On this blog I’ve been downplaying how difficult it is to live and work here. Every day, people from my town demand that I give them whatever I have in my hands. And, when I got my family to watch the closing ceremony of the Olympics, I found out that my brother doesn’t know who Harry Potter is. What kind of country is this! Granted, my family doesn’t own a single book.
I was reading State of Wonder, in which the lead was having psychotic dreams due to taking Lariam, an anti-malarial, in the Brazilian Amazon. It was around this time that I realized that I’d been crying a lot recently. Publicly.
The way people treat me here was part of the reason. I’ve been thrown off a bus then had people from my town laugh at me, witnessed a man beating a 13-year-old girl and then saw everyone laughing at this, been groped by teenage boys, and been robbed by a member of my family. These routine occurrences were really aggravating me, but I was also feeling persistent social paranoia. When my colleagues at the clinic put me in a room full of pregnant women and then told me that I was about to lead a class on birth control, I have never been more embarrassed. The night before, I had specifically told my mid-wife that I couldn’t do such a thing, in Wolof or any language. After my co-workers kept asking me to do these classes, I felt like my colleagues were purposefully trying to shame me by asking me to do things I was incapable of.
Around this time I remembered when I was applying to Peace Corps that there was a remote chance I could go to the remote Vanuatu Islands. Vanuatu was also pillaged by the French, and Peace Corps was considering me for a French speaking country. I read a blog by a Vanuatu volunteer, in which the woman thought her colleagues were purposefully trying to embarrass her. That was exactly how I was feeling! Then, I found out that Lariam, is another name for mefloquine, the drug that I’d been taking for three months. One friend of mine told me to immediately get off the drug because he had severe depression on it and had suicidal thoughts. When I went to Uganda, I just thought that mefloquine was the drug that gave you psychedelic dreams. Instead of get fun, trippy dreams, I couldn’t go to sleep on the days I took Mef.
As I’ve said many, many times it takes a crazy person to want to do Peace Corps. Why would a sane person leave the wealthiest country in the history of the world to live in a developing country? And then to have Peace Corps put you on a drug that actually makes you lose your mind, compounds an already difficult situation. Truly, the average person can’t do a job like this. Every day at least 10 people tell me my Wolof is bad. I have never told a foreigner their English is bad, and I can’t remember a time when someone in Latin America told me my Spanish was bad.
In all honesty, Peace Corps healthcare for volunteers is the best healthcare an American can get. They pay for 100% of our drugs AND deliver them to us. If there is any doubt about a volunteer’s health, they are evacuated from the county immediately. So, if Peace Corps is willing to do whatever is takes to keep us healthy, why do they pinch pennies by putting us on such a dangerous substance? I’ve heard that 30% of volunteers are unable to complete their 27 months of service, for one reason or another. I’ve considered going home. Perhaps PC would have a higher retention rate of volunteers if they didn’t try to save a couple bucks by putting us on this “medication”.
On a positive note, I was approved for a medication change just a day after I requested it. This after I had randomly burst into tears in front of a Peace Corps doctor over who knows what reason (mefloquine, cough).
