Beanland Diary #9 - Dengue, Mid-Term Meds, Bill the Gringo
“Daniel, why the f*** haven’t I gotten a new Beanland email in six God-damned months?!?”
These were my mother’s exact words to me just days ago*. Maybe the rest of you were wondering the same thing, although you might’ve phrased the question less crudely. Granted, she had already had a few belts of Bombay Sapphire when we spoke**, which tends to transform a normally predictable, mild-tongued woman into foul-mouthed conversational land mine capable of surprising an unsuspecting dinner table with language that would make a sailor cringe. (Roo and Erica, feel free to supply some examples)
But the question was valid. Indeed mom, what the hell did happen to the occasionally funny, often self-indulgent, but always punctual email saga known as “The Beanland Diaries”? Did your faithful correspondent drown in a cauldron of boiling black beans? Was he kidnapped by a mob of shoeless, toothless, ruthless sugar-high Honduran kids and forced to sing “Hotel California” for months on end? Did he change his identity after [censored] on subversive activity in Cantarranas***? No, none of the above. What has really happed in the last half-year is detailed, in part, in the paragraphs below. Proceed, steadfast reader, with all due caution…
Do You Know Bill?
It was 9:00 in the morning and Brock and I, having just arrived in Copan on a redeye bus from Guatemala, set out to find Bill, a man neither of us had ever met. We did know the following details about Bill that might aid us in our search: 1) Bill was a rich, white gringo in his 60’s, 2) Bill had only one ear and finally 3) the missing ear had been lopped off in a machete fight outside a brothel in Panama several years ago. The man who had given us this information, our friend Rob the Beer Man*^, had in fact been in Panama and seen said ear come off with his own eyes. Shortly thereafter, Rob himself was shot in the chest with a sawed-off shotgun and lost consciousness. The moral of the story, as Rob tells it, is “if you’re in a brothel in Panama, don’t flirt with the prostitutes that are clearly the ‘property’ of the local warlords.” Brock and I have extracted a different message, simply “Never travel with Rob or Bill anywhere, for any reason.” Nonetheless, we wanted to at least meet the man we had heard so much about and say hi. So we set out to play detective.
The looks of horror we got from pedestrians and shopkeepers when we asked, “Conoce a Bill, el gringo que perdió la oreja en una pelea de machete?” [Do you know Bill, the gringo who lost his ear in a machete fight?], were truly priceless. But alas, we never found Bill. Probably for the best.
Incidentally, we were returning from Guatemala (a totally separate country from Honduras, fyi) because I had just taken the GRE in Guatemala City. As if studying and taking the test wasn’t stressful enough, imagine tacking on four days of hitchhiking through Central America just to get there and back. (You spoiled shits in the states don’t know how easy you’ve got it) At least I had my vocab list to keep me entertained during the many hours spent sprawled out in the bed of a pickup truck. And the many other hours spent waiting on the side of the highway, thumb out, hoping someone would stop to let me sprawl out in the bed of their pickup truck. (See new photos on Snapper)
Mid-Term Meds
At the one year mark in your Peace Corps service, all volunteers are required to undergo a medical examination know as mid-term meds. This is a chance for you to learn some interesting details about your own body, like how many parasites are living in your intestines and sharing your meals with you, for example. It’s kinda like a 30,000 mile checkup for a car. In fact, judging by their bedside manner, I think some of the PCMOs (Peace Corps Medical Officers) actually were auto mechanics before studying medicine. Assuming they did in fact study medicine, which still is not clear.
Recent budget cuts have forced Peace Corps to scale back in all areas, and the medical unit is no exception. The mid-term med process used to last a week, and now only lasts a day and a half. Dental exams were cut. Blood tests, cut. Evidently, some things have shrunk not only financially, but physically. When it came time for me to give a stool sample, I was handed a two ounce mini Dixie cup. Basically, this is like trying to shit in a shot glass. As my brother Roo no doubt remembers from his fraternity hazing in Connecticut, this is much harder than it sounds. We actually considered doing a round of shots out of the sample cups beforehand, just for shits and giggles (pardon the expression). But we soon realized that it might be hard for us to explain to the doctors why there were traces of undigested tequila in our sample results, and we could be risking a “med-evac” to Washington for alcohol dependency counseling.
Captain Dengue
It’s a rite of passage for Peace Corps volunteers in Honduras. Sooner or later, you’re going to go head-to-head with Captain Dengue. Captain Dengue (a.k.a. Captain Dandy or Captain Bonebreak), for those who don’t know, is one of the many evil diseases, like malaria, giardia, amoebas and (God-forbid) chagas, that lie in wait for an unsuspecting volunteer. Did you get bitten by a mosquito or a chinche bug? Did you eat a sketchy baleada or taco from a street vendor? If so, be prepared for the fight of your life.
Captain Dengue came to my house ready to rumble. He arrived in the form of a single mosquito, but once in my blood stream quickly transformed into much, much more. The battle consisted of six days which I spent lying immobile in a sweaty, shivering ball as my immune system rallied to fight the forces of evil on my behalf. My fever was well into the red-zone, plateau-ing at just under 104 degrees. I had no appetite whatsoever, and in defiance of the laws of physics I actually lost almost ten pounds. I was down, and down hard. Captain Dengue was winning.
But evil would not triumph that day. Good prevailed*^^ and the present correspondent slowly but surely emerged from the dark pit of despair, weakened but alive. I spent the next month recovering weight by eating baleadas and drinking beers in La Casona (my normal routine anyway). Now, every mosquito is suspect. You never know when Captain Dengue might return for a rematch.
Is anyone still reading? Oh, you are? Well, while I do have much more to spill from the last six months, I think I should wrap it up and let you all get on with your normal, first world lives. Sorry for the focus on health and my intestines, but that’s the reality down here.
Shout-outs are due to the whole Roatan crew for an incredible week, despite the rain, with special shouts to Pete and Tina for braving the Honduran hinterlands with me.
HUGE shout-out to Jess (a.k.a Mad Dog, Missouri Slim, The Purple Terminator) for winning a major poker tournament as a total unknown and being currently ranked 5th in the world by CardPlayer.com.
Please hit me back and let me know what y’all are up to. Also, everyone should pencil into their social calendars a late summer float trip in central Missouri. Count on it, baby! Now I just need to dig out those mini flags for my diplomatic canoe like last time. OK campers, back to beans…
Atentamente,
Your Correspondent, San Juan de Flores F.M., Honduras
[Please send comments and criticisms in writing to 5 Ridgewood Rd, St. Louis MO 63124 attn: Jerome]
FOOTNOTES
* Not actually true. She never said this, but it makes a good intro and would’ve been funny if she had
** Again, not true. See previous footnote
*** Dad: remember that there is no “anus” when pronouncing Cantarranas
*^ Not a “invite him to your wedding” kind of friend, but more of a “glad he’s on your side and not against you” friend
*^^ Credit is due to Dear Leader George W. Bush for inspiring the Good/Evil Superhero rhetoric
These were my mother’s exact words to me just days ago*. Maybe the rest of you were wondering the same thing, although you might’ve phrased the question less crudely. Granted, she had already had a few belts of Bombay Sapphire when we spoke**, which tends to transform a normally predictable, mild-tongued woman into foul-mouthed conversational land mine capable of surprising an unsuspecting dinner table with language that would make a sailor cringe. (Roo and Erica, feel free to supply some examples)
But the question was valid. Indeed mom, what the hell did happen to the occasionally funny, often self-indulgent, but always punctual email saga known as “The Beanland Diaries”? Did your faithful correspondent drown in a cauldron of boiling black beans? Was he kidnapped by a mob of shoeless, toothless, ruthless sugar-high Honduran kids and forced to sing “Hotel California” for months on end? Did he change his identity after [censored] on subversive activity in Cantarranas***? No, none of the above. What has really happed in the last half-year is detailed, in part, in the paragraphs below. Proceed, steadfast reader, with all due caution…
Do You Know Bill?
It was 9:00 in the morning and Brock and I, having just arrived in Copan on a redeye bus from Guatemala, set out to find Bill, a man neither of us had ever met. We did know the following details about Bill that might aid us in our search: 1) Bill was a rich, white gringo in his 60’s, 2) Bill had only one ear and finally 3) the missing ear had been lopped off in a machete fight outside a brothel in Panama several years ago. The man who had given us this information, our friend Rob the Beer Man*^, had in fact been in Panama and seen said ear come off with his own eyes. Shortly thereafter, Rob himself was shot in the chest with a sawed-off shotgun and lost consciousness. The moral of the story, as Rob tells it, is “if you’re in a brothel in Panama, don’t flirt with the prostitutes that are clearly the ‘property’ of the local warlords.” Brock and I have extracted a different message, simply “Never travel with Rob or Bill anywhere, for any reason.” Nonetheless, we wanted to at least meet the man we had heard so much about and say hi. So we set out to play detective.
The looks of horror we got from pedestrians and shopkeepers when we asked, “Conoce a Bill, el gringo que perdió la oreja en una pelea de machete?” [Do you know Bill, the gringo who lost his ear in a machete fight?], were truly priceless. But alas, we never found Bill. Probably for the best.
Incidentally, we were returning from Guatemala (a totally separate country from Honduras, fyi) because I had just taken the GRE in Guatemala City. As if studying and taking the test wasn’t stressful enough, imagine tacking on four days of hitchhiking through Central America just to get there and back. (You spoiled shits in the states don’t know how easy you’ve got it) At least I had my vocab list to keep me entertained during the many hours spent sprawled out in the bed of a pickup truck. And the many other hours spent waiting on the side of the highway, thumb out, hoping someone would stop to let me sprawl out in the bed of their pickup truck. (See new photos on Snapper)
Mid-Term Meds
At the one year mark in your Peace Corps service, all volunteers are required to undergo a medical examination know as mid-term meds. This is a chance for you to learn some interesting details about your own body, like how many parasites are living in your intestines and sharing your meals with you, for example. It’s kinda like a 30,000 mile checkup for a car. In fact, judging by their bedside manner, I think some of the PCMOs (Peace Corps Medical Officers) actually were auto mechanics before studying medicine. Assuming they did in fact study medicine, which still is not clear.
Recent budget cuts have forced Peace Corps to scale back in all areas, and the medical unit is no exception. The mid-term med process used to last a week, and now only lasts a day and a half. Dental exams were cut. Blood tests, cut. Evidently, some things have shrunk not only financially, but physically. When it came time for me to give a stool sample, I was handed a two ounce mini Dixie cup. Basically, this is like trying to shit in a shot glass. As my brother Roo no doubt remembers from his fraternity hazing in Connecticut, this is much harder than it sounds. We actually considered doing a round of shots out of the sample cups beforehand, just for shits and giggles (pardon the expression). But we soon realized that it might be hard for us to explain to the doctors why there were traces of undigested tequila in our sample results, and we could be risking a “med-evac” to Washington for alcohol dependency counseling.
Captain Dengue
It’s a rite of passage for Peace Corps volunteers in Honduras. Sooner or later, you’re going to go head-to-head with Captain Dengue. Captain Dengue (a.k.a. Captain Dandy or Captain Bonebreak), for those who don’t know, is one of the many evil diseases, like malaria, giardia, amoebas and (God-forbid) chagas, that lie in wait for an unsuspecting volunteer. Did you get bitten by a mosquito or a chinche bug? Did you eat a sketchy baleada or taco from a street vendor? If so, be prepared for the fight of your life.
Captain Dengue came to my house ready to rumble. He arrived in the form of a single mosquito, but once in my blood stream quickly transformed into much, much more. The battle consisted of six days which I spent lying immobile in a sweaty, shivering ball as my immune system rallied to fight the forces of evil on my behalf. My fever was well into the red-zone, plateau-ing at just under 104 degrees. I had no appetite whatsoever, and in defiance of the laws of physics I actually lost almost ten pounds. I was down, and down hard. Captain Dengue was winning.
But evil would not triumph that day. Good prevailed*^^ and the present correspondent slowly but surely emerged from the dark pit of despair, weakened but alive. I spent the next month recovering weight by eating baleadas and drinking beers in La Casona (my normal routine anyway). Now, every mosquito is suspect. You never know when Captain Dengue might return for a rematch.
Is anyone still reading? Oh, you are? Well, while I do have much more to spill from the last six months, I think I should wrap it up and let you all get on with your normal, first world lives. Sorry for the focus on health and my intestines, but that’s the reality down here.
Shout-outs are due to the whole Roatan crew for an incredible week, despite the rain, with special shouts to Pete and Tina for braving the Honduran hinterlands with me.
HUGE shout-out to Jess (a.k.a Mad Dog, Missouri Slim, The Purple Terminator) for winning a major poker tournament as a total unknown and being currently ranked 5th in the world by CardPlayer.com.
Please hit me back and let me know what y’all are up to. Also, everyone should pencil into their social calendars a late summer float trip in central Missouri. Count on it, baby! Now I just need to dig out those mini flags for my diplomatic canoe like last time. OK campers, back to beans…
Atentamente,
Your Correspondent, San Juan de Flores F.M., Honduras
[Please send comments and criticisms in writing to 5 Ridgewood Rd, St. Louis MO 63124 attn: Jerome]
FOOTNOTES
* Not actually true. She never said this, but it makes a good intro and would’ve been funny if she had
** Again, not true. See previous footnote
*** Dad: remember that there is no “anus” when pronouncing Cantarranas
*^ Not a “invite him to your wedding” kind of friend, but more of a “glad he’s on your side and not against you” friend
*^^ Credit is due to Dear Leader George W. Bush for inspiring the Good/Evil Superhero rhetoric
Labels: beanland
posted by Dan at
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