Blogathon Day 9: Inherent Risks

To me, my life seems normal. I have a job, a house, a roommate, a cat, friends. None of this seems out of the ordinary. And yet, I also have to take malaria medicine every day, worry constantly about infection, and have to bleach all my vegetables before I eat them.

At first, it seemed like everything was trying to kill me, but after 20 months, I've gotten used to the dangers and how to avoid them. However, that doesn't mean the dangers aren't still there, and a few occurrences in the past few weeks have reminded me of that.

First, a couple of the volunteers in the north of the country contracted Dengue fever, which, if you haven't heard of, is really not fun. They call it "the bone-breaking fever" for a reason. At the same time, another volunteer came down with malaria, but the Peace Corps doctor couldn't take care of them because he, too, had dengue. All of them were flown to Maputo for emergency care.

Around the same time, a volunteer from my training group wasn't feeling well, but couldn't figure out what was wrong. By the time the doctors realized his appendix had burst, it was almost too late -- they didn't even have time to get him to Maputo -- they performed emergency surgery in Nampula, and since there was no anesthetic available, he had an epidural and was awake for the whole procedure. Terrifying.

Thankfully, all of the aforementioned volunteers are OK. However, my roommate recently linked me to a an eye-opening blog, "He Gave Me More Than A Bracelet," written by a former Peace Corps volunteer serving in Zambia who contracted HIV while she was serving. She took precautions, and "did everything right" according to Peace Corps policy, and still got HIV. That's going to be with her for the rest of her life. Scary.

Moments like this, I look back and am thankful and how lucky I've been. Sure, I've gotten food poisoning a few times, had some colds, parasitic worms, and one malaria scare, but on the whole I've fared pretty well. In this environment, no matter what you do, you might get sick, and here's to hoping that my last 6 months of service continue as smoothly as the first year and a half have been.