded so scary. I apologize. My stomach was just very full of gas and it was rather uncomfortable and I thought that bugs were eating me from the inside. But it was just gas.

Also, my fungus is doubled in size but not bothersome. I am treating it with athlete’s foot crème in conjunction with another fungal-fighting crème that I would rather not mention for fear of scaring readers yet again. Africa is not that bad. In fact, I love it.

Who AM I???

Remember back when I lived in Minneapolis? Remember when it was forty below zero and I had to leave my car in a heated garage or it wouldn’t start? Remember two feet of snow in the front yard?

I must not. Last night it’s seventy-five degrees and I’m sitting around a little charcoal stove in my host mom’s hut. We were trying to get warm.

It’s one of those moments where I wonder just who I’ve become. When I’m wearing a fleece and socks and it’s still in the 70’s, and I walk out in the afternoon heat of 115 degrees and think to myself, “Well, good thing today is nice and warm.” Granted, it’s a dry heat since it only rained for about five minutes in the last four months, and only small sprinkles really. But dry heat or not, I better get re-calibrated back to reality before I think of going home.

Who ARE you?

My phone rang this morning and it was a fellow volunteer from my training group. She had the urgent need to relay to me that her mother was following my blog and had called and said, “Marnie, I read Tammy’s blog and it's like yours...but funny!”

Apparently someone had set up a Parent Support Group through email for the moms and dads worried about their children in Africa and this is how this parent found my blog. With such sporadic communication, whether internet, cell phone, or good ol’ snail mail, I understand that it is nice for people in the U.S. to hear that their loved ones are doing well, even if it’s through Volunteer A’s mom, who talked to Volunteer A who talked to Volunteer B who says that Volunteer C no longer has amoebic dysentery.

This is fascinating to me. The interconnectedness of all of us. When evacuation happened, people really started coming out of the woodwork. I got emails from former Bolivia volunteers. Emails from parents of high-school classmates, high-school teachers, and old church members. I came back to the U.S. and had lunch with old acquaintances, and did a meet and greet with my mom’s co-workers who love following my blog. I never really knew so many people cared, so many people were interested, and so many people kept up with my life.

This blog helps meet goals two and three of Peace Corps, which is the cultural exchange between peoples of different countries. It takes a great deal of effort for me take my computer to some place that has electricity. Then to remember to take the correct adapters. Then to wait til the battery charges up and then take the computer back home to my two room mud hut and type out blog entries in the dark. I enjoy doing it though because I enjoy sharing my life and hearing from people.

I generally write about whatever random subject I am currently contemplating when I realize that I am again overdue for a blog post. In an effort to cater to my audience, I’d like some input from you. What you want to know, what you want to hear about. So stop right now, I mean RIGHT NOW, click the “comments” link, and answer these following questions.

1. Who are you and how did you find my blog?
2. What were you in the middle of doing just now? (If it was eating a McDonald’s cheeseburger and fries, OMG AM I JEALOUS!!!)
3. What burning question do you have for me that I have not yet answered?
4. How many times have you laughed, cried, and/or thrown up as you have read my blog?
5. What is the best/worst/funniest recent moment in your life for which I have been absent?
6. And last of all, what do you miss most about me???

Don’t even think about skipping my survey. Don’t. Cause in addition to fact that I do want to know my readers a little better (you just can’t get rid of the marketing side of me), it’s also a ploy to get to you to write to me. I worry about missing out on everyone’s life as I trek around the world on my prolonged Peace Corps journey. Now that you’ve read about my life, tell me about yours!

Give Me a Snickers Already.

Some quick updates:

Swear-in came and went and I actually ended up not really swearing-in again cause I guess you only get to do that once in a lifetime.

I also got moved into site which is the one I originally thought I would go to, Sanyang, about a 15 min bike ride from the beach. Life is back to normal. Perpetually awkward situations, children yelling NEE-HOW, and me leading groups of 15 women on gardening projects in Mandinka, when no, I still don't speak it.

I got lucky with a really wonderful host family. A mother who owns a fabric shop, three sisters ages 25, 22, and 12, three bros ages 26, 14, and 6, a little niece age 2, and a father who lives in Atlanta. Or Madison, Wisconsin. I'm not sure which cause I never get the same answer twice.

My family is highly educated and driven, relatively speaking, and they give me enough space while making me feel a welcome part of the family which is a delicate balancing act. The women in my family all could be on "America's Next Top Model" and they are quite the fashionistas, even by U.S. standards. Being that I wear Chaco sandals and dirty capri pants, their idea of integration is to make me beautiful. I don't know if this is a sustainable endeavor, but we gave it a go.

Thus far I have gotten hair extenstions in the form of Rasta Braids (an easy way to have long hair again if you can stand the intense itching, which I couldn't, and resulted in a Macy Gray fro, 100% natural. To all those who thought Asian hair couldn't fro, I beg to differ). I also get beautiful custom tailored outfits. Slightly difficult to walk in, but beautiful nonetheless.

On the health front, I have amoebas or parasites or something that has made my belly so swollen and full of gas that my pants no longer fit. And I have a small patch of skin fungus on my side, which pales in comparison to the larvae that hatched out of my boyfriend's arm. They call it a bot fly. These things lay eggs in your clothes as they hang to dry and then burrow into the skin. After a few days of incubation and hot water compresses and squeezing, out popped a little white squirming worm slightly larger than the size of a grain of rice. I almost lost my lunch.

For those of you who miss my witty analyses of life, they will resume in the next blog. I am finding that malnourishment really leaves little energy for life. Once I ate six bananas in one sitting I was so hungry. I'm in the city now where food is more abundant and I am going to go take advantage.

So until next time, leave your comments, questions, inspirational quotes and messages on the blog and drop some food in a care package and send it my way!