Friday, May 30, 2008

Water and power

Bit of a hectic week around here. The water went on Saturday and was out until Tuesday. It was out longer for many homes around us but our property has a reservoir so we held out a bit. We've also been losing electricity a few evenings a week. Also, I was awakened by a ripping headache 2AM Monday morning, cause unknown. Took some of my last few ibuprofen, waited for it to kick in while Rob worked on ways to make me feel better. We checked the 'Where There Is No Doctor' book that I had recently borrowed from Audrey (friend here in Gabane) for various symptoms to make sure it wasn't any of the big dangerous illnesses that we aren't used to. I had no fever at all, a reassurance. I was still a little shaky when I woke for good Monday morning and could feel the pain hidden by the pill (you know what I mean) and so sent Sarah home early with some transcripts she could work on at home for the next day and half. She came back to work on Wednesday and I was much better then, after a full day of self-enforced rest. I read, mostly, drank fluids and took vitamin C.

Got our laundry done at a laundry place in town (no self-service places that we know of in Gaborone). Got a bit of a shock when they called the day after we picked it up, informing us that we had someone else's khaki pants in our laundry... which we most certainly did not. She seemed sure that we did so I got Rob to come try on the ones we did get in our laundry (his) to be absolutely sure that they were, indeed, his. They are his. I informed her of this fact when she called back to see if I'd checked. She was openly incredulous, at least to my ears, and said goodbye rather resignedly, undertones of, “Well, you got me this time, guess there's nothing I can do to make you pay up.” Kind of pissed me off, really. I mean, who lost the pants in the first place? And if she could remember so clearly that she sent us home with with a pair of khaki pants, why couldn't she remember receiving, washing and drying them along with our laundry in the first place? Sigh. Ah well, water's back now. Hopefully, we can avoid future laundry service experiments. I just hate knowing that she out there, somewhere, thinking I stole a pair of pants.

The whole 'Where There Is No Doctor' is a free download, by the way. A great resource, even in places where there is a doctor but who has time to find one? Or time to wait for an appointment to open up?

2 comments:

Jill aka neeuqpmats said...

Umm..just clicked on the "Where there is no Dr" link and it came up as not found. Could you let me know where it can be found. It is one of my favourite books. Thanks.

Crystal said...

Hi,

I'm glad "Where There is No Doctor" was useful for you. I work at the Hesperian Foundation, the non-profit publisher of "Where There is No Doctor" and many other health related titles. Here's the link for our free downloads page which includes 10 of our book titles: http://www.hesperian.org/publications_download.php. We're happy to announce we just released our new book "Community Guide to Environmental Health". This is also available as a free download. Hope these are useful to you and your families and communities! Wishing you health, Crystal

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