The Heat

This is what hot cooks
look like in Tchad. 

by Lyol

Mom and Dad keep running out of time to write these blogs, so I’ll just give you the lowdown on my little brother.  

The last thing they told you, well over a month ago, Zane was still having fevers.  Bla, bla, bla… same thing as last year… bla, bla bla… Zane’s sick and getting more medicine.  

More attention for little brother.  Less attention for me.  This was simply unacceptable.  There was even talk about Zane going back to America again WITHOUT me!

So… I pulled some strings with the other Nasaras, and we borrowed an air conditioner.  Yes, they do have such a thing in Tchad.  

Now I haven’t gone to medical school like my parents, but it seems simple enough to me if your kid is hot, you should make him cooler.  This may be easier said than done when it’s over 100 degrees in your bedroom at night.  And in the morning you wake up and it’s still 95 degrees.  I’ve only heard my parents throwing around these numbers… all I know is: It’s HOT!  

Mommy and Daddy had clearly failed after two weeks of overdose cipro and two weeks of maximum dose ceftriaxone and a failed course of overdose quinine and overdose fansidar, so now I got my chance to run the show.  

Daddy plugged in the air conditioner.  Zane’s room is the easiest room in the house to put it in because you can close the windows.  Plus there’s a little kitty door in one wall to stick the AC vent out and block off the rest with a towel.  

Two weeks.  Voila… no more fevers!  I’m a genius!  Plus, I get to sleep on the floor in Zane’s bedroom and enjoy it myself too.  Mom and dad said it got down to only 85 even with the AC, but still this seemed to help.  

What a "fried" electrical adaptor looks like.

Then … attack on us … Mommy woke up to a burning plastic smell and noticed smoke coming from the electrical adapter.  It was burnt to a crisp!  

They gave the AC a rest after that scare.  But then a few days later, Zane had fevers again!!!  I"m telling you, my diagnosis is the right one.

Mommy and Daddy eventually replaced the electrical adapter with another one.  Maybe the first one was faulty.  Cheap imported stuff.  Not real Tchadian quality.  Anyway, the fevers went away the first night Zane was back in the the cool air conditioning that took the bedroom temperature way down to 85.

Then it happened again.  The second adapter fried too!  And then another rest from scary burning electrical stuff.  And then Zane’s fevers came back again.  So we gave Zane a week of quinine.  Yucky stuff.  

The wild animals in Tchad keep us entertained.

Next, Gary re-wired a new electrical plug to the AC machine.  That way there was no need for an adapter.  But this too was too much for our house’s fragile electrical system, I guess.  

So I begged Gary to try one more thing.  He wired the AC directly to the house’s breaker system.  This has been working for a couple of weeks.  Mommy and Daddy say it’s cheaper to pay for the fuel for the generator to run the AC than to go back to the states early.

Zane’s fevers have seemed to be directly related to the amount of time he spends in heat.  So he gets AC to sleep at night and for his nap.  

Thank you for coming back, Miriam.

Now he can’t complain anymore.  I'm so tired of listening to my parents worry about Zane’s fevers.  Mom and Dad say it doesn’t make any medical sense to them, but… most kids in the states don’t have to be put to heat tests like we do here, so they still think we are normal.  

That’s good I guess.  

Gamma says that Daddy didn’t tolerate the heat well when he was a little boy, so Mommy says it’s his fault.  I guess we are supposed to live in Iceland, but Mommy doesn’t like the cold either.  Where’s a missionary hospital that’s about 80 degrees year-round?