The Sniffles

Call me crazy, but it just takes a long time to heal in Mozambique. I got the sniffles a week ago. I still have the sniffles. I also had a fever and headaches sore throat and everything else in between, but it's been over a week.

This is all purely anecdotal but everybody I've talked to seems to confirm it. I've have scabs and scars on my hand from two months ago, the equivalent of road rash. It was two months ago. I still have them. They just won't go away. Everybody I know that gets a cut or a scrape, even a simple one, will have it for at least a month. They are the type of cuts that after a week in the US you wouldn't even know I had it.

Even simple little things that you would never notice are different. I would have never thought of it had someone else not mentioned it, but when I'm in the U.S., even for my brief visit last year, if I go two days or so without shaving people start giving me glances telling me to clean up. Here I could go for about a week without even looking like I've stopped caring. It just doesn't grow the same. The same go for healing from sickness or wounds.

It seems every time I get sick it just never goes away. There is a difference between a scratchy throat that hangs on for a week and spending three days with a splitting headache and a fever. The latter is what I did. Luckily for me, I maintain my unquenchable foolishness optimism in the face of adversity. A group of kids came to visit me one day when I was pretty much out of it. I don't remember them coming to see me. When asked how my fever was I apparently replied, "It's not so bad. In fact, I'm thinking of asking it out on a second date."

I shut myself in for three days just trying to avoid moving any part of my body, bright sunlight (is there any other kind) and getting anybody else sick along with me. So how did I pass my time? The same way I always pass my time when I'm sick: Watching Star Wars. All of them. In french. That last part is kind of new thing because the copy of Star Wars I got my hands on is only in French. "Louis, je suis ton père," needs no translation.

Now I'm pretty much left with a dripping nose and a sore throat. The only advantage is that I'm able to sing along with all my Johnny Cash records now. Even the bottom register of "I Walk The Line".