On Dengue

n: A tropical disease spread to humans by infected mosquitoes. Symptoms include high fever, headache, body aches, rash, and fatigue. Known in Spanish as el fiebre quebrahuesos, or “the bone-crushing fever.”

In my opinion, it wasn’t nearly so bad as it sounds. Certainly not bad enough to earn its nickname in Spanish. It probably would have been awful before people invented Tylenol, but since I got to take a lot of that everyday, it was pretty bearable.

The week I got sick had started wonderfully, with a visit to the Island (after spending August by and large working hard in Jalapa) to go to the Fiestas Patronales of Donna’s town with her and Laura (where I might have picked up the disease). In a word, it was wonderful, as my visits to the Island tend to be.

I got sick the night after I got to Granada with the new group of TEFLers, who I welcomed at the airport in Managua, and was to spend three days with, giving them my perspective, expert opinion, and inside information on what was going to happen during their service. That part was awesome, if demanding. I was always the last person to finish my food at meals, because I was pretty much constantly answering questions and spinning anecdotes from my service to the newbies. But it was more fun than onerous; the new group was, on the whole, adorable, curious, committed, funny, nervous, and excited to be starting out on their adventure; in other words, they were just like my group was when we got in exactly 364 days before they did.

While their feelings and personalities were very similar to ours, their experience was quite different. You, constant reader, will remember that my group’s orientation took place at an NGO’s compound in Managua, where we were introduced to Nicaragua with cold water-dripping, nasty-looking and broken-down communal bathrooms; cramped, hot, spare rooms; no luggage; and where we were not allowed to leave, since the compound was on the highway in Managua, not near any real destination. The newbies, in contrast, spent their orientation in the posh Hotel Granada, one of the nicest hotels in one of the most touristy cities in Nicaragua (see pictures). They had swank rooms replete with private bathrooms, hot water, air conditioning, flat-screen televisions, and their luggage, which arrived without detouring to Haiti as ours did. They were allowed to explore the town at night, getting to know each other and experiencing some Nicaraguan culture (and probably some comforts from home that would be largely unavailable once training started for them in earnest, like karaoke bars and nice restaurants). As Will Smith might once have said, our orientation was “old and busted,” and theirs was the “new hotness.”

Which me and the other greeters had a lot of fun and certainly appreciated participating in, I must say. One of the coolest parts of the experience was getting to hear Jess, the other TEFL greeter, tell all about her experiences over the last year, which I largely had never heard, as we weren’t too close in training and got placed on opposite ends of the country afterwards. It was cool to get to know her. And apart from the gourmet food and hot showers, the new group themselves turned out to be the other coolest part of the experience. The story I tell everyone who asks how the new group is is about the time when we had an impromptu dance party after dinner on the second night. I was swimming in painkillers/fever reducers by this point, but when two of the environment volunteers started teaching us the basic steps to dance to Bachata music, I got up with the other greeters and shook my hips (and tried to keep my shoulders from shimmying the way they wanted to). We ended up in a Soul Train-inspired tunnel, where two by two we took turns dancing down our makeshift runway. The pictures are priceless, and capture the euphoric mood that dominated the days we were there.

The next morning, I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed. I felt like I was horribly hungover, though I hadn’t had anything to drink the night before (apart from one Toña to celebrate being in Nicaragua for a whole year with Jess and Jim and some of the newbies). William, one of my roommates, deserves thanks for asking me how I was, to which I replied “not good,” and for then getting Jess to come, who was so sweet in helping me call the PC Medical Officers (PCMOs), staying with me while I got bloodwork done at a lab in Granada, and buying me some excellent bread to make up for the breakfast I missed. In short order, I was whisked away to Managua, where I was told to stay, get bloodwork done and see the doctors every day for a week (I should say that the bloodwork part ended up making me looking like a heroin addict by the end of the week, with two big bruises and little scabs on my arms where my veins had once been accessible in the crooks of my elbows, which forced the technician taking my blood to take it out of a vein in my hand the last time, which was about as horrible as it sounds… but I digress). I missed out on touring the Isletas of Granada with the newbies, which I had really been looking forward to, and didn’t even get to properly say goodbye to them, since they were in a session when I got spirited away.

A week passes by really fast when you don’t have anything to do besides sleep, recline, eat, and get bloodwork done once a day, and don’t really have the energy to think about or do much else. I did get to do a few cool things during my medical exile: I went to Galerías, the fachenta Managuan mall to see Inception with Allison, got veggie pizza and an avocado sushi roll while I was there, and also ordered some new glasses to replace the new ones I lost in a waterfall a few weeks back; I read a four-hundred page fictional memoir about a recovering drunk/crack addict going through rehab; I watched a lot of… tennis and old sitcoms and older movies…; I listened to Jay-Z’s The Blueprint pretty much the whole time; I ate a lot of fries and pie (dutch apple, to be specific) at Burger King.

Ok, so not all of that was very cool. But it wasn’t so bad, all in all. And at the end of the week, when my platelet count got back to normal and I could walk up and down the stairs at the PC office without pausing in pain at each one, I got to treat myself to another round of Laura and Donna, this time back in Granada with Liz and Meg joining us to celebrate our first year of service. We hung out, karaoked again, and ate at fancy restaurants, but mostly just enjoyed each others’ company. And I should mention that I got my computer back at this point, thanks to Meg’s awesome boyfriend Adam, who brought it into the country for me. It was weird being without it for two months; and I’ve definitely reveled in having it since.

I finally got back up to Jalapa after being gone for over two weeks two weeks ago, just in time to see the festivities for Nica Independence Week and Jalapa’s Corn Fest, which require a separate entry to detail.