This last week lasted forever. Sunday and Monday I felt like I was at the endgame of dying - my body was shutting down on me: kidneys, stomach, head, shaking, sweating, closing.. My thoughts oscillated violently between the idea of preparing for death and trying to avoid it. In a panic, I got Bibi to join the ludicrously expensive Bupa expats health scheme ancitipating an imminent emergency evacuation. I deleted the porn on my laptop. And I blew even more money going to see a Belgian doctor here in Abuja. He couldnt see anything wrong with me - apart from the obvious that my tests showed low levels of malaria parasites and my white blood cell count was below the accepted minimum.
Then Bibi found out about a herbalist in Garki on the Internet. I went to see her on Wed evening. Hajiya is a beautiful hausa woman in her 40's with glowing skin (I've decide hausa women are the most beautiful women in the world). Her passion is herbal medicine and natural cosmetics. She looked at my blood test results and told me it was most probably typhoid after the malaria. She prescribed me strong doses of Vitamin C&E, Selenium, and some special typhoid tea made out of artemether amongst other things.
Now after a week of partial detox (psyllium drink to cleanse the colon, apple cider vinegar and molasses drink to cleanse the liver, typhoid tea to blast out the bacteria as well as carrot, celery, parsley and beetroot juice every morning), my first encounter with the malaria+typhoid combination seems to be coming to a close. What a scary illness.
The problem with being ill is that you extrapolate the feelings of the present moment into the future, and conclude that the obvious next thing to happen is death. Its a real struggle to be positive.
I did however succeed a bit: making plans for a documentary on the life of the architect of The Scott House (see pic below) for next year; making plans for work in the next year (decided to give naija at least a couple more years). Also had the brilliant idea of going to visit Ivar and Cecile in Hull (my first Uni) during my forthcoming UK trip. And also decided it would be fantastic to see a published version of my memory project (currently written 52,000 words) - so I need to start finding an agent.
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