Rain in England is wet, cold, monotonous, grey and generally miserable. Over here it is different for a start it does not happen every day, in fact it happens so infrequently that you really look forward to it, a concept that never crossed the lonely planes of my mind when I lived in Cornwall.
I have been back here this trip for seven months now and not so much as a drop has fallen, well I lie a little there I have witnessed drops but that is all they were, not enough to make the ground wet all over, you could still walk between the drops on the ground without touching them. But in about 6 days this is all going to change. The first rains are called the settling of the ashes, and that is a pretty accurate description. It normally builds for three or four days with the air becoming more humid in the afternoon until the day the heavens open. Usually it starts in the afternoon, great big, juicy drops of fresh quenching water, the impact when they strike the ground sending up a puff of dust, then as they get more frequent so the ground starts to transform from the dust bowl it has become over the past few months, into a dark brown wallow. As the flow from the sky intensifies, then the thunder and lightning, the likes of which you can hardly believe if you have only witnessed a thunder storm in Cornwall. The lighting cracks, then nano seconds later a boom of thunder so deep and loud you feel it passing through your chest, for those with a week heart some of these booms, I swear would end their time in this place. And for those with poor muscle control they will find themselves with other all sorts of other problems. It will normally rain in the afternoons for about a week or ten days. Then stop for a few weeks, before the intervals between these bouts become shorter and the rainy season sets in, in earnest.
That is a brief outline of the rains here and the passion it invokes.
Once the ground has soaked up all it can consume the water flows where it can flow, then settles and rests where it cannot.
This brings me onto the subject of this piece, Puddles. Now puddles in Cornwall are inconvenient, a nuisance at worst. I never forget as a child being told the rime about a rather absent minder doctor from the midlands who managed to step in a puddle that came up to his waist. I think his name was Foster but that’s by the by. What my point was, that it was preposterous to think that a grown man is going to find a puddle in Gloucester that would ever come up to his waist then step in it. This having been said, in the past few years with the floods there it’s becoming a common occurrence.
The roads here as I am sure I have mentioned before are an interesting experience, not least when you get off the main roads and get onto the dirt. Some of these are well maintained but others are not, it is these un-kept roads that become interesting when it rains.
There is a stretch of road (I use the term loosely) that I used to travel every day on the way to work, as the rains came the road became slippery at first and then very slippery. Because the roads are cambered, the idea being, the water runs off. Your vehicle realises two things, the first being it now has a mind of its own and the second being its got a wicked sense of humour. the last thing it wants to do is to go in a straight line, even if you do manage straight forward travel, there is a better than good chance that the back end of your vehicle will be travelling along beside you. A friend described it to me as trying to drive on a bar of soap. I must point out at this time this is not a stretch of road 100m long, there are 17km of it.
The roads after a couple more days of rain decide they have had enough and decide to leave, they do this by attaching themselves to your wheels and try to come to work with you, this makes your vehicle even more uncontrollable and about three times heavier.
The final stage and one that tends to stay for most of the rainy season is where the huge pits that have formed over the past 9 months fill with water. I can tell you this without fear of contradiction, we saw a car in a puddle and the water level was up to the roof lining. It seems the driver had driven into the puddle, not knowing how deep it was and it flooded his engine. It was then about half way up his doors, so he decided to leave it there and go to get help to tow it out, By the time he got back to it(It had rained non-stop since he was gone) the water was to the roof. These puddles are also, not clean ones like you get in Cornwall, they are thick and gloopy, more mud than water and the mud stains.
This was an extreme puddle but I can guarantee that I will have to drive through at least 10 puddles over 60cm deep and some even deeper every day on the way to work.
The other reason for finding cars in the middle of puddles, is an interesting one, and one that should stand as a warning for those who like to drive fast through puddles.
In an interestingly helpful way to try and solve this whole puddle problem some friendly folk decide to remove the puddles by filling them with rocks and rubble. And these folk being punctual as well as helpful, if at 17.00 the said puddle only has two 40cm square boulders in it, that is how it will stay until the morning when they return to work to find a 4x4 with no sump and no front axle keeping the boulders company, and a rather unhappy owner awaiting their punctual arrival back to work.
When the rains finally stop the roads take about another month to dry out to a reasonable level when progress can be made along them at an acceptable speed. Until next year!
Denzil Bark.
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
A Cornishman in Africa: Starlight Barking
Now in October out here things are pretty warm and when your house has a single layer asbestos roof it is no longer a house it’s an oven. Your house heats up throughout the day as the roof acts like a grill gently cooking everything in your home so when you get back after a hard days work it resembles a blast furnace, so the first thing you do is to open all the windows to get a nice through draft, but unfortunately its now 18.30 and the breeze cuts off like a guillotine, but you leave them open anyway, in the vain hope that at least some of the heat will vacate the premises. This in theory is a good idea but in practice just sends a great big invitation to all the bugs and especially mosquitoes to come on in and join the party. So by the time you go to bed you have a room full of bugs and a room temp of still 45 deg C.
So you are now lying slap bang in the middle of your bed, semi naked. I say in the middle of your bed because you are petrified of rolling over in the night and the cheek of one buttock touches the Mozi net because that sets off claxons and flashing lights all round Moquitodom and they all come down for the feast at Mr Sweaty’s bottom bar. Sorry I am wandering a little from the point.
The nights are usually very still and sound carries across the bush veldt for miles.
My neighbour Rolf has two Jack Russells (with inordinately long legs for some strange reason, maybe it’s the long sharp grass and Darwin’s theory)
Well Rolf's dogs decided to go for it last night, barking like beasts possessed, at a bushbaby. The time was somewhere around midnight, now this bushbaby is smart and he was obviously leading them a merry dance, jumping from tree to tree then sitting for a while in the tree laughing at them. The dogs were going berserk.
When it comes to annoying animals the place where I live abounds with them. These bushbabies, as well as winding up dogs have another interesting habit. Break dancing, yep that’s right, Break dancing. Now you may think that I am joking but I can assure you that most nights there is the Ngwewere bushbaby break dancing competition going on, on my very thin asbestos roof. The noise is astounding, it must be even better to watch, one day I am going to video it.
The next most annoying creature is a bird who bursts into song as the first hints of daylight begin to grace the sky with their presence.
Unfortunately this particular bird was not given the gift of song, it instead repeats the same monotonous note in one second spurts every second for hours, very loudly right outside my window.
This bird was given one gift however. It is totally invisible. And that is why it is still alive.
Anyway, these dogs keeping me awake. I waited for about 30 minutes hoping that someone else to shout at them, knowing full well that if I got up and did it a. I would be on the lunch menu again for all the bugs in the room and b. I would never get back to sleep again. but in the end no one else did so I decided to do it myself. I got up wandered to the door and they stopped. I waited, silence, I waited some more, nothing so I headed back to my bed and the little buggers starting again, I flew back to the door grabbing at the fruit bowl on the way passed and stormed through the door in my underpants (and you don’t want to know how attractive that is) I hurled a couple of apples as hard as I could out into the darkness, there was a slight yelp and two white shadows (?) darted away into the yonder. (Apples were the only thing that came readily to hand that I thought would stop them but probably not kill them) Once again silence abounded, apart from what I am sure was a slight sniggering from the trees above me. Anyway the dogs did not come back for the rest of the night and they took a wide berth around me the next morning.
Suffice to say I did not get back to sleep, but was ready and waiting to try and find that bloody invisible bird.
Denzil Bark.
So you are now lying slap bang in the middle of your bed, semi naked. I say in the middle of your bed because you are petrified of rolling over in the night and the cheek of one buttock touches the Mozi net because that sets off claxons and flashing lights all round Moquitodom and they all come down for the feast at Mr Sweaty’s bottom bar. Sorry I am wandering a little from the point.
The nights are usually very still and sound carries across the bush veldt for miles.
My neighbour Rolf has two Jack Russells (with inordinately long legs for some strange reason, maybe it’s the long sharp grass and Darwin’s theory)
Well Rolf's dogs decided to go for it last night, barking like beasts possessed, at a bushbaby. The time was somewhere around midnight, now this bushbaby is smart and he was obviously leading them a merry dance, jumping from tree to tree then sitting for a while in the tree laughing at them. The dogs were going berserk.
When it comes to annoying animals the place where I live abounds with them. These bushbabies, as well as winding up dogs have another interesting habit. Break dancing, yep that’s right, Break dancing. Now you may think that I am joking but I can assure you that most nights there is the Ngwewere bushbaby break dancing competition going on, on my very thin asbestos roof. The noise is astounding, it must be even better to watch, one day I am going to video it.
The next most annoying creature is a bird who bursts into song as the first hints of daylight begin to grace the sky with their presence.
Unfortunately this particular bird was not given the gift of song, it instead repeats the same monotonous note in one second spurts every second for hours, very loudly right outside my window.
This bird was given one gift however. It is totally invisible. And that is why it is still alive.
Anyway, these dogs keeping me awake. I waited for about 30 minutes hoping that someone else to shout at them, knowing full well that if I got up and did it a. I would be on the lunch menu again for all the bugs in the room and b. I would never get back to sleep again. but in the end no one else did so I decided to do it myself. I got up wandered to the door and they stopped. I waited, silence, I waited some more, nothing so I headed back to my bed and the little buggers starting again, I flew back to the door grabbing at the fruit bowl on the way passed and stormed through the door in my underpants (and you don’t want to know how attractive that is) I hurled a couple of apples as hard as I could out into the darkness, there was a slight yelp and two white shadows (?) darted away into the yonder. (Apples were the only thing that came readily to hand that I thought would stop them but probably not kill them) Once again silence abounded, apart from what I am sure was a slight sniggering from the trees above me. Anyway the dogs did not come back for the rest of the night and they took a wide berth around me the next morning.
Suffice to say I did not get back to sleep, but was ready and waiting to try and find that bloody invisible bird.
Denzil Bark.
Friday, 20 November 2009
Cornishman in Africa. My long suffering brother
I am away in the Valley and he is across vast tracts of land and ocean in America.
When my computer hauled itself into life this morning a big orange icon burst forth upon my screen telling me it was the 20th November. Which coincidentally is my brothers birthday. Now I love my brother very much and he has been very kind and forgiving to me helping me out of a number of scrapes. And to be brutally frank I’ve been a total git to him. So Adrian I am sorry!
For the time when we were children living in Berkshire. We had two tortoises, (Cedric and Charlie) they were both Girls. Even though we were obviously terrible at sexing them you would have thought that as a process of pure chance we would have got one of them right. Anyway Adrian and I used to take it in turns to go out into the garden and hunt for, and pick dandelion leaves for Cedric and Charlie as they really were rather partial to them. So there I was wandering around the garden in the dark autumnal morning looking for dandelion leaves. Mother had gone to take father to the station, for his daily commute to the other side of London, so I knew the house was empty except for my brother who did not like mornings at the best of times, and was never at his best in them. All of a sudden I noticed the bathroom light go on and realised that he was probably groggily, washing himself up there. Now the sink in this upstairs bathroom was right in front of a large frosted glass window that overlooked the garden. Whilst looking up at the window my wicked sense of humour got the better of me. I thought that it would be hilarious if I got a clod of earth and winged it up to the window, so it made a noise, it would frighten the life out of my dear half asleep brother. Well I certainly wasn’t wrong on that front.
I found the perfect clod, about the size of a cricket ball and just the right weight, I let it fly on the perfect trajectory. Unfortunately I had got the force all wrong. If it had not been for the house in the way, it would have probably reached the moon. But unfortunately there was. My little muddy projectile hit the window right in the middle at the weakest point, it did not make a small hole, but dragged the entire window with it, on its way through. My clod hit the ceiling leaving a fantastic brown splatted skidmark. At least I think it was the mud, Adrian was very frightened. He was also covered in Glass. He had been washing his face in front of the window, when it all rather imploded in on him. He thought the bottom had fallen out of his world, when in reality it was probably nearer the other way around.
And on top of this he was livid, absolutely bloody livid. I thought at this stage it would be a good time to leave home and to go and see the world, as I certainly was not going to be very popular round these parts for a while. The main flaw in my plan was that I was only seven.
My family eventually forgave me but I never think they appreciated the humour in it as much as I did and still do to this day.
The worst I did, and I do need forgiveness for, but I am sure Adrian will never give it to me is when we were on Holiday in Devon at Bull Point Lighthouse, I was probably about 11 and Adrian would have been 13.
It’s a lovely spot, the lighthouse perched hundreds of feet on a fairly precarious headland that is suffering badly from erosion, the old lighthouse was slipping slowly, inexorably into the sea. The land around the lighthouse was open grass fields and heath land. The whole headland was suffering from the same erosion by the sea.
Adrian and I used to play for hours on our skateboard (We only had the one between us in those days) down the two mile long smooth private road down to the lighthouse or with our kites in the fields beside.
One day whilst playing in said field I was exploring on my own and went to have a good look at the cliff edge.(As 11 year old boys do) It was amazing, with the erosion what looked like the cliff edge was not, the actual edge had slipped about 1m down and formed a grassy ledge about 1.5m across. Then beyond that the abyss. 150 feet of nothing before the broken and boiling sea and rocks. Another one of Denzil’s wicked pranks sprung to mind.
The next day Adrian and I were playing with our kite in the field beside the lighthouse, the wind was blowing gently up the field from the sea, I was holding the handle of the kite near the bottom of the field and Adrian was at the top ready to launch it. He threw it into the air, and in an effort to help it gain altitude faster, I ran backwards down the field only looking up at the kite, I kept on running without looking then it was too late, I was gone. Just a heart tearing scream as I went. Falling to my horrible death hundreds of feet below ripped to pieces then smashed on the jagged rocks. The kite fell lifeless from the sky.
Adrian came running down the field, tears pouring from his eyes, crying out my name and screaming no, no.
It was when he was about 3m away my cheerful face popped up from the cliff and said “Had you going there!” He beat the living daylights out of me. And I guess I probably deserved it, but it had been beautifully orchestrated, timing, the landing neatly on the ledge, everything, down to the kite, as it drifted helplessly downfrom the sky.
I thought that he would see the funny side of it in about ten minutes, and we would be rolling around in fits of laughter for the rest of the holiday reliving it. It’s been 35 years now and I’m still waiting for him to see the funny side. I don’t think he will now. So sorry Adrian.
As I say I have been horrible to my brother, these are just two of many things that have happened, I just haven’t got space to tell you any more now.
Have a great birthday Adrian.
Denzil Bark.
When my computer hauled itself into life this morning a big orange icon burst forth upon my screen telling me it was the 20th November. Which coincidentally is my brothers birthday. Now I love my brother very much and he has been very kind and forgiving to me helping me out of a number of scrapes. And to be brutally frank I’ve been a total git to him. So Adrian I am sorry!
For the time when we were children living in Berkshire. We had two tortoises, (Cedric and Charlie) they were both Girls. Even though we were obviously terrible at sexing them you would have thought that as a process of pure chance we would have got one of them right. Anyway Adrian and I used to take it in turns to go out into the garden and hunt for, and pick dandelion leaves for Cedric and Charlie as they really were rather partial to them. So there I was wandering around the garden in the dark autumnal morning looking for dandelion leaves. Mother had gone to take father to the station, for his daily commute to the other side of London, so I knew the house was empty except for my brother who did not like mornings at the best of times, and was never at his best in them. All of a sudden I noticed the bathroom light go on and realised that he was probably groggily, washing himself up there. Now the sink in this upstairs bathroom was right in front of a large frosted glass window that overlooked the garden. Whilst looking up at the window my wicked sense of humour got the better of me. I thought that it would be hilarious if I got a clod of earth and winged it up to the window, so it made a noise, it would frighten the life out of my dear half asleep brother. Well I certainly wasn’t wrong on that front.
I found the perfect clod, about the size of a cricket ball and just the right weight, I let it fly on the perfect trajectory. Unfortunately I had got the force all wrong. If it had not been for the house in the way, it would have probably reached the moon. But unfortunately there was. My little muddy projectile hit the window right in the middle at the weakest point, it did not make a small hole, but dragged the entire window with it, on its way through. My clod hit the ceiling leaving a fantastic brown splatted skidmark. At least I think it was the mud, Adrian was very frightened. He was also covered in Glass. He had been washing his face in front of the window, when it all rather imploded in on him. He thought the bottom had fallen out of his world, when in reality it was probably nearer the other way around.
And on top of this he was livid, absolutely bloody livid. I thought at this stage it would be a good time to leave home and to go and see the world, as I certainly was not going to be very popular round these parts for a while. The main flaw in my plan was that I was only seven.
My family eventually forgave me but I never think they appreciated the humour in it as much as I did and still do to this day.
The worst I did, and I do need forgiveness for, but I am sure Adrian will never give it to me is when we were on Holiday in Devon at Bull Point Lighthouse, I was probably about 11 and Adrian would have been 13.
It’s a lovely spot, the lighthouse perched hundreds of feet on a fairly precarious headland that is suffering badly from erosion, the old lighthouse was slipping slowly, inexorably into the sea. The land around the lighthouse was open grass fields and heath land. The whole headland was suffering from the same erosion by the sea.
Adrian and I used to play for hours on our skateboard (We only had the one between us in those days) down the two mile long smooth private road down to the lighthouse or with our kites in the fields beside.
One day whilst playing in said field I was exploring on my own and went to have a good look at the cliff edge.(As 11 year old boys do) It was amazing, with the erosion what looked like the cliff edge was not, the actual edge had slipped about 1m down and formed a grassy ledge about 1.5m across. Then beyond that the abyss. 150 feet of nothing before the broken and boiling sea and rocks. Another one of Denzil’s wicked pranks sprung to mind.
The next day Adrian and I were playing with our kite in the field beside the lighthouse, the wind was blowing gently up the field from the sea, I was holding the handle of the kite near the bottom of the field and Adrian was at the top ready to launch it. He threw it into the air, and in an effort to help it gain altitude faster, I ran backwards down the field only looking up at the kite, I kept on running without looking then it was too late, I was gone. Just a heart tearing scream as I went. Falling to my horrible death hundreds of feet below ripped to pieces then smashed on the jagged rocks. The kite fell lifeless from the sky.
Adrian came running down the field, tears pouring from his eyes, crying out my name and screaming no, no.
It was when he was about 3m away my cheerful face popped up from the cliff and said “Had you going there!” He beat the living daylights out of me. And I guess I probably deserved it, but it had been beautifully orchestrated, timing, the landing neatly on the ledge, everything, down to the kite, as it drifted helplessly downfrom the sky.
I thought that he would see the funny side of it in about ten minutes, and we would be rolling around in fits of laughter for the rest of the holiday reliving it. It’s been 35 years now and I’m still waiting for him to see the funny side. I don’t think he will now. So sorry Adrian.
As I say I have been horrible to my brother, these are just two of many things that have happened, I just haven’t got space to tell you any more now.
Have a great birthday Adrian.
Denzil Bark.
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
A Cornishman in Africa: Roads not Rhodes in Africa.
I have been driving, after a fashion for 29 years. I say after a fashion as it has been an interesting driving career, starting when I really should not have done, borrowing my father’s car when he went out when I was only 16 and driving around the area cruising for chicks, we were never very successful, mainly as I have always professed because our cruising machine was a light metallic green Ford Cortina MK 3 estate. But it probably had more to do with the fact that I was ugly, spotty and could not see over the steering wheel.
I then passed my test and got my own car and things only got worse, over the next ten years I managed to get through over 53 cars, I kid you not, and these are just the ones that I can remember, unfortunately a disproportionate number of these never made it on to a next owner, and ended up in various hedges rivers and in more than one case in the sea. I as you may have realised am still alive and I believe though my antics are not to be recommended, I learned a lot from my mad early days. The greatest of which being anticipation. It took me 53 cars to learn it but if you want to survive on African roads, it is the best thing to know. The important thing to note is that it is not anticipation of what is going to happen, but what with a strange twist of fate, might happen.
Now the roads here in the capital are busy, busy and chaotic, with vehicles passing on all sides, whilst we are supposed to drive on the left, it is more often the case that you drive wherever there is a gap. Don’t even think about leaving a safe breaking distance between you and the car in front because if you do, before you can draw a dusty, exhaust filled breath, there will be twelve taxi’s or minibuses in the gap, all cussing you hard.
One really shouldn’t laugh but just the other day whilst coming home from work There was a white Pajero driving along in front of me, when without so much as an indication or much thought for what was around it, the car stopped suddenly in the middle of the road. The passenger doors flew open and three large chaps disembarked to the curb. The doors were slammed closed and the Pajero launched forward again only to pull up equally abruptly and the rear passenger door flew open again I assume to let out another passenger who had, had a change of mind. Unfortunately the resulting incident, necessitated more a change of underpants than a change of mind.
Unfortunately for all parties there was a cyclist, a big, very fast cyclist who had seen the first batch of passengers disembark, thought his way was clear to go zooming up the inside without the need to check his speed but had not allowed for the Africa factor and a door being opened in his face at 35 miles an hour. The resulting impact could be heard over the BBC world service news bulletin, and over the sound of the fan in my car wheezing away at warp factor three.
The door on the Pajero I feel sure will never close again, this is assuming that they can in fact find it. The big guys bicycle will never ride or even fly again the way it did that day, and I am sure that there will not be a stand up row at such volume down Lumumbwa Road for a long time.
All parties seemed to get away relatively unharmed (They lived) I never did hear the end of the row or discover whose fault it was deemed to be.
But it was bloody funny to watch.
Denzil Bark.
I then passed my test and got my own car and things only got worse, over the next ten years I managed to get through over 53 cars, I kid you not, and these are just the ones that I can remember, unfortunately a disproportionate number of these never made it on to a next owner, and ended up in various hedges rivers and in more than one case in the sea. I as you may have realised am still alive and I believe though my antics are not to be recommended, I learned a lot from my mad early days. The greatest of which being anticipation. It took me 53 cars to learn it but if you want to survive on African roads, it is the best thing to know. The important thing to note is that it is not anticipation of what is going to happen, but what with a strange twist of fate, might happen.
Now the roads here in the capital are busy, busy and chaotic, with vehicles passing on all sides, whilst we are supposed to drive on the left, it is more often the case that you drive wherever there is a gap. Don’t even think about leaving a safe breaking distance between you and the car in front because if you do, before you can draw a dusty, exhaust filled breath, there will be twelve taxi’s or minibuses in the gap, all cussing you hard.
One really shouldn’t laugh but just the other day whilst coming home from work There was a white Pajero driving along in front of me, when without so much as an indication or much thought for what was around it, the car stopped suddenly in the middle of the road. The passenger doors flew open and three large chaps disembarked to the curb. The doors were slammed closed and the Pajero launched forward again only to pull up equally abruptly and the rear passenger door flew open again I assume to let out another passenger who had, had a change of mind. Unfortunately the resulting incident, necessitated more a change of underpants than a change of mind.
Unfortunately for all parties there was a cyclist, a big, very fast cyclist who had seen the first batch of passengers disembark, thought his way was clear to go zooming up the inside without the need to check his speed but had not allowed for the Africa factor and a door being opened in his face at 35 miles an hour. The resulting impact could be heard over the BBC world service news bulletin, and over the sound of the fan in my car wheezing away at warp factor three.
The door on the Pajero I feel sure will never close again, this is assuming that they can in fact find it. The big guys bicycle will never ride or even fly again the way it did that day, and I am sure that there will not be a stand up row at such volume down Lumumbwa Road for a long time.
All parties seemed to get away relatively unharmed (They lived) I never did hear the end of the row or discover whose fault it was deemed to be.
But it was bloody funny to watch.
Denzil Bark.
A Cornishman in Africa: Tummy Troubles
I cannot beat around the bush and please excuse my crudities.(no, not the snacks you got before a meal.)
I have not been feeling too smart today, in fact the world fell out of my bottom, which in truth it has been doing since Wednesday.
This is one of the wonderful and many symptoms of malaria. The others are equally fun, ranging from the feeling that you have suddenly moved to the Arctic Circle in a cold snap, then ten minutes later realizing that no, in fact you have just moved house again and are living in a blast furnace in Ghana.
These symptoms you would think, would make you say oh, I seem to have something wrong with me.
But oh no, the malaria bug is clever and has thought of that, he has sent his little bugs up to the brain and pulled the plug on the part that controls all rational thought. Then they take that power plug and stick it into the part of the brain that controls really weird and strange dreams and then turn the power right up to Max. Any spare power they come across, they plug into the vomit reflex, because they really do have a wicked sense of humour.
All in all this makes for quite entertaining viewing from the outside but when you are on the inside it’s not quite so good.
So on Friday afternoon after a particularly hectic move between Siberia and Accra, I decided to hit it hard with the Coartem.
Now Coartem is a truly wonderful drug, It works particularly well in this end of Africa, but it is expensive, that having been said I always keep two courses of it with me at all times. The only thing is that you have to be sure that you have malaria before taking it, because if you don't. It too has a wicked sense of humour and will beat the living daylights out of you for taking it when you should not have.
I think this is a really good idea and should be introduced on all drugs and would end drug abuse over night.
The upshot of this was that by Saturday I was feeling remarkably better so much so that I decided to walk the 20m to the car and go shopping. Unfortunately, Coartem mends the brain quicker than the body, I probably made it about 12 m, before collapsing in a heap of jelly, after ten minutes I made it back to the house and within another ten I was back in bed feeling rather foolish and dusty.
Sunday I was still as weak as a kitten but able to maintain horizontal movement.
My wife being some 10,000km away in Cornwall, was a little worried that I was fading away and not looking after myself so in an effort to alleviate her worry I decided to take some pictures of myself.
So after about ten minutes trying to work out how to get the timer to work on the camera, that is in the phone, I managed to set it up.
Then, what should I wear to prove I was not wasting away, Maybe just my pants, NO ! After the first two shots I realised that this was looking horribly like a porn shoot from some fat fetish site. I decided pants were not a good idea, so I added shorts, and after another couple of shots it became more and more apparent that I have probably put on weight and not lost anything at all since being here. And to send my darling wife some picture of her fat white husband in various states of undress really was not on.
So I got rid of the pictures, and have decided to go on a diet.
Denzil Bark.
I have not been feeling too smart today, in fact the world fell out of my bottom, which in truth it has been doing since Wednesday.
This is one of the wonderful and many symptoms of malaria. The others are equally fun, ranging from the feeling that you have suddenly moved to the Arctic Circle in a cold snap, then ten minutes later realizing that no, in fact you have just moved house again and are living in a blast furnace in Ghana.
These symptoms you would think, would make you say oh, I seem to have something wrong with me.
But oh no, the malaria bug is clever and has thought of that, he has sent his little bugs up to the brain and pulled the plug on the part that controls all rational thought. Then they take that power plug and stick it into the part of the brain that controls really weird and strange dreams and then turn the power right up to Max. Any spare power they come across, they plug into the vomit reflex, because they really do have a wicked sense of humour.
All in all this makes for quite entertaining viewing from the outside but when you are on the inside it’s not quite so good.
So on Friday afternoon after a particularly hectic move between Siberia and Accra, I decided to hit it hard with the Coartem.
Now Coartem is a truly wonderful drug, It works particularly well in this end of Africa, but it is expensive, that having been said I always keep two courses of it with me at all times. The only thing is that you have to be sure that you have malaria before taking it, because if you don't. It too has a wicked sense of humour and will beat the living daylights out of you for taking it when you should not have.
I think this is a really good idea and should be introduced on all drugs and would end drug abuse over night.
The upshot of this was that by Saturday I was feeling remarkably better so much so that I decided to walk the 20m to the car and go shopping. Unfortunately, Coartem mends the brain quicker than the body, I probably made it about 12 m, before collapsing in a heap of jelly, after ten minutes I made it back to the house and within another ten I was back in bed feeling rather foolish and dusty.
Sunday I was still as weak as a kitten but able to maintain horizontal movement.
My wife being some 10,000km away in Cornwall, was a little worried that I was fading away and not looking after myself so in an effort to alleviate her worry I decided to take some pictures of myself.
So after about ten minutes trying to work out how to get the timer to work on the camera, that is in the phone, I managed to set it up.
Then, what should I wear to prove I was not wasting away, Maybe just my pants, NO ! After the first two shots I realised that this was looking horribly like a porn shoot from some fat fetish site. I decided pants were not a good idea, so I added shorts, and after another couple of shots it became more and more apparent that I have probably put on weight and not lost anything at all since being here. And to send my darling wife some picture of her fat white husband in various states of undress really was not on.
So I got rid of the pictures, and have decided to go on a diet.
Denzil Bark.
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