Saturday, 7th April 2007

In Lilongwe

In the morning, I woke up in the clinic, feeling just hunky dorey. I lay there, examining the ceiling a bit, before Dr. Huber came in and said, "Good morning!" in a chipper voice. I said, "Good morning!" in an equally chipper voice.

I told him that I was feeling fine and thought I could go home. "Home". O.k., back to Kiboko Camp, more like. He agreed. He told me he couldn't believe my recovery. That I was a miracle patient. He'd expected me to be deathly ill for a couple of days at least.

Well, things weren't exactly perfect. As soon as I got out of the bed to go use the loo, the effort of that brought on some nausea and headache. But I could certainly live with it! Felt like I was back in the world of the living!

When I walked back to Kiboko Camp (only 500 meters from the clinic), the first person to oh-so-kindly greet me was a woman whom I didn't recognize. She said, "Welcome back. How are you feeling?"

I smiled and asked, "Are you one of the two who helped me when I was lying on the bathroom floor yesterday?"

She said, "Yes."

I gave her a big, big, big huge hug and thanked her.

It amazed me, though. If I fainted, how did I manage to fall without wacking my skull against one of the sinks, or the concrete floor? I don't remember anything. But maybe, in my delirious state, I hadn't fallen? Maybe I had just decided that this would be a good place to lie down? So I asked her.

My benefactor said, "You fell. You went down hard. THUD!" She said the THUD very loudly. It made me wince. Yeeks! I felt very lucky that I'd not cracked my skull open.

Janey continued to act with such kindness. She said, "We need to find you a room." She searched her books, fiddled and fidgetted. I said that I could stay in a dorm bed. She said, "Oh, no, you can't do that, you'll need lots of rest. Just hold on." Finally, she said, "O.k., dear, follow me." I don't know who she displaced or what she did, but she placed me in one of the staff rooms. None of the regular guest rooms were available.

Although feeling 500% better, I spent most of the day sleeping. Sometimes my headache would come on, or some nausea would come on. But then I'd take one of Dr. Huber's nausea pills or miracle pills and things would be o.k. and back to sleep. Sometimes I'd feel fine and get up and walk around a bit. But after 45 minutes or an hour, I'd feel a bit drowsy and go lie down for a "nap." Three hours later, I'd wake up.

Though I'm completely back in the land of the living, I can't help but to wonder about that "I crossed and my wife died" bridge. I leave you with another view of that bridge, from the other side.