putting humpty dumpty back together again

Today has been a writing sort of a day, look at me go…… So now that I have told you about the shit stink that lead up to Thanksgiving, let me offer a better explanation as to how I broke my clavicle and how that has panned out for me in South Africa. So to begin with my goal for Thanksgiving was to get in and get out. Granted I was feeling in a much better space having gotten back to site and cleared my head a bit, I felt much more grounded and ready to focus and get to work as soon as Thanksgiving was done with. That having been said there was still some stuff on my mind and I felt the need to blow of a little steam if you will which leads us to the Chibuku Challenge. I’m not going to go into too much detail here as to preserve the dignity one should possess at the age of 27 but the Chibuku Challenge is an annual event that Peace Corps volunteers do at Thanksgiving and it really just involves activities that can be paired with drinking Chibuku (a local maize beer). I figured it had been kind of tough month why not get into the spirit of things, pound some shit out, make a night of it, you know…. The sad thing is I wasn’t even intoxicated when this injury occurred it was just bad luck. The event in question was sock wrestling. For the challenge we had teams of four and for this particular event one team member was the sock wrestler and the other the chugger, I was our teams wrestler. The object of said event was to remove your opponents socks via wrestling, we had put mattresses down on the ground which served as our arena if you will. The event could be won, one of two ways, either through whoever got the socks off first or who completed chugging first. I knew I was in trouble when I saw that Bonnie was my wrestling rival. Bonnie was a rugby player, I’ve seen the girl wrestle before, its powerful stuff, and three weeks prior she had thrown out her own boyfriends shoulder wrestling with him. There was an ominous feeling but I felt that if I stood strong I could hold her off long enough for my partner to complete chugging and we’d be good. So I stepped up to the mat, game face on, prepared for a tough fight, and what I got was a clavicle in two pieces. She came at my like I ton of bricks and rugby tackled my ass to the ground, meaning she rushed me from the side and threw me down onto my shoulder, when I hit the ground I heard it snap, I remember thinking ohhh that can’t be good, but I didn’t want to go down without a fight, mind you in the end she did manage to get my socks, but not before I managed to flip her over get up on top of her and choke her. Looking back I should have continued choking her long enough to have gotten the socks, had I known my clavicle was broken I wouldn’t have been so kind but I was like you cannot choke people megan, that’s just unacceptable behavior, and the minute I showed mercy she managed to get me down and get the socks. There it is that’s how I snapped my collar bone into two pieces, not a noble tale, but I suppose somewhat entertaining, and not as foolish as it could have been, it was just a good old fashioned sock wrestling derailed by a super agro rugby chic.
As soon as I stood up I knew something was not right, it was a tough night……The next day I went to the doctor and they sent me in for x-rays. I figured it was probably just a hairline fracture or something so when the technician handed me my x-ray I about feel over. I will keep this x ray for all of time, not only was my collar bone in two separate and discrete pieces but there was a good ¼ inch between those pieces. I could feel this bump on my collar bone and in looking at the x ray what I realized I was feeling was the severed bone poking into my skin. It was a toughy, not pretty at all, hence they had to send my to South Africa to have repair work done. What they ended up doing is putting a metal plate over those two pieces of bone, screwing the plate into the bones to hold the old girl together, and then waiting for the healing magic to happen. This meant going under anesthesia, having them drill into my collar bone and staying over night in the hospital. Mind you although I would like to reiterate the fact that I was not drunk when this happened as I’m too old for that kind of shit, I do recognize that this injury was my own doing, so I don’t feel too sorry for myself. Granted can’t a girl just want to engage in a friendly round of sock wrestling without serious repercussions I ask?
It was an excruciatingly painful injury and the idea of surgery wasn’t on my top ten desires list but really the only thing that has been deeply troubling about the whole event is how long I am going to be out of site. Not much that can be done for that now but it still is unfortunate and bad timing as I was just out for IST and W2W.
I got into S Africa on Tuesday and was informed upon my arrival that I would be going into surgery the following morning. I should take this opportunity to thank everyone who has called, posted messages to facebook etc. I can’t tell you how much that meant to me to know that you all were thinking about me. Rationally and logically I knew surgery no big deal, it has to be done, and I’ll be better off for it but….. I didn’t think I was a super pansy and in fact I wasn’t but I didn’t foresee it being as frightening as it was. Its strange cause you can know there’s really nothing that’s happening that merits serious worry I was just going to go in and get my shoulder fixed no big deal but while I was sitting in my hospital bed, in that stupid ass gown, with a roomful of strangers, waiting for a doctor I had never met to perform a procedure I knew very little about I was suddenly like holy shit really afraid. One a brighter, less self pitying note, there were some funny stories attached to my hospitalization. One being, I was prayed over by an unknown women who was in the room with me. I was very much lost in my own thoughts and she caught me off guard when she asked if she could pray for me, normally I would have swiftly and efficiently found my way out of that one, as we all know how I feel about the healing power of prayer in my life, but in my vulnerable state she snuck up on me and I couldn’t formulate a response and thus I received the longest and I do mean the longest prayer of all time before going into surgery. I don’t know what denomination that woman was but it was one of the chatty ones that’s for sure, she made certain that jesus knew everything about me and how special I was and how much I needed protection, she left no stone unturned, the lord and I know apparently know each other quite well. As much as I don’t care for being prayed over and don’t anticipate ever having that experience again, she was a very nice lady and thankfully she didn’t offer anymore prayer services the remainder of our time together only more healing things like bananas and chocolate.
One of the other episodes that I found both amusing and humiliating was while they were doing my intake before surgery, they ask you all these questions, most of them just generally health history but they do along with inquiring about blood pressure, diabetes, and mental illness, also inquire as to whether you are wearing one hundred percent cotton panties or not. Mind you when I left my site for Lilongwe I was only anticipating being out for a few days, I did not have the prescience to know I would end up in the hospital in South Africa and therefore I packed really light, so by the time I went in for surgery I had no clean under and thus when asked if I was wearing one hundred percent cotton panties I had to respond with I’m not wearing any panties. Oh bless that poor sweet woman doing my intake she looked horrified and had to ask me again to confirm the awful truth that indeed I had no underwear on. This situation was resolved by her giving a pair of hospital panties. I’m not sure if anyone here has been privy to seeing hospital underwear or if perhaps you’ve had the pleasure of wearing hospital panties but let me tell you it is something else. Very much like a nappy, you know, one of those diaper covers, except large enough that I’m pretty sure if I had pulled it up I could have touched my boobs into it as well. And we all know hospital gowns don’t close well in the back so there was no hiding my saggy diapered back side, oh the shame.
So there I was diapered and ready for action. Unfortunately they had forgotten to put me on the days schedule so I was pushed to the end of a long days queue. This was made more unfortunate by the fact that I had not eaten since nine the previous evening and we all know how I feel about food. When they brought in the lunch trays for everyone but me there was some deep sadness and bitter resentment. I maintained a pretty calm façade through the whole experience, I had the good sense to bring a book so I read The House of Sand and Fog and tried to keep it together which I did until they took me to surgery or as they call it here (maybe they use the same term in the states I’m just not hip to hospital jargon ) theater. When they started wheeling me down the hall I started to feel not so good. Theater is in the basement I believe and if not the actual basement it feels like one. It was a crowded place, like I-84 at 4:00 PM with gurneys, with people in various states of pain and suffering. When they rolled me into that queue of people and dropped me next to the man who I was sure was dying and then started shouting about, wheres she going, Dr. Keer, no shes Prince, wheres Prince, theater seven…….It was a tough and lonely time. They shuttled me down the hall to theater seven where Dr. Prince was just finishing up on the poor bastard he was working on, parked me at the door and said they’ll collect when they finish up and off they went. I don’t know why I felt so sad and afraid but I did. I couldn’t have imagined how bad I would want someone there, I really didn’t think it would be that big of a deal, I mean why should it, minor surgery, in and out, no problem but I had this profound sense of being so alone and wishing it weren’t that way. As much as I wanted to be tough, I’ll level I cried a bit out there in that hallway. Not any noisy sort of crying mind you, not even the tiniest sniffle, but just a few rogue tears leaking out which I tried to subtly wipe away. They got me in and the anesthesiologist asked how I was and all I could say was I didn’t think I’d be so scared. It was a rather cool and blunt dialogue her and I exchanged that was the last thing that I remember before the sweet joy of anesthesia.
Unfeeling Dr. How are you doing?
Emo Megan I didn’t think I’d be this scared (fighting back tears)
Unfeeling Dr. Why are you afraid (condescending and bored look)
Emo Megan I don’t know
More feeling but still pretty unfeeling assistant Breathe into this oxygen mask
Emo Megan Is that going to put me under (eyeing mask warily)
Unfeeling Doctor No but I’m going to give you the anesthetic now do you want to count
Emo Megan I don’t care lets just do this….
And complete and total nothing. Really going under no big deal its amazing how fast it happens and I came to really quickly as well, I didn’t feel particularly disoriented, in fact I felt surprisingly lucid just surprisingly lonely. The nurse who was there when I woke up was really nice, her name was Ruth, which I happen to think is a very nice name. She was real sweet and when I started to cry she was real nice about it. I just came to right away eyes filled with tears and all I could think to say is I wish I wasn’t alone. But I pulled it together pretty quickly, no sobbing or blubbering. And as much as it was no joy it makes me feel pretty strong to know that although there may have been some emo behavior I can get through surgery all by myself with most of my dignity and integrity.
As of now I’ve been out of the hospital about four days I think, my shoulder feels better but it still requires pain meds. I’m supposed to get it immobilized in a sling which I absolutely hate. I refer to it as my T rex arm when I’m wearing the sling, a useless shortened appendage that can barely do anything of value. I do wear the sling just not all the time, take now for example typing with the rex arm not possible and I want to communicate with you all so the rex must be freed. I’m going to check in with the Peace Corps doctor tomorrow and I’ll clarify how important it is or is not that I wear the sling at all times, I’d also like him to give my clavicle the old once over. Its still bandaged so you can’t tell what kind of mysteries are happening but I just want to make sure all feels as it should. I go back to the surgeon to have the stitches and bandage removed on either the 15th or the 17th. There is concern about me being held up here over the holidays if I have to do physical therapy as a lot of staff will be out for Christmas come that late in the month. As I type this I remember this is how I opened my last posting how redundant and yet perfectly full circle of me.
Really all is well, its been a strange last month or so but I feel like this clavicle thing was the final exorcism of whatever bad juju was floating around in my life. I’m hoping that my clavicle heals swiftly and efficiently, I will put on my sling as soon as I’m done typing, I swear and I think I’m just going to take this time here to reflect on how I’ve been feeling and why, eat lots of sushi and icecream, take lots of hot baths, enjoy the pain meds, hope beyond sweetest hope that the 6th harry potter makes to the theater here before I go back, and just try to chill and make the best of it. Peace Corps puts us up at a nice place as much as I know I need to be somewhere else, I can’t, so I might as well be here and not make it harder on myself. I know I said it before but for everyone who checked in on me, thank you, you’re all amazing people and I feel lucky to have you in my life. I love and miss you all, feel free to call and email to your hearts desire as I am completely connected to all forms of technology and have nothing to do for ten days.

Setting the stage for clavicle disaster

And its blog time……I don’t even know where to begin. I believe this is my sixth day in Pretoria, as it turns out it looks like I am going to be here a minute. The surgeon who was so kind screw the metal plate into my clavicle isn’t scheduled to remove my stitches and check my progress until either the 15^th or the 17^th. I’ve been told that he’ll want me to do some physical therapy after removing the bandage and stitches and the concern is that as its getting close to Christmas they might not be able to start physical therapy until after the holidays. I ask you is it that damn important that I do physical therapy, perhaps it is, who knows, and really aside from the fact that I have been out of site for a small eternity which stresses me out and I will expand on later I guess I don’t mind being here for Christmas, I didn’t really know what to do with myself in Malawi for Christmas so maybe staying here would just make things more clear cut in that respect.

The issue with Christmas in Malawi is actually a good segue into the strange month that was Novemeber and thank holy christ that shits done with. To be clear there is nothing terribly wrong here, nothing bad happened aside from the broken bone it was just a strange and long month. You all know my propensity to get a bit angsty from time to time, well November turned into an angst and emo filled month. Why is that you may wonder? Well I think what started the snowball of angst and self doubt rolling was two fold and that would be being out of site for so long and in service training being a bit of a let down and thinking back on it I was feeling a bit out of sorts in terms of trying to get a handle on what my role here is prior to IST and so having IST be what it was I think exacerbated a general feeling of lack of purpose and direction.

So our story begins….I was out of site for just about a month. In service training was two weeks long and you have to add a day on each end of that for travel and I had left site a few days before IST to go down to Zomba, and then after IST I went up to Tikumbo (which is right by my site) for about four days as my site mates Courtney and Mel were having their girls camp, Women 2 Women, there and I was participating in that. There’s much to be said about Women 2 Women, for the moment I’ll just go with the fact that they did an amazing job, it was incredible to see these girls so on fire and I got more from their camp then from nearly all of IST. I suppose the IST debacle merits some sort of explanation. So as you may recall I was pretty pumped for IST as I saw this as the point at which I would be getting many of the tools I feel as if I am lacking at site and in all fairness I did get some of them but not nearly to the degree that I thought we would. For example we had a session and a half (about three hours out of two weeks) on proposal writing and funding sources, which felt terribly inadequate, given this was one of the things I was most excited to learn about and really dig into. We did get some good info on income generating activities but again by in large I just didn’t feel like they handed us a whole lot of useful info. And of course theres the joy of group dynamics, twenty very different people, one hostel with no and I mean no running water. I can’t quite tell you what four toilets look like after one day of use with that many people, that bathroom was perhaps the most fetid environment that I have ever seen. This time of the year water scarcity is an issue everywhere and Peace Corps generally anticipates having water problems at the college. By problems what they were banking on was only having water for a few hours in the morning and maybe for an hour later in the day, what they did not forsee was that one of the main pipes to the college would break, leaving us with absolutely no water. It was no joy, granted I didn’t have to haul any water so that was a bonus, but I think I would have preferred hauling and having water to four days no shower and then finally scrounging up some water for a bucket bath that must be taken in a room that smells like the bowels of all humanity. In all honesty vile though the bathroom was and in spite of the rash of O to F (Oral to Fecal) diarrhea and vomiting related illnesses that swept through our group, the first week of IST wasn’t so bad. There are some really chill and decent people in my group who I don’t get to see often as they are in the southern districts and it was nice to see those folks. I’m sure if you’ve seen the pictures on facebook you can infer that there were some good times had. Alas there were also some less than good times that kind of fucked with my already delicate headspace. I’m not going to attempt to go to into all the interpersonal bullshit that came out of the wood work at IST cause really it shouldn’t be of that much importance but there were some highly uncalled for, ignorant and bigoted things that were said by volunteers. Some of these comments were just idiot comments, some were directed at staff but some of this idiocy was directed at yours truly. Never in my life did I think I would hear this phrase used, let alone as applied to me, but a member of my group on behalf of four other group members who were apparently having some deep discomfort with my being an out lesbian, told me that and I quote……. “You’ve come out of the closet already shut the door behind you”. Theres a damn long and detailed story about how it got to this point which I don’t think I have the energy to go into, I think its sufficient to say that there are some morons in my group and I just wasn’t up for dealing with their ignorance as I was trying to sort out my own previously mentioned shit about finding my way forward through my service.

I realize that this may be my most disjointed bit of writing yet and for that I apologize. Although I am doing much better I am still taking a bit of pain medication which I offer as my excuse for what you are reading now. I beginning to think I’m sounding a bit inarticulate and melodramatic about all things that transpired during the great IST pilgrimage, I guess this past month has just been me feeling out of sorts, which really is pretty fair and reasonable given that I’ve only been in country for six months and I’m trying to figure out what is it that I want to and can do in terms of work. It’s the sort of thing I suspect we all ask ourselves from time to time, I don’t know its just kind of felt like a clusterfuck. And ode to joy my power cable to the computer just exploded Damn you South African electricity for frying my shit. One of the perks of being here is the wireless internet in the room but this untimely explosion of my power source puts a real damper on that. Anyhoo no need to dwell, I’ll deal with it later, I will take what battery power I have left to tell you more about the intrigue that is my life.

So I did manage to get back to site for a bit before heading down to Lilongwe for Thanksgiving which for the record was supposed to be a short trip, I wasn’t even going to go but we had a meeting for Camp GLOW, Girls Lead Our World, a girls empowerment camp that’s put on annually by the health group and I’m the program coordinator so I had to go down but my goal was to get back to site ASAP and get some work going. As much as IST left something to be desired it did provide some direction and after Women 2 Women three of the girls who attended from Dwambazi came to me to ask if we can start a young womens club where we teach girls the information they learned at W2W. These girls are exceptional and I am amped to work with them. The moral of this story was that I did get back to site for a bit and damn it felt good. Being out for that long was no good. Even I’ve been having this small scale crisis of faith in my capacity to be an efficient development worker its reassuring to know that going back to my community feels good. I think worst case scenario would be getting back to site and being like, damn I am uncomfortable, and that’s never how I feel when I go back.

By the time I got back to site I was just done, I was done with other volunteers, I was done with over analyzing myself, I just needed to be in my space. In fact I had just left a group of other volunteers that I’m friends with, we were celebrating the end of Women 2 Women at Kande Beach, a nice damn place, beautiful beach, good folks, nice chalet, and I just couldn’t hack it anymore. I got a teary eyed and was like I have to leave, I need to be alone, I’ll see you all later. Yes very dramatic sounding but that’s where I was at, just fucking done. When I got off the minibus by the back road that leads to my house and started walking down the path I was a wreck and all I wanted was to get into my house and be home and then I saw Peter see me coming, and he looked so happy. He ran to me with the biggest smile on his face just radiating enthusiasm and god knows I still felt pretty used up but to have that moment to take Peters hand and walk to my house with him, to tell him I missed him and to truly mean it, it was coming home and it made all that other bullshit in my life small and manageable and I felt so good to be back. I really do love my community, they’re great folks, which is part of the reason I carry so much weight about not doing more at site I feel like my community gives me a lot and I can’t quite tell you what I am giving to them. And I know its early in my service and to beat oneself up for things taking time is illogical and perhaps narcissistic but I do worry that maybe its not that I need more time its that I need to be more on the ball and just be doing shit.

Before I completely devolve into a tangent riddled with self doubt…. I feel as if I haven’t mentioned Peter which I don’t know how that could of happened but in the event that I have not here’s the Peter rundown. Peter is Freddy’s little cousin and since Freddy has been gone Peter is around all the time. We’ve had our come to jesus moments about boundaries, i.e. you cannot just walk into my house, but we’ve come to a good place Peter and I. He’s my little buddy, he’s around all the time, just hanging out, he’s a good little guy, hes about 11 but looks around 9. He helps me do little things around the house or I do things like send him to the market on my bike thus making it a treat for him and a non walk for me. As much as he’s around a lot I’ve really come to enjoy Peters company and I know he really likes being around, we all know how permissive I am I wouldn’t say Peter takes advantage of that but he definitely benefits from it, I let him cook himself food in the kitchen or take showers when the waters on but why the hell not, as long as he’s been respectful, if he wants to cook himself an egg, feel free he needs all the protein he can get and if when I really need my alone time I send him on his way and he gets it. At first I was trying to get him to go to school but that’s a complicated issue and so at this point my goal, if I do nothing else with my Peace Corps service is to teach Peter to read and write its pretty much priority number one when I return. So that’s the essential info with Peter

Now that Peter is in context……..It was awesome being back at site. I worried my Tonga would be in a state of complete disrepair from not using it for nearly a month but sweet miracle of miracles I had myself a Tonga explosion when I got back. Maybe I was just super happy to be able to speak Tonga so I was pushing myself more, I don’t know, but there was a lot of beautiful Tonga happening. I also had a major break through with my water carrying technique, I can now do a whole twenty liter bucket reasonably gracefully. I named a baby and this time I knew for sure that I was being asked to name the little fellow. I named him John, I first asked if they liked the name John and then told them it was my fathers name, and they liked that and said they would call him Johni. When Malawians use anglo names which is highly common given the christian missionary presence they normally add an “i” sound to the end. For example for those who do call me Megan which is really just Illeni and Queeni they call me Megani, hence how baby John is Johni. I spent lots of quality time with Sauda, she smiled so big when she saw me, it warmed my heart. And of course my girls from Women 2 Women, Maudalitso, Mevis, and Enalla. My friend Vanessa came to hang out with me before we had to go back into Lilongwe for Thanksgiving, Vanessa had also been working W2W, thus she knew the girls, so we had them over for tea and just hung out, chatted it was great, I can’t describe how happy I am to start working with these girls. We are approaching a battery crisis situation so know that I’ll say more about the girls later. The point of all this is I love my site and its most unfortunate that I am out for so long. The whole thing with the broken clavicle is a shit show but manageable that having been said I will just be irate if it damages my standing in my community being gone so long or if it in anyway compromises my work that I believe I am getting going there.