21/12/11 Comment vous disez “barfer” en Anglais?

 

21 December, 2011

Yes, the above could have come in handy last night. I think I suffered some nasty heat exhaustion yesterday after about 5 flying hours logged with very few breaks in between. I had two bottles of water in the chopper, one of which I lost, but I still had a good 1.5-2 litres to drink during the day, as well as a softdrink. Anyway, by the end of the day, while washing the chopper (which I’d been promising to do since I arrived) I started to get a nasty headache. It soon escalated into a monster of a headache, which even lying in bed in total darkness, drinking as much water as I could, as slowly as I could, couldn’t ease.

Rooms and offices of the Chinese staff at the new camp	The dining room. Linoleum has been pinned to the corners of the floor. In the bedrooms the linoleum is pinned up the walls.

I had flown to a new prospecting camp nearby with a seismologist who wanted to check out the camp’s progress. The camp is run completely by Chinese personnel. I assume the seismic company contracted in is Chinese. But as a result I was given authentic Chinese food for lunch, and since there are very few dogs and cats in Gabon, I figured I was safe. Prawns, and pork. And a very watery soup with wisps of egg white floating in it. But all very good.

Security fencing and lighting still very much in their early stages	The blue tents that the local labour live in currently

Sadly, with my throbbing head my body decided the Chinese wasn’t good enough and evicted it (and all the water I was trying to get down) in a very impressive display of stomach muscle contraction power… Fortunately it was considerate enough to give me a 10 second warning (the notorious “hoc hoc” twitch from the stomach muscles of Mark Robertson fame) to get to the bathroom. But it really was quite crap. I had Cathy ordering me via Whatsapp to get onto a drip, and I just wanted to lie still, slowly drink my water and try to get rid of the headache. Stubbornness prevailed, I’m afraid, Cath. But my headache was gone when I woke up a few hours later, had some more water. And then it returned for a few hours, just to remind me who was boss… I actually became somewhat paranoid and fumbled for one of my Malaria testing kits (I decided to give the pills a skip since I’m mostly in the bush which is pretty Malaria-free, but keep some test kits nearby in case) but was thankfully negative. I haven’t really been in the country long enough to be showing symptoms, but better safe and all that…

This morning I’m feeling a little slow but much better. No headache – just a little weak and dizzy, but that’s no doubt due to having had no food for over a day (the Chinese can’t count). I’ve just eaten now, so expect full recovery imminently. My second little niggle was that I hooked my finger on a piece of wire on the helicopter whilst washing like a madman. There was a massive storm approaching and I wanted to soap it down and let the storm wash it clean. Didn’t worry too much about it and then with all the illness of last night tried to remember the last time I had a tetanus shot. Since I’d laughed off the drip the night before I figured I shouldn’t become too cocky, so I wandered down to the medic and tried to explain the situation in my best French. “Me, wash helicopter. Look. *shows small cut on finger* Don’t know when *stabs arm illustrating an injection* Tetanus.” It was all quite fluid and the medic smiled in a “well I really appreciate your coming to see me, these sort of things should never be taken too lightly” sort of way. He took me into his surgery, for what I assumed would be my injection. He put a plaster on my finger. “L’injection pas necessaire?” (admire the fluency). “No, c’est pas grave” (Its not serious), he replied. Right. Don’t I feel like a tonsil for rushing over to the medic for a plaster?!

Fortunately it seems that today is a no-fly day – which couldn’t have come at a better time. I think another long day of flying would have killed me. Time now to curl back up in bed and watch one of 100 movies I have brought with me and haven’t even had a chance to start watching… Happy Wednesday, all!