Ever seen the film Blood Diamond?

 

I have Dengue Fever, which has nothing to do with a movie. OK, I don't really have Dengue, but I love saying that. It's so much more exotic than malaria, which I don't have, either. I do, however, have some disease. Very high fevers that rarely break. General malaise. This makes for some odd dreams, obviously, and also for a teeny bit of crankiness. Well, let's call it a teeny bit . . . in fact, I've been a bitch (sorry SED pals). And with this illness that's lasted three-to-four days, yes, there are times when I wonder "why was I so keen on becoming a PCV?" But those moments are very fleeting. After the hottest day that I've ever experienced, ever, I return to a bucket shower and genuinely believe that I've got the best life in the world.

 

TIA . . . when the usually-filthy/muddy piglets are soft pink after a hard rain. TIA . . . when I ride through rivers following an afternoon deluge . . . and I finally realize exactly why they gave me a mountain bike. When radios blare with West African music in the early morning on the way to class, TIA. When I ride home well after dark and after Wednesday night cocktails, through rushing rivers (not kidding) with my beloved, tricked-out, purple mountain bike, covered from nose to tip-of-tail with red mud, smiling . . . TIA.

 

So it's all true. Everything that the 50-years of PC experience promised: it's not the day-to-day challenges that get to you. OK, it is the loo, but it's not the lack of running water, nor the culture. It's definitely not the culture, which I absolutely love. It's the language barrier; it's the beaten-down feeling when I believe that I will never learn the local language. Alas, TIA, too.

 

Last night I dreamed, again, that I was a PCT in Indonesia. Don't know how I knew that it was Indonesia. I had left the staging/training site and flown home to Dallas. In one of those only-in-a-dream moments, I realized that I was in Dallas without permission. Lord, I was AWOL. I dashed off to the airport at DFW, pulled-out my credit card, and purchased a first-class ticket on British Airways to return to Asia. Again, in a dream-zapped moment, I was back in the PC, whereupon I was discretely advised by a PCVF that I had been MIA for 27 days and I that I should probably just return home, without even mentioning my attempt to return to the PC life.

 

What does that mean?! For those of you who know me well, the first-class credit card purchase on British Airways is oh-so obvious. It's so me. But why the recurrent dreams that I go MIA. I always go home, and I'm always returning to Asia (not Africa). Sometimes I go home to go shoe shopping at Neiman's. I find this hilarious. Sometimes I go home to visit my daddy – fairly obvious, right? Buy why, in my recurring dreams, do I never see my friends at home? And what about the baby Jill? I am boggled by this. Anyone dare take a stab at this? It's the fever, right? We can only speculate.