The day I read to the preschool while fighting malaria.

Tuesday

“Good morning Julius”

I went down to watch morning announcements since I haven’t seen them yet and Julia has told me such fun things about them. 

I can’t believe I missed singing the national anthem, school song, and doing stretches with the school every morning.  Precious.

There’s something special about watching a child stand tall and proud singing their own national anthem.

I went back up to begin packing for my trip home.  I got as far as separating my clothes I’m taking home from my clean clothes I’m leaving here from my dirty clothes I’m leaving here.

And then I felt really nauseous, reminding me I forgot to take my malaria pill last night.  Eeeh, no good.  But Dr. Laura gave me some coartem, so I’m covered just in case I DO get malaria. 

Having finished my project and my 800 essays for INMED, I decided to begin writing my blog for the past 4 days.

I was still feeling sick so I decided to take a quick nap before lunch.  Julia came to wake me up for lunch but I still didn’t feel good so I slept.  Yuck.  I hope I don’t throw up.  I don’t want to be sick.  Dear Lord, please heal me!  I know you can.

Julia came to get me after lunch, and I didn’t feel much better, but I promised to read to the preschool kids today, so I got up. 

..................................................

At one time in my life I wanted to be a preschool teacher.  Now is my chance!!

Ryan’s Mom found me this awesome book about going on a Safari in Tanzania.  It has all the numbers in Swahili as well as animal names and Swahili kids names.  It’s the coolest book, and she found it even before she knew (and I knew) I was coming to Tanzania.  God new though.

[look how well they're paying attention!!]

I probably butchered half of the names in Swahili, but I know I got all the numbers right.  Julia took some pictures, and then I gave the book to the pre-school teachers so they could teach the animal names and numbers in English and Swahili and have a really cool book about Tanzania to read.

And it has a map of Tanzania in the back.  And the preschool teacher pronounced it “Tanz-ania” with the “an” sounding like the word “an” in the word animal instead of the way we pronounce it in English, which I thought was way cool.

We got the power turned on so I could contact the outside world and call my dad for his birthday, which was yesterday, check on my plane flight times because it might have changed for the 8^th time, send my completed project to my teacher, and post blogs.

But there was no internet again.  Bummer.

I decided to take another nap since I still felt terrible and I was exhausted!

I slept until the children got out of school.

I only got up because it’s really hard to sleep through 200 children running around outside.

Julia was making what sounded like a delicious dish: chicken and banana curry.  I was looking forward to it. 

Before I felt nauseous all day.

But, as I hadn’t eaten anything all day, I walked up to the big yellow house with the intention of helping her.  Really all I did was eat a fresh-baked piece of bread and lay down on the couch.

I decided I should just go to sleep.  And that I should just take the malaria medicine I have.  It feels like malaria.  Probably.

…………………………………………………..

I asked Julia to wake me up in 8 hours because that’s how you take all 8 pills on the first day: 4 now and 4 in 8 hours.

I vaguely heard a movie playing in the other room.  I didn’t think that was a symptom of malaria…

……………………………………………………

I woke up in a panic at 1 am because I thought I had overslept and not taken the medicine.  Really, I didn’t need to take it until 4 am.  I went back to bed.

…………………………………………………..

I heard Julia’s phone alarm go off so I grabbed the medicine and started popping the 4 pills out of the foil packaging. 

Julia told me it was only 3:15, that she had just gotten a text message from Chris, the director of JBFC who is currently in America.  Likely he sent it earlier and it just took that long to get to Africa because he’s not super rude.

But he woke me up anyway.

…………………………………………………………..

Finally, after what feels like forever Julia’s phone alarm went off.  I took the medicine and had trouble going back to bed.