Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Polio Day 1

March 23rd

Today was the first day of the polio campaign! I got up nice and early at 5am, and went with Azeta and Sali to the neighborhoods within walking distance, then over to the marche to find women who were there with their small children. It's tiring being on your feet all morning when you usually aren't, but greeting lots of people was fun. We sat and ate in the marche, and had our district supervision check. I bought 2 sachets of water, plus drank most of my bottle. We got back to the CSPS and endured the typical long wait while major does his calculations and such for nearly 2 hours while we all sit there before he tells us our village assignments for the next day. I was very relieved when we finally got to leave by 2pm.

I'd forgotten that even though the heat doesn't bother me anymore, I seem to sweat a lot more than most people here and lose water very quickly, and I soon realized that this massive headache (and my morning crankiness) were from being dehydrated. Normally by 2pm I would have had 2-4 cups of tea and 2 bottles of water, more than double the amount I had this morning. Took some Ibuprofen, continued to drink tons of water, spent the afternoon reading, and now I'm feeling a bit better tonight, although I'm strongly considering staying at the CSPS tomorrow in the shade instead of walking around in the sun, just to let myself truly rehydrate fully. Lesson learned!

No comments:

Post a Comment