Ups And Downs

This week didn’t get off to a great start: whilst Sunday morning was really still Saturday night, Peter took ill with a stomach bug that lasted into Monday morning. His appetite finally returned on Thursday night, but up to that point he admits to having resided under a cloud most of the week! His only pleasure was that there was no way this particular bout was being written off as ‘man flu’…

In fact, over the past couple of weeks several people on the compound have been taken out with the bug, but it seems that things are on the way back up.

We really have to be thankful that this has been the first real incident of sickness since we arrived. Despite changing climate, sleeping patterns, diet, and more, the effects had been limited to tiredness and the odd headache.

As the number of doctors has dropped to a more normal level lately, Ruth finds her workload picking up pace. (In February, the PMI – that’s the Paediatrics clinic – saw shy of 1100 patients, an average of about 50 a day.) There’s also a few more nights on call on the schedule. However, she has also moved rota slightly, so as to spend several hours a week in Obstetrics to build up some valuable experience in that area ahead of working at Danja.

A real pick-me-up came today, when D. (our resident wildlife buff) turned up on the doorstep with a chameleon! D. is typically found with one eye on his work outdoors, and the other on the surrounding landscape as he catalogues the flora and fauna of the area – both for fun, and for useful purpose. Amongst other things, he is trying to improve the standard of the gardens at Galmi – the fact that they manage to grow all this greenery already is pretty impressive, but the potential reaches even further with careful management.

Anyway, he came over with a chameleon. Peter had been talking with him a lot about photographing local wildlife. Though there’s seemingly a few chameleons about if you look hard enough, this was the first one we’d been able to (literally) poke a bit and see for ourselves. He’s not the healthiest looking, but absolutely fascinating.

See his ‘hands?’ It’s the strangest looking thing as he climbs, moving his legs like human arms, reaching and pulling himself forward. With his opposable claws, he reaches out and grabs on to things the way we home sapiens would. He was last seen methodically making his way up the tree outside our front door, slowly changing colour from an anxious bright green to a calm yellow as he settled down afterwards.

Galmi’s getting very busy this weekend, as it hosts an annual homeschooling conference – there’s over a hundred expected on site. We fully intend to spend most of it lounging around trying to keep cool. Hopefully at some point in the next few days, quite a bit of post is due to arrive – really hoping some stuff we know has been sent out might have arrived! We will keep you all posted.

Feeling the strange urge to go climb something…