MD2B: Anti-Malaria Pills...We have a love hate relationship

To address the title...I'm taking Lariam, or Mefloquine, to prevent Malaria whilst on my trip here in West Africa. The pills make me feel pretty icky for the day and make me have little patience. To take the pills or not to take the pills? I've visited two medical facilities over the past 6 days I've been in Sierra Leone. At each of these settings, I've asked the question of what the most common diagnosis was, or the most common ailment. The doctor I asked the question to today answered with "#1 diagnosis Malaria, #2 most commonly diagnosed Malaria, #3 did I mention Malaria?" So...I love the pills because they protect me from Malaria, like bed nets would, but I hate the pills for the way that they make me feel. For the record, I was prescribed a different medication in the States but because it was over $100 for the pills, I chose the cheaper option. Note to self, don't take Lariam.

It is the end of day 6 in Sierra Leone. As my friends Katie, Holden, and Sylvester can attest to, a day in Africa can be like a week or more in normal life.

There is a lot of ground to cover and I can't cover it all with this blog post. I'll do my best to catch up to speed. Intermittent electricity and an outage of internet is partially to blame for the delay in posting. Not to mention, Sylvester and I are often on-the-go visiting project sites or scholarship recipients well into the evening. At night, I also try to work through footage, edit, pull down all my video/images from the day. Tonight, I worked for a couple of hours with Joshua who is learning video and video editing in a crash course over a couple of days. He lives in a community near Mellon Drive in Wellington. Wellington is suburb of Freetown and is much more "rural". Develop Africa has partnered with Joshua and his community as a site for mosquito net distribution with See Your Impact as well as given several scholarships for out of school children in his community. This is a good intro to summarize the last few days since they start in Wellington.

Can you call it off-roading when you are actually on a road? It makes sense that all the Non-Government Organizations or NGOs have four wheel drive vehicles. The places they go in Africa demand such. We have been so lucky to have a pre-1999 body-style Toyota 4-Runner. It has gotten us a lot of places. Our most excellent driver, Mr. Jah, ascends the 50 degree incline of rocks and dirt. The only thing left that resembles a road is the curbs that line what is left. After ascending at a maximum of 5mph, we reach our parking destination. The rest of the walk is on foot. Sylvester and I had been invited to be honored guests at a celebration of all that has been given to the Wellington community through Develop Africa. As we came around several "houses", there was a sea of kids waiting for us. They must have numbered 300 or more. They had signs and had banners hanging for our visit. It was such a moving experience. All the kids loved soccer there. There was a little girl who had never seen a white person before. She was so funny and asked the others if I was a real person. I laughed and called her over and showed her my hands. She pinched my fingers one by one. After the celebration, it was time for a little futbol. I don't think any of the kids expected me to run for the field and want to play with them. Amongst shouts and high pitched thrills, we were off to the "field". No grass. Yep, no grass. A rocky shale is what the field is made of. Many of the kids didn't have shoes, several had sandals. Even without shoes, they loved every second of futbol and played their hearts out.