Pecadom Plus Day 4: After Me, The Flood

The fourth day of Pecadom started a lot more chill than the previous few days.  This was because the number of us had shrank from 15 to 3.  I kept on keeping on because I really enjoyed going around to all these cool places and because it was refreshing to be a part of a project that actually was set up with a research design element with observable outcomes.  There were only 3 of us because a few had gone back, some had gotten sick, and Karin and Frank were going to sites close enough to Saraya where they could bike.  So Anne, Chad, and I went to the health center and one of the drivers there was kind enough (and foolish enough) to agree to drive us.  This day we would be going to the health post in Bambadji, and decide who would be going where from there.  Map for reference:

Go east young man!

Let me tell you, that road was not very good.  Like seriously though, it took us forever to get there.  There was only one dsdom with good French, so I was assigned to him.  We’d all take the car, we’d drop off Chad, then me, and then Anne.  On the way there we crossed a pretty considerable river, but were able to make it through. 

The river isn't that bad

  We dropped off Chad, then we got to my village.  The village I was assigned to happened to be the site of Mike Majors.

I think this point in the story deserves a bit of a tangent about Mike Majors.  He’s known as “Peace Corps Mike” because he served in the Peace Corps in three different countries.  He started out in cape verde.  Apparently there were a bunch of Chinese store owners, so of his own volition, while there, he learned mandarin Chinese. Why not?  He then went to Peace Corps China.  It still blows my mind that there is Peace Corps in China.  Their experience must be so much different from ours.  Could you imagine doing Peace Corps in China?  Anyway, from there he apparently applied again and got sent to Senegal.  I hear that he didn’t like his site so he up and relocated himself. 

Back on point, when we got to my village my dsdom said he wanted to continue on to Anne’s village because he was afraid that we’d get lost.  Long story short, we went all the way to Anne’s village and then it started pouring.  Like torrential.  I had never seen so much rain in my whole time in Senegal.  Of course, we’re in the car trying to get back to my village through this deluge, bouncing around and flying through puddles that were turning into rivers and rivers turning into lakes.  We eventually made it, alhamdoulilai, and I got drenched making it to the dsdoms house.  We waited there for a long time for the rain to subside.  When it finally did, it was time for the sweeps…

…but it ended up basically like the day before.  We went to one compound and people from all around the village started coming to get tested.  So this woman with her daughter walks up and says that her daughter has malaria.  When I asked what signs or symptoms she has, the mother basically said that she didn’t have any, but she could tell that she had malaria.  We take her temperature (since our thermometer actually worked), it came back negative for fever. I turned to my dsdom:

“She doesn’t have any signs or symptoms of malaria and we have limited tests,” I say

“I think she has malaria.” He replies

“But she doesn’t have any signs and no fever”

“I think we should test her anyway”

“why?”

“I can see that she has malaria in her eyes,” was his rebuttal

“what does that mean?”

“Look at her eyes!”

“Yeah, I’m looking, but she doesn’t have a fever”

“We should test her anyway”

“But it will come back negative”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“I am sure it will!”

“but if it comes back positive, what would you do?”

“I don’t know, I won’t humor that thought because it won’t come back positive”

“then let’s test her.”

“OK, let’s”

…And it came back positive.  Darn.  I just lost all of my credibility in this village for the rest of time.  For the rest of the day he could always give me a knowing look, and I’m almost positive he gave me a wink every now and then when I was skeptical of someone’s malaria claim.  Like “hey, how about her, don’t think she has malaria too?”  It was overall a negative experience. 

Anyway, we made it back to Bambadji as the sun was setting.  Bambadji was actually a pretty nice place:

Mommy, why is that white person taking a picture of us?

 And we were on our way back to Saraya.  However, the heavy rains from the daytime had made a marked difference in the terrain.  We get to what was once a considerable river, which is now raging.  The driver gave quite a few skeptical glances at it, considering whether it would be worth it, weighing pros and cons.  Anyway, we decide to try it.  As we enter the flood the water starts to slowly rise along the carside.  I was looking out in anxiety when all of a sudden everything went dark.  See, it was nighttime and the only light we could see was from the headlights.  The darkness resulted from the water rising above the level of the headlights as we plowed through the river.  At this point I thought we’d be carried away by the current, never to be seen again (possibly in the Gambia).  However the car miraculously made it across.  I didn't know how it made it and I still don’t. 

With that excitement behind us we trudged along through the sarayan bush back to Saraya.  We hadn’t see any signs of civilization for a few hours when we arrived in a small village 10k outside of Saraya.  It was in this village that our car broke down.  We had to wait around for about an hour , but the health center sent an ambulance that rescued us.  I still shudder thinking about the alternatives.  If we had broken down a little while earlier, we would be in the heart of the bush, many miles away from civilization, without reception.  I don’t know what we would have done.

We collapsed back into the Linn Inn at around midnight to discover that the ceeb that Karin and Chrissie had gotten for us had turned cold.  We ate cold ceeb thankful to be back, and then passed out.