Shots

Three vaccinations today from an efficient, personable Capital Health Care nurse. photos of China on her walls. the Terracotta Army.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_Army). When I entered her office, she said I had 15 minutes but she gave me 50.  I came with data in French and in Spanish and with little understanding of what I had or did not have.I left with 3 vaccinations and a vaccination book that I can actually read, and a  treated mosquito net and insect repellent with DEET . all this came to just under 300.

Necessary? maybe not. When I went to Senegal in 2005, I got a whole slew of shots but they cost a lot less and I got them without deliberating as to what was necessary or  healthy .. I did all in the whirlwind initiated by my sudden decision to leave my Mexico posting for Dakar . I am not in the same place mentally as I was then. I feel more cautious.

I am reading, reading the journal /blog / book of the MSF doctor in Sudan, I feel peace; my desire to go is rooting itself deeply; I no longer am dreading the heat and unattractiveness of Kaolack - this is according to tourist guides. the people I will work with for a month live here. it is their home. maybe for all of their lives. and my memories of Northern Kenya have been revived: the heat, the burning sand, the cement-walled unadorned house I lived in, the sand burning the sides of my sandled feet, the rhythm of Somali music, cardamon tea, hot wind, quiet afternoons reading, mosquito net cocoon feeling of security,  napping in my friends' straw Somali-style home made from thorn bushes .. napping on woven mats on packed sand.. ah..

Few thoughts spent then on acquiring things, food ( onions and tomatoes and rice and goat/camel/beef bought recently cut were the menu of each day) ; no forms of entertainment besides tea and conversation and books and UNO. Simplicity. Not without struggles and choices and frictions but a slowed down, more focused existence. 


I would love to experience something of this again.