Oral Rehydration Solution

So, for lunch last Tuesday I went down to the street to a food vendor lady and ate a bowl of kay kay (kind of like couscous made from manioc) and all was well for a couple hours. Then I started to get a stomachache, and felt pretty bad that night, and felt even worse the next day. It wasn't as bad as whatever I had a few weeks ago, but it was exhausting and unpleasant nonetheless, and I wasn't able to get much work done.

As luck would have it, there wasn't much work to do, as most of the office is either out in the field or off on vacation, and I was able to spend most of the rest of the week lying down and sipping ORS and reading over things.

Salt + Sugar + Potassium = Magic

ORS (also known as ORT, Oral Rehydration Therapy) replaces the electrolytes that you lose when you can't keep anything in your stomach for very long. This helps your body to actually absorb water so you don't get dangerously (or just uncomfortably) dehydrated over the course of an illness. It  is quite literally a lifesaver for little kids and babies and other people who are particularly vulnerable to diarrheal diseases. People can be trained to make ORS themselves (since it's pretty much just salt and sugar) and health-focused NGOs like PSI market affordable, appealingly packaged ORS here in Guinea and work to spread the message that treating diarrhea is quite do-able and can prevent a minor case of "running stomach" from progressing to something more lethal.

Happily, when Peace Corps gave me my med kit it was stocked with a generous supply of ORS. Even so, I'm not going to take any chances with street food for awhile. I have my kitchen all set up now (I even started to decorate the walls!) and, having finally read In Defense of Food* over the weekend, am determined to use it.

*I liked In Defense of Food. Though nothing in it was particularly surprising - most Americans have an extremely unfortunate relationship with eating, highly processed foods are terrible for everything, industrial agriculture and meat production are upsetting - the stuff Pollan writes about was good for me to think about. His suggestions for eating inspired me to resolve to trek over to the market at least a couple times a week to get fresh vegetables, and also left me slightly dismayed at how impossible some of his recommendations - Don't eat alone, Enjoy a glass of wine with dinner, Eat whole grains, Buy a freezer - are for me here. On a related note I really, really liked Pollan's recent piece in the New York Times Magazine, all about our microbiomes and why the bacteria in our gut is important. 

Ramadan

Today marks the first day of Ramadan in Guinea, and so many observant Muslims are beginning a month of prayer and fasting during the day – no water, no food, no sinful thoughts or acts – and breaking the fast with sweet things at night.

I don’t plan on fasting at all this year, as I am not Muslim and I already know how it makes me feel to not drink any water all day. (During both Ramadans I spent in Senegal I fasted for one day only, out of curiosity and solidarity with my host family and also just to show that I was completely capable of fasting if I chose to do so; I wrote about Ramadan 2011 here and Ramadan 2012 here.) Honestly, the whole idea of being compelled to not drinking water all day in a hot climate doesn't sit well with me, but for many people here participating in the fasting and praying is a profound experience that strengthens their faith and their sense of community, and there are provisions to exempt people who should not be fasting - children, diabetics, pregnant and breastfeeding women, drivers of big buses full of people, and so on. 

I’m interested to see how Ramadan plays out here, but don't imagine that it will be wildly different than it was in Senegal. I am expecting that things at work will be slow, that some people around town will be more tired and cranky, that roads will be more dangerous, and that shops and vendors will be closed more often than usual, but I've been though it twice before and it wasn't so bad. Since I have my own private little kitchen set up now, I don't think I'll have to change my own little routine any more than I want to, and I can always head over to the Peace Corps office if I get tired of discreetly ducking out to eat lunch by myself.