Conjunctivitis

September 22

No, I don’t have conjunctivitis. But I feel like I should be acting Boris the Rusisan computer programmer from Goldeneye (the mid-1990s Bond movie, if you haven’t seen it you’re just going to have to read this post for the non-references.  See this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXW02XmBGQw&feature=related). I should be standing up and yelling “I am invincible!” But I’m not going to. Because once I do, I know the big vat of nitrogen whatever will explode and freeze me in my celebratory pose. Except in my case it would be a big vat of pinkeye.

So what am I going on about here? Well, let’s see. A week ago, my teaching partner Rachel came down with the visible symptoms of conjunctivitis about halfway through the day, leaving me to fend for myself (read: teaching) for two days. The secretary at my school? Pinkeye. By Wednesday, one of my students came in with it. He was sent home immediately. Thursday morning my sister woke up with it. Bad too, in both eyes. By Friday night, Gabriel, a Dominican guy who we hang out every so often looked in the mirror in my apartment. His eyes were red. By the next day he looked like a boxer at the end of a title fight. By this morning (Monday), Laura, the library coordinator was out with pinkeye. By lunch Rachel (the co-teacher) was showing symptoms again. She went home, leaving us with about half of the staff at the school actually AT the school. Even another volunteer, who up until now had been able to fend off contracting this stuff, was commenting about possibly having itchy eyes towards the end of the day.

Now, there are a few other people who haven’t had the pleasure of missing work because they want to scrape out their eyes, but I’m particularly proud of myself, if that’s okay with you, because my sister, who I usually eat meals with (and did even when she had the hardcore symptoms) had it. Added on to that is the fact that the person who co-teaches with me has now had it twice in a one week span. For now I think I’ll wait until everyone I know is free and clear of the symptoms before I start perfecting on my Russian accent, but that doesn’t mean I’m not practicing clicking my pen in front of the mirror.




Update: September 24

So. One of the volunteer writing/art teachers now has “the junk” (yes that’s the name that has been bestowed up on it), leaving 2 out of 5 adolescent program teachers at the school over the last two days. It’s been pretty crazy. Thankfully, there’s free HIV testing tomorrow at my school, meaning no classes. Which is awesome. We’re giving out a half-pound of rice to everyone who gets tested too. I think I have to do that job. I'm going to take a few minutes to be one of the rice giver-outers, which I’m sure will be an experience, especially when if we come across someone who is distraught they’re HIV positive. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to see me there telling them, “Hey, look on the bright side! Here’s a free half-pound bag of rice!” Yeah right.

Update: September 30

My eyes are legitimately invincible.

A Brush With Ike

I think Wednesday afternoon it was really hot and sunny. Maybe part of Thursday too. Otherwise, it’s been raining here. A. lot. It’s even pouring right now. At the beginning of the week we got the remnants of Tropical Storm Hanna (I honestly don’t remember if it was a hurricane of a tropical storm by the time it passed us to the north). It always seemed like Hanna was going to pass pretty far north of us, that is of course until it took a sharp, almost ninety degree southerly turn towards Haiti. Poor Haiti, they can’t win. So anyways. Tuesday. Crazy amounts of rain and a solid amount of wind. I thought about how I didn’t want to imagine what a direct hit from a hurricane would be like.

Cue Tuesday night.

Everyone in Cabarete was in full freakout mode. According to the news and the radio (neither of which I have access to from my television and radio-less apartment), Hurricane Ike was set for a direct hit on the north coast. I was still a little skeptical. It was due to hit sometime Saturday, way too far in advance to know anything for sure. As the week went on it seemed like the Bahamas were destined to get Tina’d, not us. That was according to the national weather service (the American one). Apparently people here were indifferent to that projection.

When I came home from work Friday afternoon my apartment door was wide open. Oh sh-. That was my first thought. Then I walked in and found my landlord’s son taping X’s on all my windows in preparation for the hurricane. That’s when I knew for sure we weren’t getting hit directly. It was definitely jinxed. Saturday morning came around, the windsurfing class I help with was cancelled, unbeknownst to me and Derek, my sister’s boyfriend who lives here now. We showed up and there were pretty good sized waves so we went swimming. Dominicans thought we were nuts, but we remembered the vitals of swimming, don’t swim against an undertoe, swim parallel to shore, et cetera. There was a slight riptide but nothing dangerous. That and we could touch the ocean floor at all times.

Later on we went to an American owned bar to watch the Notre Dame – San Diego St. game. There were a bunch of fifty-ish good old southern boys from Alabama whose small talk and banter was actually pretty funny. There was also a Notre Dame alumnus who teaches high school in Sosua (a city about 10 minutes west of here) who seemed happy to see other alumni around (my sister and Derek). Even at about four o’clock, the skies looked to be clearing. I was right, a little drizzle maybe, the hurricane was supposed to be passing to the north at around 2pm.

So, happy hour at this bar is 198 pesos (about 6 dollars) for all you can drink beer for two hours (timed perfectly to coincide with the football game). Somewhere in those two hours I must not have noticed (even though it was an open air bar), but Ike showed up, despite being 300km north of us. I didn’t notice anything until the satellite feed crapped out at the end of the game. As we left it was absolutely pouring. I stubbornly refused to believe I was wrong, calling the rain “drizzle.” At least Derek was on my side.

Thankfully one of the colmados (like a neighborhood store) near my apartment was still open, using candlelight to operate. I bought a small bottle of rum and the guy at the counter said “Good idea, for the cold.” For the cold? It’s like 78 degrees. I guess that’s cold to them.

Soon the wind showed up and I was a little glad that I had X’s taped on all my windows in my apartment. All the girl volunteers gathered in the apartment next to me, so I dropped in on that for a while…until the nail polish came out. I took a walk to the beach to see if there was any storm surge. There was a little, with the rising waters creating little lagoons on the beach, but it didn’t pose a threat to the bars and shops right on the beach. The wind howled all night while the rain pounded my ceiling and a chorus of frogs going nuts tried to keep me up all night. I still think Ike was pretty wimpy. But if this is how a storm 300km (sorry I don’t feel like doing the math to convert that to American ) to the north affects us, I still can’t imagine what a direct hit would be like.