Sick Days

I should have had my flu shot sooner. I had an email from the Peace Corps Medical Officer letting me know the vaccine was available in Tirana, but had not found time to make the long trip to the capital. Back home, I always got my shots as soon they were available, but never felt any real urgency. Herd immunity, the protection we get from the fact that so many around us are already immunized, can generally be counted on in the developed world. Here the opposite is true. Once a readily infectious, airborne virus makes an appearance, it spreads rapidly. It seems counterproductive for a health education volunteer to be a vector, however unintentional. Even though I probably could have dragged myself to work, I stayed in my apartment.

An invitation to dinner at the home of the country director for the Peace Corps was forthcoming on Monday. I decided that if I felt well enough, I would take the bus on Wednesday. It was supposed to be at least 10 degrees warmer in Tirana and his home has much better heating than mine, not to mention a traditional Thanksgiving menu. If I stayed here, it would likely be soup, pasta, salad and maybe roast chicken, as a special treat. This is the typical dinner menu here. Nothing wrong with it, really, it just gets a bit boring. I tried boiling some potatoes for variety the other day but ended up falling asleep and being awaked by the smell of burning spuds. The fact that I have not yet done anything to limit the air leaks around the windows in my kitchen (because of the slow gas leak from my stove) helped a lot to clear out the smoke. I suppose I could blame the episode with the potatoes on limitations caused by the flu, but even at my best I am not a great cook.

Palo, my landlord and upstairs neighbor, brought me some rose hips from the garden of his family home in the mountain village of Dardhe. These are high in vitamin C and are recommended to be crushed and used to make tea as a remedy for colds and flu. Another neighbor brought some salep, which is brewed with milk and sugar and topped with cinnamon. This is another folk remedy, but I don’t care for the taste even though many of the volunteers are quite fond of the concoction. Whenever I have the least little sniffle, friends, neighbors, coworkers and even strangers on the street will offer medical advice. While I was walking home the other day, someone came up to me and handed me a pack of menthol cough drops.

I did manage to get to Tirana. I went straight to the Peace Corps medical office in the basement of the staff building. The medical officer, a nurse practitioner, gave me my flu shot, checked me over, and gave me a course of broad spectrum antibiotics to start if my cough seemed to be turning into pneumonia. Since drugs like these almost always cause major GI side effects, I don’t plan on using them unless I really need to. In a country with interminably long bus rides and Turkish toilets, I would almost prefer to have pneumonia.

I felt somewhat better on Thanksgiving Day and headed over the American compound where the traditional Peace Corps vs. Embassy Staff touch football game is played. Since my weight bearing joints have been nice enough to continue functioning over my lifetime without major surgery, I try to be considerate of them and now abstain from contact sports, but I went to cheer the team on.

The field is a rather steep hillside, covered with grass, but after all the rain it was pretty slick with mud. Before the game I tried to subvert one of the opponent team members, a recent college graduate from Portland. He is unemployed so was visiting his sister who works as a political officer in the Foreign Service. I told him that as an unemployed, recent college graduate it was more appropriate for him to be with the Peace Corps. This might seem to be an unsporting activity, but, remember, the Embassy team includes the Marines assigned there. I figured we needed any edge we could get.

I sat with a group on the side lines. We tried to think of appropriate Peace Corps cheers; like “DON’T FIGHT, TEAM!” and “I.R.B., I.R.B.!” (I.R.B. is an abbreviation for “Intentional Relationship Building”, a favored Peace Corps technique. I have suggested changing this to “Buttering-Up Local Leaders” which I think would be more descriptive of the technique and provide an easier to remember acronym).

As it turned out, the Peace Corps team dominated the field. The large group of new volunteers apparently includes several with experience in college sports. There were only four Marines on the Embassy team and the others seemed more academically inclined. The Peace Corps team was ahead when the game had to be called due to hail and lightning. For all of our sakes, I hope the Marines were not dispirited.

At dinner, I asked the Peace Corps director if he had done any recruiting of new volunteers with the game in mind or if he had a friendly bet with the Head of Mission at the Embassy. He smiled as he denied both. There were 16 at the table; 10 volunteers, the Country Director’s family (three of his children go to school in the US and were with family in Colorado) and a few local friends, Albanian and a Serbian. There was a huge turkey, a ham, and a fine assortment of appetizers, side dishes and desserts. After dinner we got to watch the Macy’s Parade in NYC and the Detroit vs. New England game on the big screen TV in the upstairs family room. We sat on the big couches around the room and their two dogs sat with us. It was a typical American holiday scene and a nice respite from the routine of Peace Corps service around the country. I am sure the other volunteers appreciated it as much as I did.

I was feeling better, but my cough persisted and my energy level was not up to par. I took it easy over the long weekend. It continued to rain, so it was not hard to hole up indoors. The long bus ride south was crowded with students going home from Tirana for the long holiday weekend (not Thanksgiving, of course, but Albanian Independence Day on November 28 and Liberation Day on November 29). The heating system did not work right and the bus was superheated. The road was muddy and flooded in spots and there were detours around sections that had washed out or were blocked by mud or rock slides. I plan to be back at work on Tuesday.