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| Me with a couple of hot Swiss bankers (lol) |
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| F at the African restaurant |
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| Free roaming zebras at Royal Livingstone hotel |
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| Dripping children |
I have only a couple more days on the malaria pills; and the end can't come soon enough. The medicine gives you strange dreams and a hefty dose of existential dread...totally unsuitable for summer in Portugal. (Crying, sunburned English children can make one think the end is nigh even under normal circumstances...) Part of it is of course coming back from Africa. We made a movie while in the bush for a friend's birthday, and it was a riff on this way people have of talking about Africa: like you can't possibly understand anything if you haven't been there...that it changes you, that you are somehow only comfortable there after seeing it only once..blah blah..ha ha. We thought this was very funny. And yet now here I am moping around the golf course wishing there were crocodiles around the corner. Or at least something that could bite me.
The morning after the world cup I felt a little sick when I woke up; but I offered to make Thomas a coffee, because as I said: No German should make his own coffee the day after winning the world cup!" But once sniff of the brew sent me racing to the bathroom. So I stayed home, and spent the day shivering and rushing to the loo. Thomas kept calling from the golf course in Zimbabwe (I love the way that sounds) and he sounded so worried. He kept waking me up to ask me how I was; presumably because everything seems so much scarier there-a little mosquito or a little snail in the water could kill you. But that tension is also a good thing: it keeps the mind from spinning.
Luckily, Germans are very good at crises involving the mind. Nothing more familiar then existential dread (i believe they have a course on it in the second grade; right before nap time). This morning Thomas flew into action -and dragged me from my warm bed to the beach and into frigid ocean waters before breakfast, (before coffee!) Then he gave me cake. It is like a mental tourniquet...stops the bleeding. When he determined I was no longer in immediate danger, he slapped a heart rate monitor on me and told me to run. I am begging to stop the pills early-there was very little risk of malaria in the first place, (winter has few bugs), and I don't see a bite on me..but Ordnung muss sein; so I will gut it out.
In the meantime, any light that any of you could shed on the meaning of life would be greatly appreciated.
I'll be waiting by the computer eating cake.
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