Minor adjustments (gastrointestinal and otherwise)

Earlier this week, at a gathering of various ex-pats (American, Swiss, French, Dutch and a few Spaniards), I watched as people around me dug into plates of salad, quaffed beverages nicely cooled by ice, and wondered, looking sadly at my plate of rice and chicken (in a very nice peanut sauce, but still), if perhaps I wasn’t being a bit paranoid in re: my rules of ingestion.

Two weeks after my arrival, I've not suffered a single stomach pang, or cramp, or anything approximating discomfort, even after sharing a few traditional meals and an afternoon tea (from a communal cup -- it really would have been horribly rude to decline). Having said this, I suspect the gods of intestinal fortitude are only biding their time, waiting to unleash some particularly unpleasant variation on the euphemistically named "traveler's stomach."

Anyway, my gut felt especially strong that night, and so I asked Arthur, my conduit to all things UNFPA, whether he’d had any problems eating the local food. Arthur, who is about 6 and a half feet tall and probably weighs only a bit more than I do, shook his head. “The only thing I still won’t do is drink the local water,” he said. I nodded, considering this fact. Arthur, like many of the other non-Senegalese young people I’ve met here, is working for a year or two in Dakar between graduating college and going on to graduate school. Most work for various NGOs, and in general they appear spectacularly unfazed by the challenges of life here in Senegal.

As I thought about the possibility of leaving the ice in the glass that had just arrived, another ex-pat spoke up. An ebullient woman with a sunny, confident demeanor, and, it should be noted, a taste for green salads, she was hopscotching across conversations at the table, and hadn’t heard my line of questioning. “Well,” she announced brightly, taking a swig of her ice-laden Coke. “I just went to the doctor and guess what?” We all leaned in in anticipation. “I’ve got two parasites and a worm,” she said, still smiling. No one (besides me) seemed particularly alarmed by this information, and soon the discussion turned to more pressing matters, i.e. the competing merits of Senegalese beers.

At my end of the table, moving with my best approximation of stealth, I picked up my glass and emptied its contents into the planter situated behind my chair.

In other health-related news:

I spent the first week or so of my Senegalese sojourn fretting quietly about the amount of DEET I was spraying on myself (a lot) vs. the number of actual mosquitoes I’d seen (not a lot). And so, out of laziness or perhaps some vague (misguided) sense of rebellion, I stopped applying the stuff and let nature take its course. (Nature, hemmed in considerably by the nausea-inducing malaria pills I choke down every day – which renders the DEET cutback less adventurous, but, I hope, also slightly less moronic).

Moments after making this decision, I got my first mosquito bite. Now, two days later, it is impossible to locate a square inch of my legs unmarked by a red bump, some of which are extremely itchy. I am, it appears, facing a conundrum: possible long-term side effects of DEET (cancer, sterility, and lord only knows what else) vs. the threat of Dengue fever, which, I am told, is quite rare but also enormously unpleasant and possibly fatal.

UPDATE: 80 million mosquito bites later, I am back on the DEET, consequences be damned.

Thanks to all of you who have expressed concern about the bumps on the backs of my hands, a health dilemma which ranks in global significance just below the hangnail I acquired last week. The bumps are stubborn, and have now spread up my arms, and are also making themselves at home on the back of my neck. Still no discernable ill-effects (itching, pain, oozing, etc), so will continue operating under that assumption that they are benign manifestations of sun sensitivity. (Mom: Please don’t worry; and also please don’t send me the dire results of any more Google searches for “bumps on skin.”)

Apologies to anyone for whom this post is slightly too, um, health-related. Those of you who know me well are probably wondering what took so long.