Not much to report here, but I wanted to say hello nonetheless. After nine weeks in the pediatrie, I finally caught something and was rendered bed-bound for the last several days. As such, I had the interesting fortune of hearing all the sounds that go on around the house during the day. It was as if I secretly cracked the age-old riddle of "if a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it..." (I realize that makes no sense as there was someone there, but the house didn't know that!)
Anyway, apparently it is mango season, as mangos continue to drop like little grenades from the trees outside our house onto our metal roof. In addition, the most popular way of passing the time for children ages 2-12 (Yes, 2. Here, if you can stand on your own, then you ARE on your own) is to throw rotten mangos up into the trees to knock down other mangos. I kid you not - this game can last all day! My favorite (is that bad?) kid here recently stopped by with the choicest of his winnings as a gift for me and my roommates.
I am feeling a million times better and am quite excited to get out of the house and back to work on Monday. As I have not taken any photos recently, I am including an older photo here from one of the days that I was au village with PMI. Interestingly, if I were to ask the elderly of the two women how old she is (in clinic, of course, not out of curiosity), she would reply "ah, troisieme age," meaning "I have no idea. I'm old. Your guess is as good as mine."
Addendum: After writing this post, I went home, and five minutes later there was a knock at my door. Two kids, with huge smiles on their faces, splurted simultaneously "Mangos for sale!" I confirmed with them that I was indeed to buy mangos that had fallen from the tree in my own yard, and they proudly stated yes. So, of course, I purchased four.
1 comment:
Good to hear you are back on track after some virus.
Re: Mangos. Mango skin, bark and leaves have 3'5' pentadecylcatechol (the same haptene as poison ivy, oak etc.). Yet -- contact dermatitis is not seen in locals (you can check on that). It's a great experiment. Kids ingest the oil at an early age. Exposure to the gut associated lymphoid tissue (GALT)induces tolerance --not cell-mediated allergy. Exposure to skin w/o gut exposure causes Type IV allergy. So, you and your room mates need to be careful if you are allergic to the urushiols. I noticed the same thing in Hawaii where locals did not get "mango dermatitis" while "malihinis" (people who were visiting or moved there did.
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