The Road to Recovery

6/27

We woke up this morning and, thank goodness, Sarah was feeling weak but over whatever had made her ill. Ivy, however, was not quite as lucky. We found out that the clinic did not have any medication to give her last night because it doesn’t have an on-site pharmacy. The doctor told her to come back this morning and pick up the drugs. Unfortunately, she had gotten so much worse overnight she wasn’t strong enough to leave the house. Mwape went to the hospital alone to get medicine while Sarah and I tried to help her, but even that was full of obstacles. For example, she asked us to prepare a hot bath because she was so achy and that took a full two hours because we have to heat all of the water on the stove. It’s just impossible to take care of someone who’s sick the way you would at home, and we were both feeling really homesick by lunchtime.  To make it worse, we found that Snoopy (the annoying dog that we are currently trying to train) had ripped a pair of Sarah’s shorts off the clothesline and torn them all up.

Eventually, Ivy’s medication arrived and while she’s still not feeling much better (it’s about 5 o’clock in the afternoon right now), we’re hoping she’ll start to improve or we’ll have to call Mwape to take her back to the hospital. We’ve spent the entire afternoon watching movies (National Treasure, Ocean’s Thirteen, Blood Diamond, and Fool's Gold to be precise) and made grilled cheese for lunch to cheer us up. It’s a holiday here and school/activities were all cancelled, so we definitely chose a good day to stay home, be lazy, and nurse our sick housemate. Sarah’s feeling much better now, so we’re planning on going to work tomorrow unless Ivy needs us to stay home with her. Being sick in Zambia is rough. L

Oh and, p.s., when we first arrived here, a Zambian family was living here and moved to a new house about a week later. They took silverware, plates, and more with them. We found out today that they came back Sunday afternoon and took every single bucket in the house. That means we don’t have a garbage bucket or a bucket for laundry or showers. Yessss?