friday night i was sitting eating some food when i started to feel strange. i walked to the bathroom and noticed i had begun to shiver quite a bit. i never felt nasious (sp?) or had any problems with running to the loo again. but apparantly i had a fevor and i definately started to feel like crap. horrible headache, shivering all night long. tired. from shivering all night long and not sleeping. at one point my hands and feet were numb.

this place is prone to malaria, so i figured the chances of that being the issue were pretty high. so i took the anit malarial medicine i brought with me. I immediately began to feel better after the first dose, but then shortly after that was back to feeling like crap. Saturday i spent most of the day lying in bed trying to sleep and sweating uncontrollablly into my sheets. that was a little disgusting.

i got up inthe afternoon and went into town to get a blood test. the guy took my blood and looked at it under a microscope and a few minutes later came back to me and said I was negative for malaria. which was aggrivating to hear. but what I have found out is that after taking malaria medicine it is apparantly difficult to pick up on the parasites. and for some reason it is very hard to find malaria in the folk coming from outside of africa even if they have it.

so i may have had malaria or may have had something else. the something else is what concerns me cause if it wasn’t the malaria it means it is probably still around and could have just setteled down for a few days and is only waiting for the chance to jump back up and say “howdy!”

the funny thing about being in the bush is that when something breaks, it takes a while to get it fixed. a while back our whole internet system went down and as it turned out, i and one other person were the only ones capable of examining the situation to see if we could fix it. and we weren’t. its probably something small that any tech could figure out in about five
minutes of time.

we keep going into the office in the morning looking at our computer screens and hoping that by some miracle things automatically begin working again and we can access the rest of the world. but alas no, we sit and we stew and we realize its actually kinda nice to be seperated for a little bit. not a long bit, but just a little.

maridi is slowly becoming hot and humid. a few storms have passed through the way, cooling things off for a short time, but leaving behind lots of moisture to heat up under the sun the next day. soon the storms will stop, and the heat will stay. hopefully not the humidity.

the excitement level is low at best. the day is consumed with sitting in the office inputting information into the computer and hoping something worthwhile comes out. in the evening the options are popping around the corner to the little shop that sells very warm beverages, going back to the camp and being less than productive until dinner, or taking a walk and getting very hot and very sweaty. at night, we enjoy the images of BBC/CNN updating us on the events on the outside world as we suck down dinner. the same food as the night before. well the same type. hopefully lasts nights delight was fed to the dogs. ugali, rice, pasta, meat, beans and
cooked greens. too many carbs. not much taste.

im trying to pick up some of the local dialect. which is a form of arabic, but in the same class as eubonics is to english. its slowly coming. i can say "i want coffee!", "i don’t have money!" and "where is my pen?". very useful in day to day activities.

yesterday there were seven puppies in the compound. they had been there for a while actually, but yesterday they were seven in the compound and by the end of the day they were one. apparantly they had finally hit that stage in life where they can be taken away from the mother, and actually from the way the mother seemed to act around them, she wasn’t or will not be terribly upset that they have left. and in the evening there was only one puppy in the compound. looking rather lost and confused. wondering what happened to all his playmates, looking for someone else to play with. he didn’t seem happy. the reason he didn’t go away was because he was a male, and the others female. guess they were thinking they could limit the chances of more puppies in the compound over the course of the next few months. i want to call him “wallet”, which is the phonetic pronounciation for the arabic word meaning “one”. and actually instead of saying “t” at the end it is pronounced more like a “d”. so “wal-led”. I think its a good one.

im feeling lazy today. waiting for feedback. the books are going to drive me nuts.

saturday morning and back in the office. the generator is running and the satellite is working. and i am avoiding doing anymore artwork on the computer for as long as possible.

when it gets dark, it gets dark here. i stayed in the office until bout 8 in the evening. it was dark when i left. the compound where i stay is just a few minutes walk away and luckily there is only one road you have to take to get there. i couldn’t see a thing. and it had just rained eariler in the afternoon so i was sure that i would hit a large mudhole. fortunately i did not. i did feel like i was walking blind, and the few people i passed i didn’t see until they were right on top of me. they may not have seen me, but i think they heard me. i clunk loudly. i don’t seem to lift my feet enough.

some photos of where im at

today i am in Sudan.

the place i am staying is called “Maridi”. It is a small town just north of the DRC border in the southwest part of Sudan. This place is amazing. Lush vegitation everywhere. Tons of different fruits - bananas, mangos, papaya, pineapple and many more. Very very green at the moment.

i also have a very nice place to stay. unlike my previous experience where i lived in tents when i was in Sudan, i am staying in a small one room brick house. It has a small enclosed porch at the front so i can sit and enjoy the outside without actually being outside. and there is a small room inside the house where i can take a bath. this may not seem strange but generally in these parts they keep the "shower" room next to the toilets. and the toilets are not in the house, but about thirty yards away at the back of the compound. and they are long drops, no seats and no flush. what i like to call a "squatty". flush toilets would definately make this place paradise. at the moment it is really close.

the people seem nice. havn’t had a chance to meet too many cause i just arrived this morning. but that will come. did see part of the “town” and it too is much nicer than anything I have seen in sudan before. actually
lots of buildings. there is even a directional sign at the one round about in the center of the town. at the bottom of it it says “help keep Maridi clean”.

so i am really looking forward to my time here. will definately be an experience.