Monthly Archives: January 2011

January 31, 2011 · 8:57 pm

She Works Hard For the Money…[Get A Job.]

Given that apparently I’m going to be residing in the penguin habitat known as North Carolina for approximately the next month and a half, I’ve decided to fill my days with something slightly more useful than watching CSI reruns and memorizing the backs of my cereal boxes. [Cinnamon. Life. Cereal. And everybody said “Amen”.] I’ve decided to…

Find a job.

Stage lights fade to black.

On July 6th, come hell or high water, my cowgirl boots and I will be hopping on a Raleigh bound plane never to return to Dakar.

Okay, so that may be a bit of an overstatement. The point is that I will no longer be working in Dakar, no longer be working for Crusade, and thus, will need to find a new way to pay rent and keep myself caffeinated. And let me tell you, nothing causes the old flight-or-flight response to kick in quite like the loathsome prospect of finding a job.

…emphasis on “flight”.

I feel like a senior in college all over again. What am I going to be when I grow up? Am I already grown up? Is this real life? It is with no small amount of disgust that I have recently come to the startling realization that [brace yourselves]: I am quite possibly the most unmarketable person on the planet. Truly, if that electric blanket quits on me, there is the distinct possibility that I will use my diploma as kindling to stay warm.

I am unwaveringly convinced that nothing in the world is quite as soul-shattering as summing yourself up on that mind-numbing little piece of paper commonly known as a resume. I find myself bemoaning the fact that I ever went to see a movie in college, when I could have been curing pancreatic cancer or rescuing Bulgarian kittens. But no-I just couldn’t say no to Zac Efron’s irresistibly cute little Cheeto orange face. Poor kittens never stood a chance.

And then in a fit of sheer brilliance, I decided it would be a wise idea to major in psychology. Psychology! I ought to have my head examined. And Lord knows, I’m not qualified to examine a darn thing because I have a useless undergrad degree in PSYCHOLOGY, which essentially means that I’m qualified to steam lattes and march my butt straight back to school.

Undergraduates: no matter how practical it may seem right now, do not major in psychology. Or languages. Unless, of course, you have no particular attachment to food. Do your future a square one and just fugghedaboutit. That one’s for free.

Right now I’m seriously considering taking up balloon sculpting. Or I would, except I’m deathly afraid of clowns-and where a balloon is, a clown is never far behind. Maybe I could be a backup dancer for Beyonce.

…except, then we run into the whole clown issue again.

Excuse the lack of cohesive thought-that’s simply the staccato nature of how my mind has been working as of late. Clearly, I am currently taking life-plan suggestions. If you come up with something brilliant, you can reach me in the kitchen. I need to practice my latte steaming technique.

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Filed under Home, My ghetto-fab life

January 28, 2011 · 1:05 am

The Little Legs That Wouldn’t. [The Saga Continues.]

My sweaters have emerged from their two year hibernation in my garage, and these days you can find me alternating between the couch and my bed-dragging an oversized electric blanket with me to and fro. [Africa has made a cold-weather pansy of me.] My time at home has been spent staying off my feet [a subtle art that I have sadly perfected over the last month and a half] and eating a host of the nutritionally irredeemable foods that I can only daydream about in Senegal. [And for those of you that have been reading for a while, I feel the need to point out that I haven’t given ho ho’s so much as a fleeting second thought since I boarded my flight back to Raleigh.]

You may be wondering what on earth is wrong with my legs. …I have just barely enough information to tell you the story. I’ll try my best to be succinct. Pithy. Concise. …oh heavens, this is hopeless.

As previously mentioned, I’ve been seeing the head of infectious diseases at Duke Hospital. [Love Dr. Sexton. Hate Duke. A subtle but critical distinction.] I have a rather uncommon infection in my legs-the question has simply become what in blazes caused it?

In an effort to answer that particular existential question, we drained approximately half the blood from my body, stuck it in a myriad of brightly labeled little tubes, and shipped them off to the four corners of the earth to be tested for everything Dr. Sexton and his resident could pronounce out of their medical dictionary.

A week later, I very hesitantly poked my head back into his office, begged Nurse Ratched not to weigh me again, and braced myself for the bad news.

The verdict? Every single test had come back negative. Which was both good and bad. Good because it meant that I don’t have a random parasite or something equally as unpleasant. In fact, I probably have something benign that will quietly work itself out of my system with no theatrics. The bad news is, if I DON’T have something benign wrong with me, there’s probably something serious wrong with me. We’ve ruled out most of the more minor possibilities.

Raise your hand if you got bored and skipped that paragraph. I sure did.

So here’s the skinny [because after a month and a half of bed rest, it certainly isn’t me]: Dr. Sexton thinks that a medication I’ve been on for quite some time caused the infection. I am currently off of said medication, and it ought to take about two more weeks to work its way out of my system. After that, the infection should take six to twelve weeks to leave my legs. I’ll still experience a significant amount of pain even after the bumps are gone, but in time, that will leave entirely, and I ought to go back to normal with no long-term side effects.

IF, in several weeks, I am not showing any improvement, we’re going to start running a second round of tests for some more serious possibilities-but my doctor feels pretty confident about the medication theory, and doesn’t anticipate that being necessary.

I am currently booked to return to Dakar with a duffel full of sweet tarts, oatmeal cream pies and Dr. Pepper [you’d think every single member of my team were pregnant] on March 16th-which clearly, is significantly more time gone than I’d hoped for, but that gives me three and a half months to wrap up my time in Senegal. I’ve started physical therapy and fully intend on being able to run with Michelle soon after I get back. Heck, I may even do pirouettes and arabesques around her the entire time simply because I can. [And I think we all can agree that I’m not presently attracting quite enough attention when I run.]

So, in the words of the worlds most beloved stuttering pig, that’s all, folks! I’ll try to do a better job of chronicling my time at home. [My Mother keeps complaining that she doesn’t know what’s going on in my life.]

[Note: If you’re a college student that’s thinking of coming on summer project to Senegal this summer, or STINTing in Dakar next year, the bottom line here is that Africa didn’t make me sick. Neither you, nor your parents need to feel antsy about you hopping on a plane!]

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Filed under My ghetto-fab life

January 16, 2011 · 5:24 am

Please Excuse This Interruption.

I know. It’s been a while.  But life as of late has been fraught with the busy ambiguities that drive me absolutely mad and don’t make good stories anyways.

But here it is: I’m back in Raleigh. Three mildly panicked SOS doctors, two plane rides, and one giant caramel latte later-I’m home. The saga of the Little Legs that Wouldn’t, while both riveting and wildly entertaining, got to be a bit too much and the powers that be mandated that I leave Senegal immediately for medical care. Before I really had slightest clue as to what was happening, I was pressed against the side of my JFK-bound window seat trying to avoid a positively massive Senegalese lady that struggled to grasp the subtle concept of personal space. She spent eight excruciating hours attempting to teach me Wolof, while I masqueraded as a viciously intimidating member of the Russian mafia that hadn’t the foggiest idea of what was happening.

[Just kidding. I used all four of my Wolof phrases.]

And before I knew it, there was snow [SNOW!] on the ground, and a very sweet custom’s agent was listening to my life story and offering her medical [in]expertise.

After which Kellan accomplished the seemingly impossible, and successfully rendered me entirely speechless when he surprised me at JFK with that aforementioned giant caramel latte to fly the rest of the way home with me. I kid you not- all ability to form coherant sentances was hopelessly lost for a solid two minutes.

I’ve spent the last week making friends with the head of Infectious Diseases at Duke Hospital. My condition has been diagnosed-but the cause remains to be determined. I’m going to be just fine-and hope to be back in Senegal soon. Stay tuned on that one.

Thus far, the most delightfully astonishing things about life back home are as follows:

  1. Sleeping on a bed.
  2. Being able to drink tap water.
  3. Not blowing the electricity when I plug something in.
  4. Not waking up to bugs crawling all over me.

But goodness, do I ever miss my team. And as crazy as this is going to sound to most of you, part of me misses sleeping on the floor and waging genocide on the roaches in my kitchen. [Okay fine-watching Michelle wage genocide on the roaches in my kitchen.] That’s my world right now. It’s my world until July 6th. And I need to get back.

More stories to come soon-I simply thought it was high time to clue you in to the chaos. North Carolina friends-I would love to see you, but I’m just not up to much. Though come to think of it, drinking caramel lattes doesn’t have a thing to do with my legs, now does it…

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Filed under Home, My favorite people, My ghetto-fab life, Team, The daily grind

January 4, 2011 · 8:44 pm

With Friends Like These…

I met Christy Seamon my junior year of college-for all intensive purposes, the day I moved in with her. To cut a long story short, I’d already pre-determined that she had no personality whatsoever, and she’d decided that I was the kind of girl that would insist on holding hands and singing sacred hymns together every night before a strict nine o’clock bedtime.

 Needless to say, both of us were a bit off in our initial assessments. [I go to bed at ten.]

We’ve been inseparable ever since. She’s the kind of friend that I can turn to and in all seriousness, ask a question like, “What’s that one thing we did that one time with that one guy?”-and as my team can attest to, she always knows exactly what I’m talking about. I think I’ll keep her.

When our senior year of college rolled around and the time came to figure out what on earth we were going to be when we grew up, I decided that I wanted to move to Africa and wasn’t going without Christy.

So she came too. Me and Christy is like peas and carrots. [Come to think of it, Hohos and Ding Dongs might be a more accurate descriptor. I’m humiliated.]

This year, we once again find ourselves on the dreaded job hunt and in the absolutely soul-numbing predicament of deciding what we’re going to do with the rest of our lives. Only this time around, we’re making haphazard decisions an ocean away from the continent that will be home to our new [old? It’s so confusing.] lives in six months. My latest ingenious idea, for those of you that are interested, is a little invention I like to call: [drum roll, please…]

The magic eight ball watch.

NOTE: THIS BRILLIANT IDEA IS COPYRIGHTED.

Think about it! You would have a magic eight ball on your wrist –ready and waiting to make any critical life-decision for you at a moment’s notice. Why, with my magic eight ball watch, you’d never have to make an autonomous decision again!

 “Should I move to Portland?” You may rely on it.

 “Is it a bad idea to eat a fourteenth brownie?” Concentrate and ask again.

 “Should I marry Harold?”  Don’t count on it.

Magic eight ball watches. I think I’ll be an absolute smash in Lithuania.

The thing about Christy is that she’d be first in line to buy one. She’s always in absolute favor of all my hair-brained schemes, Lord bless her.

Well last night we were sitting in the living room, and Christy was threatening to move to Iceland and become a bag lady as she researched potential job options for next year. I’m not kidding-she’d managed to work herself into a veritable weeping and wailing, teeth-gnashing frenzy.

After finding a possibility that came with an annual paycheck of 11K [paycheck? When you get down to it, that’s something more akin to a glorified goody bag…], she threw up her hands in exasperated frustration, tossed her laptop across the couch and proclaimed, “That’s IT! I’m going to be so POOR! I’m going to have to eat RAMEN for the rest of my life!”

Ever the eternal optimist [just call me little Miss Sunshine], and possessing an uncanny ability to always say precisely the right thing at precisely the right moment, I reassuringly commented:

“Well that’s okay, baby-at least you know how to cook that!”

That’s me. The perfect blend of tact and gentleness. [In my defense, Christy isn’t exactly known for her cooking prowess-but she DOES make a mean pot of Ramen. ;)]

About twenty minutes later, she’d pulled it together and it was my turn to fall apart. [The delicate timing on these things is no laughing matter.]  I’m still having difficulty walking on account of The Little Legs That Couldn’t, and 11:45 PM last night found me channeling Sybil,  sprawled out on the living room floor ranting to the ceiling like a madwoman. Christy, meanwhile, hung on my every word…

Me: [With at this point, what I’m embarrassed to admit was a shrill air of panic.] “What if I have a degenerative leg disorder and I can never walk normally AGAIN!? What if on my wedding day, I have to CLUB FOOT it down the aisle!?”

Christy, with that flawless blend of practicality and gentleness that we’ve so artfully perfected over the past four years of our friendship, didn’t miss a beat.

Christy: Well then, we’ll get you a Hover Round.

…*cricket

 

Cue raucous laughter.

The Ding Dong and I are going to be just fine. And if you need us in about sixty years, you’ll find us at the Grand Canyon. We’re taking the Hover Rounds, baby.

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Filed under My favorite people

January 3, 2011 · 2:46 pm

The World From My Yellow Taxi.

Michelle, Ted and I ventured out on a top-secret mission this morning. [I'll tell you all about it after Christy's birthday this Saturday. You see the problem is, she routinely reads my blog so she can keep a tally of gross exaggerations that I make about her. Retribution is coming, and it's going to be ugly...] On our way home, I snapped a couple of pictures from the taxi window. Normally I don’t do this-Senegal and I made a gentleman’s agreement quite some time ago that I was going to refrain from behaving like an obnoxious tourist at all costs. However, being partially hidden inside a taxi allowed me to sneak in a couple of quick shots on the sly. And so without further ado, here’s what’s going on in Dakar today…

The Senegalese use an obscene amount of onions in everything they cook. I’ve never before seen anything like it!

Our spin on an Ace Hardware. This is where Dayton and Michelle found the parts we needed to fix our toilet.

A juice cart-you can’t go five minutes in Dakar without running into one of these. My entire team [with the exception of myself] is obsessed with these little juice bags. They’re about 25 cents each.

A car rapide. These are everywhere-I love the color.

People are always selling things by the side of the road-which given the relentless heat, sounds like an absolutely miserable job.

I keep telling Christy that she needs to carry her kids around like this one day-strollers are for pansies. :) It’s been a year and a half, and our attempts to master the fine art of carrying things on our heads have been a dismal failure. Mohammad the fruit stand man is going to be bitterly disappointed when he finds out what a terrible Senegalese wife I’m going to make…

This, sadly, is the Senegalese spin on a Starbucks. Rusty little rolling stands that sell you a shot of instant espresso-esque Nescafe sludge in a tiny little plastic cup. And a little piece of me dies every time I see one.

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Filed under Senegal