From Silicon Valley to Swaziland, Rick & Wendy Walleigh [i love reading books .txt] 📗

The U.S. Embassy and Other Concerns

In life, if one wants to worry, there are always things to worry about. In familiar situations, we learn over time which risks create real and present danger and which ones can be safely ignored. In new and unfamiliar situations, we don’t have these rules of thumb, and everything seems scarier. It wasn’t clear to us as to whether the apparent upsurge in violence in Kenya was really something that we should worry about, but apparently, the U.S. embassy wanted to do something to respond to concerns raised by the extensive publicity surrounding it. They called a “town meeting” and invited all of the U.S. citizens living locally to come to the embassy. I didn’t think that I was going to get any new or useful information, so I decided not to attend, but their initial invitation and the follow-up message were additional reminders of the somewhat threatening environment.

I had basically forgotten about the meeting until the embassy’s follow-up e-mail arrived. At the meeting, a U.S. citizen had brought up an issue about the location of the embassy’s parking for U.S. citizens going to the embassy for various services. Evidently, the parking lot was a significant distance from the embassy and not particularly secure. The citizen was concerned, and probably asked if anything could be done about this situation. Well, the e-mail response from the embassy indicated that because of safety and liability concerns (my italics), there would no longer be parking available for U.S. citizens going to the embassy for services. They really took care of that problem!

While I had basically gotten over worrying about increased violence from Somali migrants, at this time Kenya presented other opportunities for worrying such as Rift Valley fever, which had broken out in the north. Rift Valley fever is a hemorrhagic fever disease, sort of like a mild form of Ebola (the horrific disease which kills 90 percent of its victims within a few days). Fortunately, Rift Valley fever mostly attacks animals like cows, goats, sheep, and pigs. However, the disease can pass to humans, and more than a hundred people had died. Not everyone who contracts the disease endures a serious case. However, those that do bleed from all body orifices and die within a few days. During the outbreak, the consumption of most meat plummeted and the demand for chicken and fish skyrocketed. Most cases of human infection actually come from contact with live animals, but people were still worried that they could get it from contaminated meat. If you bought meat from a reputable butcher, there was nothing to worry about. My general approach to life is to be optimistic and avoid unnecessary worrying. I didn’t change my eating habits, and I didn’t even get a bloody nose.

On the other hand, we did worry about malaria, and I was reminded why when I went to the office to ask a colleague, Carl, about the project he was working on. He seemed a little out of it, and when I asked about it, he said he wasn’t feeling well. I asked what was wrong, and he said he had gotten malaria, but he’d caught it quickly and was on good medication. He wasn’t concerned.

Nairobi, because of its altitude, is a relatively low-risk area for malaria, and so most people don’t take preventative medication. However, Carl had been to Tanzania and hadn’t bothered to take precautions. Every tourist is seriously warned to take prophylactic medication, but most people who live in Africa don’t. The medications do have side effects, both short- and long-term, and many people don’t want to take them for years on end. Maybe it’s a good gamble if you live in Africa, but for us, there was no question. Wendy and I religiously took the meds. And besides, those other people were missing out on some great dreams. Yes, that’s one of the side effects.

When you’re a tourist in a malarial area, there are two primary types of preventative medication to choose from, malarone and mefloquine. For short vacations, malarone is generally considered the drug of choice. It is probably somewhat more effective, and it has the fewest side effects. However, it has to be taken every day, and when we went to Africa, it was very expensive if you took it for a long period of time. Mefloquine, on the other hand, was also effective, needed to be taken only once per week, and was much less expensive. However, the potential side effects of mefloquine can be quite interesting. One is hallucinations.

Wendy and I didn’t have any daytime hallucinations, but the Tuesday night dreams were exciting. Monday was the day we took our pills for the week, but for some reason, the resulting dreams were most intense on Tuesday nights. Wendy periodically had scary nightmares and talked loudly in her sleep, but my dreams were just weird. I had the usual late to class, didn’t study for the exam, walking around naked dreams, but I also had some unique ones as well. One that I remember concerned not having a date for the senior prom. I was very upset that I hadn’t asked anyone to the prom and was remembering all the girls I had dated in high school (not a long list) and wondering if I should ask each of them. As I was going through this process, I remembered that I was married and couldn’t understand why I was worried about a date. But I still thought I should get a date. My mind tried to reconcile these thoughts, and then I woke up. It was really like going to a weekly festival of strange, short movies.

Although I was looking forward to getting off the medication and experiencing plain old boring sleep, we weren’t going to risk that in Africa. When I was talking to another colleague, David, about Carl’s malaria, he said, “Oh yeah, I had malaria and almost died.” Several years earlier, he had felt feverish and achy, but he was traveling away from home and thought it was just a virus. He hesitated in going to the doctor. By the time he went, just the next day, the malaria had gone to his brain. The doctor immediately told him that he might not survive and put him into intensive care. David was totally conscious and called his wife and told her that he might be dying. He called his brother to discuss his own funeral and burial arrangements and also asked his brother for help in taking care of his wife after he was gone. Fortunately, the doctors pumped David full of medication for several days and he lived. He chuckled as he talked about it, but it was really a close call. Wendy and I paid close attention to the calendar and took our meds every Monday like clockwork.

Carl quickly recovered from the malaria, but he was still feeling bad. He found out he also had an amoebic infestation. Those critters take a week of nasty medicine to get rid of. No, we weren’t in Kansas.

Continuing the unpleasant creatures theme, I had learned what to expect regarding animal encounters in our apartment. I had been surprised several times by geckos scampering up the wall to hide behind curtains or other cover. Fortunately, they seemed quite afraid of me and disappeared before Wendy saw them. In the unusual bug category, Wendy had called on me several times to kill some very large invaders (species unknown). They were about an inch wide, two inches long and appeared to be a cross between a beetle and a cockroach. They moved very fast, but ultimately made a large snapping sound as I crushed them under my size 14 work shoes. Overall, however, Nairobi’s high altitude and dry climate contributed to minimizing insect (especially mosquito) encounters, for which Wendy was especially grateful since she tends to be a mosquito magnet. Whenever they’re around, mosquitoes bite her and not me; I think because she is much tenderer.

While some of nature’s threats, such as malaria, are predictable and can be defended against, for others we can be totally surprised and essentially helpless. One day, I was sitting at my desk, and I felt a strange movement coming up from the floor. It wasn’t quite a shaking; it was more of a