Two days last week I stayed home from work nursing Charlotte who came down with a fever and sore throat. Nothing serious thankfully, but here in Africa my imagination ran wild. Is a simple fever malaria? A stomach upset cholera? Is there some unnamed disease just waiting to latch on to my precious girl? A quick trip to the medical unit and my fears were allayed, a simple flu virus, not even something that needs to be treated with antibiotics. Home we went with a prescription for fluids and rest. On day 3 the fever broke and she felt much better.
I brought with us a veritable pharmacy from the States and have something for every contingency from pink eye to giardia. Most used are the usual things like band aides and ibuprofen. There are pharmacy's here in Harare, well stocked ones I might add. Nearly everything you might need is available if you can afford it and nothing here is cheap. With my stocked medicine chest I have not needed to buy anything, but I wander in once in awhile to gauge what is available and how much. When I see the prices for the simplest things, I think about my gardener who makes less than $100 per month and has a family to care for. How does he do it? Do they just do without?
This weekend was glorious, after week of non-stop rain, the sun finally came out yesterday. Everything is so green and lush and beautiful and I imagine after a few days of sun, will be even more so. From what locals tell me, we are getting to the tail end of the rainy season and will have a few months of continued glorious weather before "winter" come along . They call it "winter" but in fact it means dry and not as warm. There is rarely frost and it is not unusual for days to reach well into the 70's. We arrived last year in the dead of winter, mid July, and loved it! The dry season is nice because there are not as many bugs.
Speaking of bugs, my completely bug phobic daughter, Charlotte, has come a long long way in her handling of the various and often quite icky bugs of Zimbabwe. Lucas, on the other hand, has become quite the bug expert. Thankfully, we don't get too many mosquitos, house flies can be a bother and if you leave fruit out to spoil, fruit flies will take over. We have been lucky and not had too many ants, the flying ants were rather nasty for awhile, but we figured out how to keep them out of the house (towels to cover the openings at the bottom of doors and Raid around the exterior of the windows). Chungalulus are big, black millipedes that come out after a rain, but mostly they stay outdoors. In the house we see mostly spiders, great big, flat ones that move as quick as lightening. Everyone tells us they are the spiders to have because they eat the "mozzies" and don't bother with the people. If you wanted to smash one you would be hard pressed to because, like I said, they are fast. The photos above is of the most unusual spider I have seen, this one was outside (well away from the house) and had built a most spectacular web. As long as the bugs stay outside, they are safe. Come in my house and they will be squished.
Love, Shannon
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