Parasite pal?

I have been considering my methods for a time now of accepting various glasses of juice in all sorts of different houses without any questions. The problem is that when you go to visit a house here, they offer coffee, soda, or juice to almost any special guest. I don’t drink either of the first two, and already feel difficult enough without any more comments, and so accept the juice. That would be fine, except for the fact that I’ve discovered through my community diagnostic that almost every family drinks not bottled or boiled water, but rainwater. Or “what God sends us,” as most put it.

Which leads to my current situation: I think I’m sick with an amoeba. And everyone that knows about my diarrhea and occasional stomach aches which arrived over a week ago has agreed that I do as well. Luckily I can pretty easily control the symptoms that I just mentioned by a bland diet and not much oil (ok, that’s sort of hard here with my oil-happy family cooking for me). But if I want to know for sure that I do have this parasite and get it out of my system, I have to trek on down to the capital and give a couple poop samples and then wait for them to get analyzed. At the current moment, I prefer trying the home remedy teas and lemon water, and the next time I make it down to the capital I can get it checked out. Yuck. At least I’m never all alone, right?

I’m hoping and wishing and praying with all my might that the camp we’re having next week goes off well. There are about 65 kids signed up. We’ve had our counselor training sessions, and they’re excited and prepared. The only real problem that we are encountering is that I budgeted just a couple pesos per kid per day for water and bread for a little snack, since we’re just meeting in the morning till noon. I’ve gotten lots of little comments about how horrible it is to make the children FAST, but never paid much attention to the comments until Monday when all ten counselors decided that it would not work to just give bread and water, and put a juice-making schedule together. The reason: the kids will not come back after the first day if we don’t give them something better! Then they gave me a Dominican saying that “Comer es primero,” which is roughly in English “Eating comes first.” I never realized it was such a serious situation I’d gotten us into until that moment when the counselors confronted me!

I’m still house-hunting here to hopefully move out in the first part of August. It’s harder than expected! There are quite a few empty houses around, but finding a house with close neighbors, good neighbors, and that isn’t too big or falling apart at the seams is a different question. I have a couple small leads, including a house in the little street right next to the church. Which, although there are always a certain type of crazies associated with any church, being so close could keep away a different type of crazy here in town.