How Many Cows

Hey Everyone!

I am back on the borrowed computer and modem (wahoo!).

Good news on the health front – I kept all my food down yesterday and, as far as I can tell, my minor fever broke last night.  I still went to the clinic here in Kampala this morning because I was advised to get some lab work done before heading back to the field.  It turns out that the antibiotics I was given in Iganga (at the small clinic the night I was very sick) were the right antibiotics but the wrong dosage. I should have been on a much higher dosage and that may be why it has taken so long to recover.  My blood work came back fine and I just have one more lab test to complete before I will be heading back to the project site.  The latrine construction is going great – the curtain walls are up and plastered and the roof construction should be in progress currently!

Now, if you have two minutes of your life to waste (you won’t get a refund), read on : )

Most of you know me well enough to know I am not much of a “girly”girl.  I cringe at the thought of wearing high heels and I can count on one hand how many times I’ve worn make-up this year.  One instance though, where my female fear comes screaming to the surface, is with snakes, worms, etc.

Last night, in my room, I had one such incident with a Super worm.  After bathing, I noticed 2 huge worms in the bathroom.  They were at least 10” long and very thick -like they spent most of their time at the gym lifting weights.  I decided to let them run the bathroom region and I retreated to the bedroom portion of my small guestroom space hoping the Gladiator worms would be content with the living arrangements.  A few minutes later I poked my head around the corner to see that one of the bodybuilder worms decided he’d rather head to my space and was rather quickly slithering in my direction.  I tried to corral him back with a rolled up piece of paper, but like The Hulk, he rose up larger than I thought he was, ripped off his little worm shirt and fought against my flimsy paper.  I dropped the paper and retreated again but the Terminator worm continued forward.

[Now listen, I know what you all are thinking … “Cait, you are at least 100 times the size of the Hercules worm, why can’t you just smush it?” well, because that would be gross…I am a girl after all]

Ok, back to the War of the Worms.

After retreating, I looked around the room in hopes of finding other things to use as barricades. I noticed flip flops in the corner and decided to drop one on top of the Jack Bauer worm, hoping I could kill it without having to feel the smushiness under my own feet.  I leveled the flipflop over the monster and let it fall.  I froze, watching the flip flop, eager that the fight was over.  To my horror, the flip flop started to move towards me! The Invincible worm was continuing his journey to reign over my living space! I decided that I couldn’t be passive anymore – I grabbed the other flip flop, leveled over the first and let it fall.  Everything was still for a moment.  Ever so slowly, the flip flops moved, but this time it was spastic and not towards me anymore. I was afraid to assume I had won but my hopes were starting to rise.  The Predator worm wiggled out partially from under the weight of the shoes.  He, in all his worm-power, was partially crushed and couldn’t get completely out from under the shoes.  In one last brave attempt to gross me out, the Henchman worm slithered as much of his body into my flip flops as wormly possible and died.

Well played, Darth Vadar worm. Well played.