Illness

After the injury post, I thought a relevant follow-up would be about illness. Disease is too big of a topic to discuss here, so I’m going to stick mostly to personal experience and some observations. An American I met in the capital asked me what the most difficult part of being a Volunteer was. My first answer had to do with work – the lack of efficiency, interest, ability, access, and funding, among other factors, that I have found to be significant impasses to progress. But then my friend pointed out that he thought being sick would have been my answer, sickness being something that happens fairly often to Volunteers here. I was stunned to realized that I had become used to it. Stomach issues don’t faze us; these problems have faded into a part of daily life. However, during a recent bout with another stomach bug, I thought about it more. Being sick is different than being sick in the States. At home, we get colds and the flu. We feel it coming; there is a tickle in the throat, a sniffle. We pop vitamin C with added zinc, maybe some extra orange juice in the morning. We sneeze, we cough, we take a day off work if it is bad, and we get better. No biggie. There is a doctor’s visit for what we can’t tackle at home: a diagnosis, a treatment, a recovery. Straightforward and predictable, for the most part.

Not so here. Being sick often comes from nowhere, from around the corner late at night. It comes when you least expect it, armed and dangerous, with intent to harm. Sometimes we are at fault (eating street food, playing with dirty, dirty children), but usually they are unavoidable (eating food ever, playing with most children). So, we get sick: hit by a two-by-four. Diarrhea for a week, but not after the first episode happens on the bus. We are laid low, doubled over. Sure, we get treatment. Our medical staff is phenomenal and our coverage amazing. But something seems to linger. Even with our medical staff, the diagnosis is uncertain and the recovery can be unpredictable. The thing about these guys is that they never really seem to go away. The bad feeling comes back, the cough is slow to go away, and the sore takes days to heal. There is always the scepter of the serious: giardia, dengue, even tuberculosis.

Nevertheless, we are lucky and we know it. After all, illness did not come first to mind when I thought of the most difficult part of the job (and, after all, we do not live in sub-Saharan Africa). We get sick, we get over it, we get used to it. We get to go home. Our neighbors are not so lucky. Prevention measures are not taken as often as they should be, environmental factors are innumerable, and treatment is often laughable outside major urban areas. In the tropical heat and humidity, problems often take longer to heal anyway, compounding difficulties. We as Volunteers try to do our small part, but we do not have the capability or resources to make systematic reform. Así es. I will be on my way out soon, having survived the hitman and ready to go back to NyQuil. Once I unwittingly harbored a stowaway campo tarantula in my backpack on a trip to the beach. Hopefully I won’t be taking any kind of bugs home with me this time.