[ Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire ]
No series of updates would be complete without an overview of my health status, physical and mental. If you’ve been paying attention, you know the biggest question has to be this: is the muthaflippin malaria finally gone?!
Well…
Last Monday I visited my usual clinic for one final blood test, checking for malaria, typhoid, and all the standard blood chemistry. Results? A clean bill of health. No malaria, no typhoid, blood counts all normal—even my cholesterol was good. Woot! I hope you’ll concur: this is long-overdue, fantastic news.
And so the time has come. The first weeks back on the road are going to hurt; sore legs, pounding heart, screaming lungs. The worst will certainly be a particular anatomical area typically undiscussed in polite society, which will nevertheless assert loudly its dissatisfaction and discomfort via my interior (or, um, posterior?) monologue. It’s a small price to pay for watching my old nemesis plasmodium falciparum fade away in the rear-view. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that it stays there, at least until rainy season returns.
That about sums up Body. How about Mind?
As good as could be expected, I believe; as good as it can be until I’m back in the thick of things. I’ve simply been here too long (in Abidjan, not Africa). Too many daunting things are screaming at me from the periphery, and it has taken a toll—too many annoying-yet-important things have gone wrong (and plenty more could easily join that roster). But if there is an acceptable alternative to pushing through, I can’t see it.
I call to mind accounts of in/famous journeys undertaken in the past two centuries, the writings of explorers like Richard Francis Burton. Compared to these tales I travel comfortably, through a tamer, smaller, quieter world; my undertaking is but a trifle. Yet some commonalities can’t be denied: open-endedness and improvisation, constant immersion in uncertainty, no guarantee as to outcome, extreme isolation, lack of a safety net, exhilaration and self-doubt.
When all is said and done, I’m out here alone. The weight of this can’t be exaggerated. Even with committed, generous sponsors (thank you!), and friends who answer when I reach out (thank you!), and kind, engaging locals (thank you!), the days and weeks and months are spent alone—overwhelmingly inside my own head.
It’s noisy in there; turns out that’s where the biggest, scariest, most lethal monsters reside.
And so…I’m excited to turn away from such beasts; excited to tilt once more, full-speed, at less intimidating, more rewarding windmills. Allons-y!
Namaste,
—Quixote out
(PS
I planned to say ‘it’s time to dust off your lances and join me,’ but somehow that sounded dirty. So I’ll just “say it” parenthetically and postscriptually and scare-quotally instead of actually saying it, and pretend and proclaim I never said it at all. Ever. In any way. Got it? Good. In any case and however you see fit: dust-off, polish, hoist, brandish and otherwise prepare your randomly selected phallic totem–we’ll be on the road again before you know it. Get ready.)
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