What started as an awareness raising and ethnographic styled walk through Sierra Leone, this site now details the encounters of a not so academic academic who spends more time occupying Wall Street and squats than a university...
I don't know where to begin. I've never in my life hoped for anyone to have Malaria (especially after almost dying of it myself), and never even thought much of Typhoid fever. But right now I am hoping, and asking for any and everyone's positive thoughts and prayers, that Yapo just has malaria or typhoid.
Yapo and Tyson
For months I have been interacting almost daily with Yapo in Sierra Leone, trying to figure out a way to combat this deadly disease. Trying to raise awareness here in the US, get donations for food and medicine, and simply trying to get people here to care. Yet, repeatedly, I have to tell him I've come up empty.
It took us three years to scratch together enough money just to start building a small office/community center in Makeni. We finally sent the money - $3800 - in two allotments last spring, and started building the foundation for our vision for alternative, community centered not-for-profit "development" in Sierra Leone. We got this high:
aibia's office/community center...
Then Ebola struck, and everything in the country stopped. But not Yapo, Throughout it all, He has been working incredibly hard, struggling to make things better. Proposal after proposal, idea after idea: an information campaign, a door to door awareness campaign, medical professionals, volunteers, etc. The budget dropped and the plans changed as we came up empty one after the other. What about just food and medicine? We tried to no avail, but yapo kept working. He created a group called "save Salone" on whatsapp made up of over 30 professionals and connected people working towards productive responses to Ebola. From that day I have been connected not just to him, but to his whole network. This has of course connected my network to him and them. This website i"m writing on right now, our organizations website (www.aibia.org), facebook, etc. The world that I know and the people I engage with have been connected because of Yapo's tireless work ethic. And work done in the face of a deadly disease that is taking life after life around him, and has literally destroyed the entire fabric of society in Sierra Leone and the surrounding countries. Everything has stopped. Food, jobs, no one can touch anyone, nothing can be moved around the country or in and out of it really either. There is only the food you can grow, and the salvation of hope. An entire population being taught to fear touching another person...
Yet throughout this, Yapo is sending picture after picture, story after story, of what life is like on the ground dealing with Ebola. Orphans, ambulances, quarantined people, even the dead. Whatever it takes to have the story told. But not just to get the story out, but because he is trying to affect local change. To stop Ebola there in Makeni. He has been on the front lines trying to make this better, better for all of us. These are some of his pictures:
Suspected large scale contamination of a village...
A recent orphan...
A little girl being taken to isolation...
A women headed for quarantine...
All of that work came under a different light this morning though. I got a message from him in his typical humble fashion.
"Tim sorry, i might not be able to followup with the documentary thing for now, because i have some fever, though not too severe for now, they might put me under isolation for observation."
Like somehow the documentary is more important than his fever. Of course to him it is, because the documentary is a way to get people throughout the rest of the world to know and care about what is happening in West Africa. The fact that he might have Ebola and a better than not chance of dying doesn't seem as important. Amazing, the will and heart of some people...
----Break----
Wooo!!! Update!!! paused to check phone and he just got the test back, Typhoid fever!! No Ebola!! He will have to be admitted to the hospital for three days, but should be ok after some antibiotics. Never would I have thought I'd be glad that a friend of mine has a disease that kills 200,000 people per year globally, but with antibiotics and a few days he should be fine. With Ebola, there is no cure, and in this outbreak 60-70% of people with it are dying (compared to .09% fatality rates with Typhoid).
This has been a very scary morning. A morning that happened to me here in the US just today, but that is happening to the everyone in West Africa everyday right now, every day. As people die though, we do so little. Our governments send small contingents of 300 or 600 people, old medical supplies, and pay it lip service. Only when a man dies in Dallas and his nurses or a nurse in Spain catch the disease do we really stand up an start to take notice. People claiming Ebola is fear-mongering, the next disease said to be - but that won't be - a threat. Yes, maybe not to you today, but an entire region of the world is being devastated by it. And if we don't stop it there, it will make its way here.....
Can I get back in the saddle?? So it's been an eternity since my malaria encrusted mind saw light enough to turn into electronic words. Where to begin...
So I got off the plane on Tuesday the 23rd of November and was vomiting not much after walking in the door in New York (Could I be allergic to America!?! lol.). A couple days later, more of the similar but of the less pleasant variety. Come Friday I was in the hospital, but was sent home after a couple of bags of IV and an apparently botched malaria test. Sunday I awoke on what felt like death's door with a decent fever, horrible sickness, and an ambulance ride back to the hospital. By mid afternoon I was in the Critical Care Unit (CCU) and signing papers for possible blood transfusions. They hadn't yet figured out if it was malaria, lasah fever, or something else. Things from there for me though are pretty fuzzy. They started pumping enough antibiotics and meds into me to look like Chris' cow.
They also came across a positive malaria test and some other mysteries at some point. Of course then come the medications - which I ceremoniously threw back up after 45 minutes. The next night was even worse. They gave me the pill at 8:45 in the evening and I was determined to keep it down no matter what. I fought with ever ounce of strength I had. Every meditative thing I'd ever learned, breathing, energy movement, acupressure, whatever. But the pain... I was determined to make it 45 mins. I wanted to throw it up for every single one of those 45 minutes, but I concentrated and pushed past it the best I could, trying to get to an hour and be certain. The nausea started moving from my stomach into my digestive system though and turning into cramps and pain. I think then and there is the first time I ever blacked out. I was in agony, concentrating on my breathing, just trying to handle it - then all of a sudden it was later, where was I?. Not sure what happened. But regardless, I had started seeing things. Not real things, but they were way to vivid and multidimensional to be dreams. Rumor has it they were hallucinations, and I kept hearing this frog behind me in my right ear... Funny though, no one else seemed to hear it. Not sure why, what isn't normal about having frogs in hospital rooms... What a horrible night.
To top it all off, in critical care each nurse has two patients and no one else can sign off on anything/has responsibility. No nurse tech or helper. The women next door had just come in and had to go to emergency surgery, her/my nurse left with her. There was no one to help me. I ended up naked, writhing in pain, and cursing belligerently about ancient Chinese medicine and listening to that damn frog sing his/her tune!! Finally, I called my mother. It was 11pm and I'd lost it!! Lol!! Miraculously, by 11:30 my mother (and maybe brother) and four nurses were in there helping me. Funny how that works, a naked man writhing in pain and talking of a strange Kermit type comrade doesn't bring help, but a mother sure can!!
I expected much the same the next night. But I had gotten them to drop the antibiotics that day in hope of not having a reaction. Wonderfully so, it worked. I took the malaria meds and slowly drifted off to sleep an hour later.
I got moved out of critical care a day or two later and then was home a bit after that. It was quite an experience. Since then I've been dealing with the after affects. For the next month I had a tremendous amount of weekness and dizziness. Pretty much debilitated for all intents and purposes. Sequestered to my house, bed, and couch, using the walls for balance and movies to keep time.
I started getting better though, enough to be motivated to look for work. Non-profit jobs all over the country. I need to get something meaningful to do, put some cash in my pocket, and allow me to try to move forward with the projects found on this trip. I have a lot of thoughts on things and some options to hep get things started here in the US. The problem obviously is that my health has not put me in a position to function at full mental and physical capacity - or even at half capacity much of the time. But I am getting there.
I got to a point where I was out hiking: elevation, millage, even some trotting and walk/run trail trips. Things were looking up, until I got some other kind of sickness. This seems to have put other things over the edge, or have been the edge itself. I had been getting follow up doctor visits and blood work, and as it turned out, things were going in the wrong direction. The tests were showing problems with my liver, spleen, and kidneys. Each visit things were worse. So off to the specialists I went. And that gets me right up to today.
All this while I've been slowly getting an increasing amount of abdominal pain. Sharp, bend you over, type stuff at times of late, coupled with a light hazzy film covering all physical and cognitive functioning. I've still got that of course, and apparently will for quite some time. But my blood work has turned around and is going in the "right" direction. So theoretically - while there was a concern for things like liver disease - I really am just "hurt", not "injured". Which in American football terms means: if your hurt, you can play; if your injured, you can't. So it seems I can't make myself worse. The pain is there, and the organs are still not functioning properly, but the body is cleaning itself out and I'm apparently headed in the right direction. That of course is all I can ask. They said it may take several more months to get back to full strength, but rest assured I will, and I will come back much stronger than ever before.
So obviously its been a long time since my last post. I stepped off the plane and pretty much disappeared it would seem. I wish I was just catching my breath. I unfortunately got sick that night that I came home, and though it leveled off a bit over the few days that followed, by Friday I was in the hospital and in a pretty solid amount of pain. I was incredibly dehydrated after vomiting and diarrhea that covered several days. A couple IV bags of fluid though and they sent me home. I felt horrible, but malaria had come back negative. So with just 'flu-like' symptoms, no big deal right? Well by Sunday morning I was in an ambulance, and by Sunday night I was in the Critical Care Unit at the hospital. Honestly, I don't really remember much of Sunday. It's all pretty hazy. They started me on antibiotics for a possible intestinal infection and then a late malaria test by the special blood doctor came back positive. Of course I'm allergic to most chemicals, antibiotics, and medicines. Bottom line is that the next couple days were horrible. Lots of pain, high fevers, delirium, hallucinations, I even heard a frog that no one else seemed to hear!! Anyway, we talked them into cutting off some of the antibiotics and other craziness they were pouring into me and things started to clear up.
There were some other serious issues though. I was dangerously close to needing a blood transfusion as my blood platelet count was extremely low. But started to be able to keep food down and the blood count started to come up. The malaria medicine - despite the violent reactions I had to them - was working, the parasites in my blood cleared out. The hospital kept me going, kept me alive really.
So home I came. I've been here for a couple days now. I couldn't really walk or stand up for a few days there. Very dizzy and week, but I'm fnctional now. All told, I lost 15 pounds and a lot of strength. It's going to be a long road back. Amazing that in two weeks you can lose so much. My body seems to have been cut in half. Incredible. But the most important thing to take from it all came in a frank conversation with the infectious disease doctor. Basically, giving my sensitivities/allergies and general health concerns, with the issues I had, the probable intestinal infection and malaria, if I had not gotten out of Sierra Leone when I did I probably would not have survived this. Pretty powerful thing to hear. I was incredibly close to needing blood, and with all the other fluids and medicine I needed and was given, I would not have been able to get it in Sierra Leone. Tough to swallow. Guess I'm not Superman... :-/
