Limol #5



Beautiful but hot run to the canoe place late this morning. The canoe place is 3.33 km away from the edge of the village. I ran to the end then back to where Grace and Lauren were walking behind and back again for a little more than 5k. I felt strong and didn't walk, but it was very hot. 

It's a Saturday today and the goal is to rest but I just want to work. There is a big community meeting happening today and Joshua and Saly came from Malam to see us. After lunch with them I took a nice long nap in the hammock with my computer. I wrote up some pages on vowel harmony and fell asleep. When I woke up it was nearly evening. Grace and I attempted to pass out cooking oil in a plastic funnel but it failed. I took Joshua to rerecord a story of his fathers but a loud fight with lots of yelling started so we paused. 

Then a man came by asking for some medicine for his daughter who got a terrible cut on her buttock from a shovel (we learned later that he had hit her). Fortunately we went to take a look because it was very dirty and already a day old. We had to clean it all out and bandage it. She had a very high fever and so we also gave her Tylenol. We went home and I read more about dangerous wounds made by dirty objects that are possibly feces infected in the Where There Is No Doctor book and we decided to go back and give her antibiotics to avoid a bigger infection or even tetanus. Lauren and Grace went in the house and they said the conditions were really bad, very dirty and lots of urine. The parents seemed pretty uninterested too. We came home very sad and frustrated and stressed. As we left their house I found a huge spider on my hand. It shocked me and I yelped and ran and then found another huge one near my foot. I was shaking all the way home when I climbed up into the house, went to hang the lantern on a pole and found another one bigger than my hand on the pole already. I totally broke down and couldn't calm down until half way through a silent dinner. I sprayed the house with peppermint oil and am safe inside my tent right now. Hope things are less eventful tomorrow...
Kate

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