Just
wanted to send a quick update on the last couple of days. Things have
gone about as smoothly as possible…but, for Sierra Leone, that still
means complicated. Before I left Atlanta I got an email that said, “your
flight is scheduled to land at 5:45pm; if all goes according to plan,
you’ll get to the hotel around 11pm”. I would hate to think what would
happen if things didn’t go according to plan! I expected standing in
long lines at the airport without A/C for immigration and a mandatory
Ebola screening. I even kind of expected the luggage madness (of the
dozen CDC employees traveling with me, 3 of the people’s luggage was
lost). What I didn’t expect was the “water taxi” journey that was a
45-minute long, high-speed, jerky, roller-coaster-of-a-speedboat ride
that slammed into 6-foot waves all the way across the bay. After 24
hours of traveling, that is not something your brain or body wants! Wish
I had been warned to take Dramamine and wear a neck brace.
Speaking
of medicine I’m glad I’m taking anti-malarials: there are mosquitos
everywhere, even inside my hotel room. The stat today was that if you
don’t take prophylaxis your chances of getting malaria are 10-50%.
Yikes! I’m more worried about forgetting to take a pill one day and
getting bit than I am about Ebola. I’m also glad I decided to get the
rabies vaccine series before I came, since I learned today that Sierra
Leone has the highest stray dog population in all of Africa. However,
there is no bat infestation, as far as I can tell. I’ve had enough of
that.
The
hotel is nice enough but the air is stale and it smells like bleu
cheese. Throughout the day there have been about 10 power outages
ranging from 30 seconds to 30 minutes, which can be inconvenient if you
need to charge a phone or use a wifi router to send an email. It can
also be quite concerning if it happens when you are getting into an
elevator, as I found out for myself this morning – as I was walking into
the elevator, it slammed shut behind me, jerked a bit, and then
audibly turned off. Not something you want to happen anywhere, but much
less when you are on your way to have your first meeting with your team
lead in a country that isn’t well known for responding quickly to
emergencies. After a minor freakout (mostly about how I was making a bad
impression on my new boss) and right as I was about to try to jimmy
open the doors with a bottle of bug repellant…the power came back on,
the elevator reset, and it took me down to a secret basement floor that I
shouldn’t have access to. A confused laundry worker and I stared at
each other for a minute as I furiously kept pushing the lobby button
until the elevator finally started moving again.
Speaking
of electricity, I just tried to plug in my blow dryer and even though I
used an adapter and was very careful about putting it on the right
setting, I short circuited my whole room (and possibly the whole floor).
Sorry, neighbors. My boss is right next door to me, too; hope he
brought a headlamp, and no, I’m not going to tell him it was me. I’ve
already made bad impressions.
I
found out today that I’ll be staying in the capital almost the whole
time, which is good because I’ll be at the hotel all the time (somewhat
reliable wifi, hot shower, nice bed) and bad because I’ll be at the
hotel all the time (boring, and smells like bleu cheese).
That’s all for now. So far there has been a lot less crying on this trip to west Africa than the last. A good sign.
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