December 28, 2004: Headlines: COS - Tanzania: Writing - Tanzania: Malaria: Safety and Security of Volunteers: Writing - Tanzania: Excerpt from "the Big Trek": Tanzania RPCV Carmen Bailey contracts cerebral malaria.during her service in Tanzania [Excerpt from her book "The Big Trek"]

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Tanzania: Peace Corps Tanzania: The Peace Corps in Tanzania: December 28, 2004: Headlines: COS - Tanzania: Writing - Tanzania: Malaria: Safety and Security of Volunteers: Writing - Tanzania: Excerpt from "the Big Trek": Tanzania RPCV Carmen Bailey contracts cerebral malaria.during her service in Tanzania [Excerpt from her book "The Big Trek"]

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Tanzania RPCV Carmen Bailey contracts cerebral malaria.during her service in Tanzania [Excerpt from her book "The Big Trek"]

Tanzania RPCV Carmen Bailey contracts  cerebral malaria.during her service in Tanzania [Excerpt from her book The Big Trek]



Read and comment on this excerpt from "The Big Trek" by RPCV Carmen Bailey contracting cerebral malaria during her service in Tanzania. Folow the link to find out more about the book at:

AT THEIR BOUNTIFUL MERCY - Chapter 6*

* This link was active on the date it was posted. PCOL is not responsible for broken links which may have changed.



AT THEIR BOUNTIFUL MERCY - Chapter 6

At 10:30 I crawled into my pallet on the concrete floor. As soon as I spread my feet into the bottom, I was bitten on my left instep… just a little nip. It wasn't the usual sharp sting of mosquito bites. It was weak. It vibrated, left a little welt, but barely itched.

As I cautiously examined the little welt, I mused, "I hope it isn't one of those funny mosquitoes."

Then I wondered, "How did she get there?"

My pallet had two sheets and two light blankets tucked in on both sides and at the foot. A mosquito net hung to the floor from slats which I had nailed to the window frame. If she had been inside my net when I made my pallet this morning, I would have seen her, as mosquitoes fly to the light in the early morning and make themselves visible inside the net. But this mosquito was under linens at the foot of my pallet. She didn't raise them up and fly under them. She would have been crushed by my method of bed making this morning. So, she had to be put there! After I made my bed.

I assumed it was one of "those funny mosquitoes," and I probably had the kind of malaria for which there was no prophylaxis nor medicine. Years later I remembered that there was a 12-14 day incubation period, so if I had Falciparum now, it was from a previous bite. I knew there was a 99.99% death rate the first day after incubation, and my skin crawled for a moment. Then, I relaxed and said out loud to myself, "Looks like I am going to die here. Well, this is a good place for me to die." But it did not become an issue; I didn't mind; and that idea left. I then thought that I would roll with the disease.

I studied my open medical manual, but could not locate symptoms. Symptoms of this kind of malaria are different from malarias we were told about. There were no discernable symptoms, as opposed to violent shakes and temperature ups and downs and nausea of malarias we were told about and were discussed in the medical manual. The only reference I found was, "If you have Falciparum, get immediate help."

Okay. How does one know if they have Falciparum?

I lay back on my pillow and studied. "This is an agency scam and I am not agreeing to it. They will account for this someday." I am not dying until after they account for this scam!" "They" - my agency - was Peace Corps! The American globally beloved volunteer group of globally upward bound American citizens… all of us unknowingly destined to a death warrant if it could be done quietly. The Peace Corps Medical manual WHERE THERE IS NO DOCTOR by Werner, did not explain this disease!

Although life in Mombo ear-splittingly continued until 3 AM to the beat of Stevie Wonder and Lionel Richie, I knew there was no help for me, not until symptoms became obvious, and I did not know what they would be. I took two more chloroquine tablets and went to sleep.

Chloroquine is a trade name for a malaria medication. There is much speculation about its effectiveness. I'd read of chloroquine users who died anyway. Of malaria.

There are innumerable studies by all correct organizations like WHO [World Health Organization] and UN [United Nations] and CDC [Center for Disease Control] but they want to sell patented medication to make a steady income from it.

The most pertinent study imaginable happened right in Mombo just a few months before I became ill.

When I lived at the hotel, there was a doctor from Dar es Salaam who had come to Mombo to do a medical study. I invited him to dinner. He was an obstetrician who was sent to Mombo to study effects which malaria or chloroquine had on the fetus and newborn infants.

I asked what conclusions he drew. "I don't really know," he said, "If the pregnant mother takes chloroquine, she won't be anemic and produce a sickly baby. But she will not pass malaria immunity to her baby." He soberly added, "For my part, I wanted mothers to take the chloroquine, but there really isn't much I can do. Mothers will not take the medication. They are more afraid of its side effects than of the malaria."

It was explained to me that chloroquine changed the structure of red blood cells to that of Sickle Cells which parasites cannot split for their food, but caused anemia.

That was so detrimental for such a low return, and it became logical to prevent myself from being bitten to start with. I devised systems which provided that protection but wore off like everything else, and got under my net before it wore off.

I had brought A & D ointment with me and before dusk approached when mosquitoes would come out, I applied a light film to my hair, hands, and face. I added repellent to long sleeves, slacks and socks, changing from flip flops each evening to socks and shoes.

I used a systemic of raw garlic which was purchased from the local Farmer's Market. For my weight and body chemistry in conjunction with multi testing, three cloves peeled, sliced, and swallowed like pills on an empty stomach, kept mosquitoes away until I crawled under my net. At the hotel, an electric fan blew mosquitoes from me.

I had used raw garlic for 15 years to deworm my dairy goats, to stop an occasional sore throat, to lower fever. Albert Schweitzer used it effectively against typhus, cholera, and typhoid when he went to Africa to live and teach. I used it to make my odor unplea- sant to hovering mosquitoes.

During an evening dinner with Mr. Bwende and Mr. Masakola, I offered A & D ointment to them which they spread on their arms and faces. Mosquitoes backed off and Mr. Masakola said he would bring some home when he took an eight year old girl from Dares es Salaam to New York City for heart surgery, courtesy of a professor in North Carolina. Mr. Msumai refused my offer.

I began making home brewed repellent. I bought jars of plentiful Vaseline, crumpled needles from a straggly cedar tree into them and set it all in the broiling sun on a hot concrete patio floor to steep for a couple weeks. But it was an uphill effort. Most Africans do not fret about mosquitoes same as most of us do not fret about smog. We'd rather talk about it than do something about it.

#

I didn't get up the next morning. I wasn't ill, just very tired. I thought, "This is the first time I've felt this tired. It must be the result of years of hard work, stress, and tough training. I'm so happy with what I'm doing, that maybe I'm letting down."

Bibyan asked if I was okay, could she fix my breakfast. I was okay and wasn't hungry or thirsty. Bibyan went to work.

I slept through the morning, toddling out back by leaning on the wall for balance, to the latrine but using the patio. My eyesight became bleary off and on, that afternoon. In between bleariness and sleeping, I consulted the medical manual and took my temperature which I had none of. I slept through the night.

The next morning I was still in bed when Bibyan asked me if I was alright. "I'm not, but I don't know what's wrong." I hadn't eaten or drank; I didn't remember that I had been bitten. I was euphoric and drunk.

On the second evening when Bibyan came back home, I asked for a phone call to be made to the main office in Dar. But neither of the two phones in Mombo worked. But then, the main office in Dar was closed anyway.

On the third night, a moonless evening, there was a knock on my door. I crawled to it, reaching up without eyesight, fumbling to unbolt it, and opened it. I said, "Nane?" [Who is it?]. I recognized the voice of Bibyan's Uncle Abraham who visited her several times a week. I added, "Njo?" (Come in?) He said, "Hapana," (No) and I closed the door and crawled back to my pallet under the mosquito net.

Presently, Bibyan was shaking me, telling me to wake up. She said that Uncle Abra- ham had stood outside the house waiting for her to come home and said, "Get Mama to a hospital right now! She does not know our diseases. She does not know how to get help. She cannot get to a hospital. You have not been looking after her!"

Bibyan ran to the Usumbara Hotel to catch Mr. Bwende before he left to go home to Korogwe, and came back with him. I arose and walked to the edge of the porch. I could see in dim grays. I was crouched over, my right leg dragging.

I could not talk but realized I could not make the steps and stopped at the porch edge. Uncle Abraham came forward and helped me down. Mr. Bwende took my arm and helped me into his Land Rover with seven men going home with him. This was July 16, 1986.

I remember a few events of the several hour drive. I remember that there was no place to lie down. I leaned my head on the door, or the seat in front of me, and every time I awoke, the men were looking at me and saying, "Pole Sana, Mama."

I remember Mr. Bwende telling me that the men would get off first because their stop was on the way to the hospital; then being pulled out of the back seat of the Land Rover by the tall driver who carried me sagged in his arms, and with tears streaming down his cheeks, he was saying over and over, "Poly Sana, Mama."

Mr. Bwende was standing in the doorway of the hospital with a wheelchair, between tufts of tall grass, and rolled me into the doctor's office who told me, through Mr. Bwende, to get up on the table; a wooden table worn uneven with the years. The wooden pillow was concave in the middle.

I remember the doctor. He took my pulse and looked into my eyes with unforgettable composure. He asked several questions as Mr. Bwende translated. As I lay with my head in the concave wooden pillow, I was aware of the concern, love, and care for me. But, with all clarity, I knew there was no medicine in this rural hospital for me or for anybody else who contracted the deadly Falciparum malaria. As I opened my mouth for the doctor, and as he held my eyes open to examine them, I passed out again. Everything that happened afterwards was convoluted and confusing - if remembered.

I was wheeled into the women's ward; women who would soon give birth or who had malaria. In five minutes the wheelchair returned and I was wheeled into a private room. This bed was hand-hewn with a soft, comfortable mattress. Sheets were refrigerator white in spite of the red-clay water which was available.

Mr. Bwende went home to get a light bulb and sent two Scandinavian girls to stay with me overnight. He would return in the morning.

That night and the next day, I counted five IVs. I don't know if I had more. I began scratching the needle out of my arm in delirium, I was told, and throwing myself around. I was vaguely aware that I was mumbling, aware that I couldn't say what I thought, but at each moment a nurse comforted me, held my hand or arm, and from a corner of the room I heard gently wafting to me, "Mama, you must have this. The doctor is washing poisons out of your kidneys."

When Mr. Bwende returned the next morning, he asked what I wanted to eat. Only the modern hospitals in Tanzania serve food; it is the custom elsewhere for relatives to bring food and stay with each patient.

I said, "I will pay for it," over and over, knowing my response was inadequate but unable to say anything else. He said, "You don't have to pay for it," and brought food I was unable to eat. I was not hungry, could not make the food go down.

In the morning, a nurse said I should wash myself in the showers. This was a hospital made of concrete, built by Germany in 1956, and had, as I recall, six showers, none of which functioned now because there was no water. The nurse helped me walk to them and I sat nude on a concrete block in front of a bucket of water. I said, "This water is too cold for me," mumbling out the side of my mouth. "Can you warm it?"

She returned in a few minutes with the bucket of warm water and I numbly asked her how she managed to do that.

Matter of factly, she replied, "I took it to the men's ward. They have a cooker in there (charcoal burner)."

The next day, I went to the showers alone, nearly sightless and having little balance. As I blindly walked through the ward, women steered me around their beds and through the door way.

I was at Korogwe Hospital for three days. Then Mr. Bwende said he would drive me to Tanga Airport on the coast, to be flown to Dar es Salaam from there by Flying Doctors. I asked for records of this hospital to go with me.

As I was being wheeled out, I turned around to say good bye to all the ladies and they waved with smiles, "Kwaheri, Mama."

My recollection is that Mr. Bwende took me to the home of an expatriot from Germany. This man had worked in Tanzania and now lived here. We would be early for the plane's connection and would bide our time at this man's house. The Scand- inavian girls accompanied us.

I lay on a bed in his house; got up and roamed around, observing flowers in his house and garden, and an odd piece of furniture. I said I would come back and visit him.

I remember nothing of the four hour drive to Tanga airport. But, seven deadly days into the disease, I recall with startling detail, part of waiting at Tanga airport.

I sat in the rear of Mr. Bwende's Land Rover when he came to get me. As we went through the airport lobby I saw the plane: a brown and white twin engine Beechcraft. As I approached its stairs, I asked a friend to help me up. "I can't handle the steps."

I sat in the middle of the right side of the airplane. Officials of my agency sat in the back and offered boiled water from their canteens.

I recall being wheeled into Aga Khan Hospital at Dar es Salaam, straight from the airplane and into the front door and changing into a white fresh gown. The officials asked what they could get for me. I said, "I'd like to have a milkshake from the ice cream parlor in back of the Greek Orthodox Church near the harbor." They said they would ask if I could have one. And I waited and waited.

Actually, I don't recall being at Aga Khan Hospital, but according to a medical report, I was diagnosed and eight bags of quinine drip were administered through my wrist vein. This was the only cure then, and was not mentioned in the medical manual nor in training sessions. It is not reliable now. Nothing of recommended chemical medication is reliable or safe. Only herbs… specifically, one which the Chinese have used successfully for centuries, Artemisia Annua.

It is not allowed to be sold in USA, even as a medicine to take to malaria-ridden locations, but data is on the internet. The Chinese do not advise using it as a prophylaxis so as not to dilute its effectiveness when a sudden strong new medicine is needed against the tenacious red blood cell parasites.

When the eight bags of quinine drip killed all the red blood cell parasites in my blood stream, I developed kidney failure. Aga Khan Hospital did not have kidney failure machinery, Flying Doctors was called back, and I was flown to Nairobi Hospital.

I was plugged into ICU at Nairobi Hospital - arriving mostly brain dead - and went through six weeks of torturous ICU and took two weeks to wake up from that.

I don't remember being on oxygen in ICU; or how it was administered. But I remem- ber that my gut wrenched with fear and I became frantic because it was to be removed.

I thought I was lying on grass, outdoors. I kicked. And saw typewritten words before my sightless eyes. I read them and spoke them loudly and brokenly, giving vowels the Kiswahili sound: "Geeve me ox ee jen."

A soft female voice said, "Mrs. Bailey, you have oxygen. It's in the air." I panicked! I gasped, three times, and hoped she was right and then thought, "This must be the way a new born baby feels." I remembered this incident for months after I returned home. I awoke in Pioneer Ward in mid September. Through bleared eyes I saw a hallway that went past my room on my left. I did not know where I was but knew I had been loved back to life. I tried to get up but my legs wouldn't move. I leaned on an elbow and asked the lady in the next bed if she spoke English. She said she did and I mumbled something about the need for a bedpan.

None was forthcoming and I hallucinated a solution… a yellow plastic radiator, 2 x 2 x 1 foot, was implanted in my abdomen so I wouldn't have to look for a latrine while working. However, I couldn't figure out how it was connected to my bladder and didn't use it.

Soon thereafter, a man strode to my bedside and introduced himself: "I am Jeremy Watkins-Pitchford, administrator of this hospital."

Blearily, I offered my hand but plainly said, "I am Carmen Bailey. Glad to meet you."

He said that I would be moved to another room but I don't remember going, or even being in a room until two days prior to departure to USA. Peace Corps had already tried to get me on a plane before I was plugged into ICU and then again before I was awake! The next time I awoke, there was the gray form of a lady sitting on my bed. I had no idea where I was; was not able to wonder about it; could not raise my head; could not even speak more than a word or two. But she said, "Did you take the prophy-laxis?" Not, "Welcome back to Planet Earth." Not, "How are you?" Not, "How did you survive?" Later, as I pondered how she could be so callous, I was told she was a Peace Corps nurse testing me out while I was unable to think.

I mumbled, "There isn't one."

She said, "It might have helped."

I drifted off before I could finish…

#

When I first flew into Tanzania, I renewed what made an Ugly American. And now, even in my semi conscious state, I attempted to maintain the serenity of African patients. But I had no control. I cried if anybody looked at me. I shouted. I yelled all over the place. I said things I wished I hadn't.

While I was still abed after ICU, too weak and unaware to be wheel chaired, a nurse said to me one early morning, "Mrs. Bailey, time to use the bedpan." I mumbled. She repeated, "Mrs. Bailey, time to use the bedpan."

I mumbled that I didn't need it. I thought there were three nurses, each saying the same thing. The third time she said it, I slid off the side of the bed, sightless, and sud- denly discovering that I couldn't stand, leaned on the side of the bed and pulled the sheet around me. I had no voice due to a tube having been down my throat while on the respirator for a month, and I shouted with a whispered voice, "Okay!' If it will make everybody happy, I'll have a Biiig Pee!"

Present and ensuing hallucinations were terrifying. Some told a story.

Before I knew I was alive, it was my first thought in ICU... "I was on a respirator. My body was wrapped around a black hard plastic cone which was bigger than I. It was based on a dish of the same ingredients. It resembled a one piece candle dish with a candle in it, like a lemon juicer."

In the second hallucination, I was lying on one of many supposed marble slab covered desks in ICU, my legs hanging off at the knees. I watched what turned out to be my two doctors, Dr. David Silverstein from Washington, DC, who was the head doctor. And Dr. John Masembe from Uganda. Dr. Silverstein was leaned over a desk, closing his black valise. I moved from desk to desk to have a better vantage.

I had lost much weight. I must have weighed 85 pounds which was less than the proverbial skin and bones description of a skinny person. One night, a nurse came with a needle and she put it in my fleshless butt and I shouted, "You broke my butt!" Later, I learned that each night I was screaming and she had been giving me shots so other patients could rest.

The most frightening hallucination was that I was being rolled down a concrete incline in my bed by an African intern. He took instructions from a woman walking beside my bed who was wearing a dress with a white coat over it. She was very kind to me as we went. I asked her why I was being taken downstairs. "It's to help you feel better," she said. But I was unable to find out what was wrong with me or what she was going to do for me downstairs.

I was rolled into a bedroom with walls of hard fabric and told to sleep there the rest of the night. There were other rooms on the sides of each wall and two doors leading out. I heard men and women talking and bottles rattling. I grasped the attention of an African woman I didn't know. I wanted to get out of my room and she wanted to help but was reticent. She sat on my double bed and I went to sleep.

The first lady, name of Tom Thumb, reappeared the next morning. She was no longer kind. She became vindictive. She told me she was going to kill me and would do it by placing four cuts in my legs and hips and pour pombe (local brew) into those cuts which would prove I was guilty of her charges against me.

I thought the pombe would kill me because it was poisonous, not because I was guilty, which I was not. But I wouldn't give her the benefit. I said, "The poison will not kill me and you will look dumb!" She proceeded anyway. I thought I was going to die and went to sleep but awoke in good health and she let me go.

The next hallucination involved her also. She tried to make me look foolish, untrustworthy, by telling me that I should make a project with an unbaked ceramic jug. I said I didn't need it, that I didn't use one, but I failed in my project. As she watched, she made use of my failure.

I went along with her to give me time to get away from her, but she finally agreed that I was a good influence; that I did not have ulterior motives. And she left. Later I showed her how to grow flowers and herbs in that jug, for beauty and for medicine.

Another hallucination was my standing beneath a tree, clad in jeans and knit shirt. I saw four deep square pits, each about 10 x 8 x 8 feet. Each of my four children were in a pit which was covered by saw boards nailed together and laid loosely over the top of each pit.

I hallucinated about a Caucasian lady who was bringing me carrot shots. I wanted to build my health and was to meet her in the front office. Immediately after that hallucination, a nurse came to my bedside to bring medicine. I told her about the carrot shot I was going to get and asked where the front office was. Every person in that hospital made me feel secure and I was taken seriously.

The nurse patiently explained, "There is no front office with a lady waiting for you."

I droned, "Yes there is. It's that way," as I pointed, and drifted away again.

As I gradually became coherent, I was told about my illness. That I'd had cerebral malaria, the kind that gets in the brain. I had never heard of it - did not know the significance of having lived through seven days of the disease when 99.99% die the first day after incubation.

I was told that the administrator of the hospital had visited me every day in ICU to talk to me to keep my brain working. That I'd had kidney failure, and lung failure, and a hole in a lung, and blood transfusions from blood leaking in the intestinal tract. That I'd been on a respirator for a month. That I'd had physiology every day.

And Dr. Silverstein added, "You did a good job, Mrs. Bailey."

The terrifying hallucinations ceased and I began to glean a sense out of them. The hard fabric of walls was the curtains around my bed. The tinkling was ice cubes in glasses of water on rolling carts to be served along with sumptuous meals of hot, real food, linen napkins and metal utensils. Dr. Masembe said that I had not met up with Tom Thumb, "No such thing happened." At every turn I was nurtured, as was every patient.

#

I was in a wheelchair at first. I was rolled to sit on the porch overlooking a manicured lawn with thick trees and gardens of flowers. I was rolled to the hair salon which was owned by a lady from England. I was rolled to the physiology team from Scandinavia; to the snack bar for a submarine sandwich, or BLT, or for candy to fatten me up so I could go home.

I wheeled myself to see a Peace Corps friend... I thought she was... who had a broken leg in a sling hanging from the ceiling. She accused me of not taking the prophylaxis: "You will not be allowed back in the agency because you did not take the prophylaxis!"

I was too weak to go into the facts but had already ascertained that she didn't want them. That was the entire gamut of all my friends. Later, when she and I were to go back to USA at the same time, she had a nurse to help her. I was refused a nurse! Peace Corps would not pay for a nurse for me!

In a few days, I walked with a nurse on each side of me. As we walked along the hallway, an old nurse wearing starched whites, greeted me with, "Mrs. Bailey, it is so good to see you alive and walking." And she hugged me. It is not embarrassing or unprofessional in Africa to have warmth to share. She looked into my vacant eyes as she said it. She must have known I was unable to respond.

Each week, the supervisor of the hospital made rounds. She was taken to each patient and introduced by a nurse on each ward. She asked me, "Where is your husband? Where are your children? Where is your agency? Where is your ambassador?" She asked if everything was alright with the hospital. I wish I had thought to tell her how right everything was! A few evenings later I said I didn't think I needed an aide anymore and she agreed.

An aide studies her patients in ICU, follows them to the ward until they become coherent; and sticks to them like they were welded on.

Agnes, in her mid-twenties and speaking no English, was my 12 hour nightly aide. She was a large contributing factor to my wellness. She treated me, and later, her next patient across the room from me, like sick babies; smoothing our sheets, holding our hands, calming with soft words. She knew when I needed, or wanted, a nurse, and rang for her. When I was able, I asked her to let me do for myself. She cried.

When I left, she gave me a black plastic ring she wore on her finger which I still cherish, and I gave her my wristwatch.

Dorcas was my 12 hour day aide and I saw her more often. She was 17, spoke fluent English. She was with me when I went for my first solo walk. As I wandered aimlessly and restlessly to a staircase, she asked where I was going.

Aimlessly and restlessly, I shouted, "I don't care!" She could laugh at me now. She had taken me for baths, put my tray on my bed so I could reach it and helped me cut my food. While I needed this at first, I later became resentful because I wanted to do it and she wouldn't let me. I accused her of stealing my food. It became a problem to the point that Dr. Silverstein had to tell me that all patients are paranoid from ICU.

One day, a gracious lady bearing a cane, strolled into my room. She introduced herself: "I am Gloria. When I was in physiology, they told me an American patient was in the hospital. How are you?"

She said she had lived in Nairobi for 30 years. That her now deceased husband had been a Marine officer at Pearl Harbor; that she initiated the building of this hospital.

She showed me a locket she had worn since childhood which signified exemplary school work in USA. Next day she brought books, a shawl, shoes, slippers, and a lav- ender oval cake of soap from London. She left with a hug.

I remember her often - a person to emulate - as I think of all the wonderful people who saved my life and my sanity all the way from my pallet on the concrete floor in Mombo.

I remember Sister - head of the floor - with much respect, who possessed high capacity for dry wit and provided constant good humor. Although I wasn't exactly in a laughing mood, her good humor filled my wizened soul. She also had a quick eye for problem solving and caught the sudden decline in my energy and had a blood count made. Two more bags of blood were given to me, cultured for four hours and administered the night before I was to leave for USA.

Once, during an afternoon stroll down the hallway, my right knee gave way and I plopped to the floor in an upright position. I was picked up and I went on my way. But Sister said I should not use the stairs unless she accompanied me.

One day she went with me to the stairs, rolled up the back of my robe into her hand and held me steady as we went up the staircase. Along with her dry wit, she possessed a no nonsense approach as she told other stair users to give me the way as I held onto the rail. Stairs were used as a therapy for me with Sister, but when alone, I used the elevator; getting lost, and visitors and doctors and nurses directing me.

I was reborn in Nairobi Hospital! I saw for myself that there were people who cared and loved and nurtured. I was restless though, and had gained enough pounds to go home. Although I did not want to go back to USA, I recognized it was my only choice until I could get on my feet and return to Africa.

My youngest child, Jesse, had been given a week's leave from the Marines to come get my body. He was allowed to stay when I didn't die that first week, to take me back to USA.

An American Embassy van waited at the front door. I walked to it. Jesse pushed me up the steep step. For years I had planned on visiting Nairobi but now I saw only ten minutes of it as I rode through it. It reminded me of Winston-Salem where I once lived.

When we were halfway to the airport, the Kenyan driver stopped for a road block. When it was our turn, the armed guard asked if we had guns or knives on us. Jesse and I said we did not. He asked me to open my purse; the shoulder bag I had left in Mombo and was just now given to me.

As I opened my purse in response to the guard, a paring knife loomed at the bottom! I had carried that knife with me in Mombo to peel oranges, pears, and mangoes purchased from wheelbarrow vendors. I was so startled that I flung it out to him!

He said officially, "You can keep that." But I gladly gave it to the Kenyan driver. Otherwise, every shilling, every dollar, was intact, as was my camera, radio and other expensive and unobtainable for them items.

We parked in the front drive of the vast international airport. Men and women crowded the sidewalk as they went in and out, to and fro. As Jesse went inside to get a wheelchair for me, a father and his three/four year old daughter paced in front of the open van door. Suddenly, the father lifted his daughter inside the van, facing me! We studied each other intently. A lavender dress hung to her shiny black shoes. Her long black hair was encircled with a glossy lavender ribbon.

I said, "Jambo Bibi" and shook her hand.

She said nothing; just stared at me.

I said, "Habari za mchana?"

She said nothing; her black eyes becoming wider.

Her father said, "Sema Jambo."

She still didn't speak or move.

Her father lifted her back to the sidewalk, never taking his eyes off his lovely daughter.

And they were merged into sidewalk traffic.




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Is Gaddi Leaving? Is Gaddi Leaving?
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The Birth of the Peace Corps The Birth of the Peace Corps
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Charges possible in 1976 PCV slaying Charges possible in 1976 PCV slaying
Congressman Norm Dicks has asked the U.S. attorney in Seattle to consider pursuing charges against Dennis Priven, the man accused of killing Peace Corps Volunteer Deborah Gardner on the South Pacific island of Tonga 28 years ago. Background on this story here and here.
Your vote makes a difference Your vote makes a difference
Make a difference on November 2 - Vote. Then take our RPCV exit poll. See how RPCV's are voting and take a look at the RPCV voter demographic. Finally leave a message on why you voted for John Kerry or for George Bush. Previous poll results here.

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This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Tanzania; Writing - Tanzania; Malaria; Safety and Security of Volunteers; Writing - Tanzania

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By Admin1 (admin) (pool-151-196-43-253.balt.east.verizon.net - 151.196.43.253) on Saturday, January 08, 2005 - 12:53 pm: Edit Post

Tanzania RPCV Carmen Bailey gets treatment for cerebral malaria. after her service in Tanzania [Excerpt from her book "The Big Trek"]

Tanzania RPCV Carmen Bailey gets treatment for  cerebral malaria. after her service in Tanzania [Excerpt from her book The Big Trek]



Read and comment on this excerpt from "The Big Trek" by RPCV Carmen Bailey contracting cerebral malaria during her service in Tanzania. Folow the link to find out more about the book at:

AT HOME - Chapter 7*

* This link was active on the date it was posted. PCOL is not responsible for broken links which may have changed.



AT HOME - Chapter 7

My airplane made three stops on the west coast of Africa before heading across the Atlantic Ocean for New York City. I was a close relative to a vegetable. If something happened, fine. If it did not happen, that was fine too. I was going to New York City because I wasn't going some place else. During the second stop on the west coast, Mozart's vibrancy poured from speakers on the plane; strains of a beloved sweet-of-all-sweets melody, long forgotten. Tears sobbed as I realized I had lost my place under the sun.

From New York City, we flew to Raleigh where Jesse put me in a hotel room and took a bus to Winston-Salem where his uncles lived, to buy transportation to drive us to Camp LeJeune where he was stationed. I couldn't figure how to use the telephone, but desk responded. I asked, "Is this water safe to drink?" I knew that was an inappropriate ques- tion but could not figure out what was wrong with it.

The next morning I walked the long hallway, leaning on the wall for balance, to get to the restaurant. As I sat down, a waitress placed a menu in front of me and explaining, said, "We don't get very many female salespersons around here."

I ordered four times what I could eat. It was my first American meal in over a year.

#

Jesse had obtained transportation! After we were established in his abode at Camp LeJeune, a friend from Eastern Shore of Virginia came to get me and I set about to get disability pay.

The head of Public Health on Eastern Shore, Dr. Thomas Simpson, who said he had taught Tropical Diseases at Johns Hopkins Hospital; who had been instrumental in building my health to specifications of Peace Corps - the first of five agencies I belonged to - now would not see me, sending me to a doctor who sent me to a doctor who said he was a neurologist: Dr. Robert Paschal. Peace Corps medical forms had been sent to him to fill out - I saw them on his desk - and I handed him a copy of the five page computer written medical report from Nairobi Hospital.

Dr. Robert Paschal was flippant, brusque. Before he examined me, he asked if I was going to sue. "No. Besides, I'm offered disability." "Are you going to take it?" "Yes." "Well, I'd like to have a little disability myself so I wouldn't have to work all the time."

But he refused to talk to me about my condition, actually discrediting it with, "People do not survive Falciparum, therefore you didn't have it. I am writing you up as a psychiatric case for thinking you had it."

My disability pay was denied.

I had sold out when I went to Africa because I planned on staying for years; maybe the rest of my life. I now had no income, no home, and savings were used up before I left Nairobi.

Friends took me in, over a six month period. I alternated between them.

Twice I slept in the back of a car. Four months after I returned to USA, I missed a connection between homes and rented an efficiency. In two weeks, a home became available. But per agreement, my deposit was not returned and I sued. And won.

I began gaining weight, and my skin no longer draped over my bones; much of my hair had fallen out from medicine used in ICU and now was growing back in. My voice rose above a whisper, now, seven months after the ventilator tube was removed from my throat in ICU. But I began to deteriorate in other places. My right knee crunched when I moved it. Insteps became painful when I walked. I was unable to absorb ordinary conversation and lost what concentration I had.

My Representative, Herbert Bateman, encouraged me to make application for Social Security Insurance. Or Widow's Benefits, which I was denied when my husband died four years previously. I resubmitted and was sent to a psychiatrist who leaned back in his chair and bellowed at me! He asked if I thought people were doing things to me! I lied and said, "No," so he wouldn't report me as paranoid."

I asked if Social Security Administration had sent him a copy of my medical report. After I gave him one, he recommended benefits but they were not forthcoming. Social Security said I was able to work. I told them that it would have been easier, quicker, and a lot kinder if I had died when I was supposed to have. They objected to my statement, mewling that they were doing the best they could.

Representative Bateman said I should resubmit to Social Security but I could not handle it. I needed a place to sleep; food to eat; now! I said I did not know that getting Social Security Benefits was a game and I did not have time to play it. Belatedly, I realized that was the idea.

One and a half years after I returned to USA, I obtained a copy of Paschal's report. It was so embarrassing to read the inaccuracies so zestfully written that I could not bear to read much of it. Half a minute's perusal said that I "claimed" to have had cerebral malaria. That I was manipulative because I asked him to give me a hand to help me down from his examining table.

At first, he told me that cerebral malaria fries the brain. Since he knew that much about it, I reasoned, he would then see that I came through with neurological conditions. In retrospect, he meant that since my brain was not completely fried, that I had not had cerebral malaria. His partner absent-mindedly concurred; nodding in agreement and suggesting I take Benedryl and not come back.

I needed somebody. Anybody! Except establishment doctors who would sanction Paschal's decadence and clout to jerk me around, to humiliate, and lie and make it stick! When I asked them why they treated people in this manner, they replied with things like, "Don't rock the boat." They literally thought it was proper that doctors have the right to slander, abuse, and let people die; professionally, of course.

I turned to other important matters.

#

I asked Representative Bateman for all my reports per Freedom of Information Act [FOI] and he had a bunch sent; some which were not meant to be seen; sent by an aware insider of Labor Department. But the two main documents I wanted were not there; those which documented unmitigated injuries. It took another year to get those through another source.

Bateman's administrator, Ms. Beasley, told the Social Security office across the street, to let me see my files. A little boy angrily stood over me as I flipped pages and got stuck on one which read, "She is a simple farm girl from Florida."

I was stunned, lifted the book and pointedly read the statement aloud! And added: "There is nothing simple about me, little boy! Besides, I don't mind being a farm girl from Florida; it just isn't so. I'm from Florida decades ago, but I never saw a farm."

He mumbled.

I indignantly asked, "Who is deranged enough to think this up?"

Six months after I was back in USA without benefits, Jesse and girl friend drove me to North Carolina where I stayed with friends and another son put me on a plane for Florida where I stayed with a relative while looking for a doctor who would sign for me to obtain disability pay. I was sent to a psychiatrist/neurologist who had no knowledge of cerebral malaria but knew how to keep payment coming from the government. He was intent on making me confess that I was depressed and that was my problem. He told me to say that.

I wouldn't say it! When he finally discovered there was more than depression, he asked pertinent questions like, "What do you want?"

I said, "My brain back. And my good balance. My concentration is broken and my right knee is in worse condition than when I came back from Kenya."

Over a three month period at that doctor's office, I had a brain scan which showed functional damage; an EEG which showed tiny seizures. I was wired and shocked from knee to toe on the right side. And wired elbow to finger, also on the right side; both showing slow nerve reaction. Another test revealed short term memory loss. My long term memory was okay.

During this time I was given an appalling and irrelevant oral exam which lasted several days. I remember a couple of the host of irrelevant questions. Like, "Do you like kinky sex?"

Even in my stupor, I wondered what my like or dislike for kinky sex had to do with the United States Government deliberately trying to let me die. I did not answer the question. In this country of supposed freedom of speech, it was none of their business.

The next irrelevant question was… "Why do people go to a doctor to get medicine?" Asked like I was a bouncy cute li'l kindergartner.

I absentmindedly replied, "So the AMA has a good place to peddle its drugs." I thought it was common knowledge.

But she actually said, "Oh, I can't put that down. Is there another reason?" "No, that IS the reason." I knew the questions were slanted but it had not occurred to me until now, that my answers should be slanted too.

Several questions later, I cut in and said, "Oh, I know what you want me to say. 'It's to keep drugs off the street. But it isn't working too well.' "

They all took that fact to mean that I was on illegal drugs - not theirs!

My doctor treated me for secondary depression, whatever that is, and issued Sinequan which drove me the rest of the way batty and I lost my home with my relative. She was very ill and couldn't handle me. I couldn't handle me! Shrink was angry that I quit taking it. When I realized again that I was in worse condition by going to see a conventional psychiatrist and said my son was coming to get me to take me home, shrink evenly asked, "What if I won't let you go?"

But, finally, disability was restored!

My home was in Greenbackville, Virginia, a waterman's village along the coast of Chincoteague Bay in the Atlantic Ocean beneath the Atlantic Flyway where thousands of Canada Geese and Snow Geese, over wintered and fed on acres of what was purposefully and joyfully left for them after the harvesting of corn fields. Then they migrated further south; or mingled with relatives at the National Wildlife Preserve at Assateague, two miles across the bay from me.

From my house, it was a two minute walk to the newly restored marina which boasted harbor light and a slatted boardwalk encircling it. Slips fastened sleek sailing vessels rarely used by rich vacationers... and rusty, chipped-paint, beat up old craft used daily by the hardiest of all people: the watermen - who harvest seafood in any weather from the bottom of the ocean.

All craft were christened with emotions and loves: MISS BETTY. NORTH STAR. SEA WHORE. EXPLORE. To name a few. Crab pots with commercial, or sealed plastic, milk jug floats were neatly stacked beside them on the slatted walkway.

My backyard opened into a swamp. At high tide and full moon, bay water came up on the main road. Tadpoles grew in the filled gullies. Cattail grew beside a creek which fluctuated with the tide in my yard. Stork-like stilted water birds pecked through my yard, their knees opening backwards from mine.

With my restored disability pay I could stay in a place long enough to gain enough health to return to Africa.

I thought!

But I had only gotten started. With each segment of progress came new depths of decadence! Now I could not get my checks sent to me. They were sent to my ill relative's house in Florida, for eight months. I finally called Department of Labor and a lady exclaimed that she didn't know what I was complaining about; that a client just called to thank her for sending her check. I didn't say, "So would I if got one."

They did not accept certified mail.

They skipped a month.

They sent me a form for bank deposits but did not use it when I sent it in.

I was visited by FBI. One of them knocked on my door and I opened it. He flashed his badge and shouted "FBI!" I said I didn't want him in my house. He said he had to come in and ask me some questions. I asked him if his boss really and truly sent him to ask dumb questions. He nodded.

I asked him if he really expected me to believe he drove 100 miles from Norfolk to ask me about a kind letter I wrote to President Gorbechev, hoping he liked us, when he first visited Washington, DC.

Somewhere along the line of 20 minutes of astonishingly convoluted conversation, he asked me if Gorbechev had come to see me. I bit my tongue to keep from saying… "Oh sure! Didn't you see it on the news? He and his entourage caught a shuttle from DC to Salisbury, rented Hertz cars and motorcaded down Eastern Shore to my house." "Miss Effie closed the post office in celebration, and her husband, Mr. Milton, made his famous family recipe of clam stew from clams which grew right there in the bay," pointing to Chincoteague Bay, where I stuck my big toe in it every day. "Charlotta and Richard brought lawn chairs for everybody and Laura did a serious reading on folklore fishermen." "The local fire department sent a great western string band over and it roundly played "Old Joe Clark." "It really was a blast and President Gorbechev enjoyed it so much he said he was coming back."

That's what I wanted to say to such an ignorant question. But I had enough problems already before getting mixed up with another high IQ robot.

Neither did I want to impugn any of my fine neighbors; they would then be on suspicion to be harassed and slandered. I simply said "No," and studied him for signs of life. He left, but his kind harassed me for over a decade.

The first harassment had already been in effect for three months. I discovered it when my phone was restored untapped that day and my mail resumed delivery.

After the FBI man left my house in Greenbackville, I drove to Pokemoke City in Maryland to get a hamburger. When I got inside the McDonald's, there were six strange men standing around grinning. They were clad as their idea of fishermen - color matched sports clothes and new felt hats with lures stuck in the hat bands. I studied them while pacing in front of them, stifling an embarrassed grin.

Fact: There are no commercial fishermen on Eastern Shore. There are commercial Watermen. Watermen do not fish. They do not use lures. They work a dredge on a ship which reaches to the bottom of the ocean to pull up clams. It is a grossly dangerous job and very poorly paid, so Watermen do not walk about grinning. And they are too underpaid to have much more than a wash one and wear one… forget a fancy felt hat with a band around it to hold lures they don't use.

As I went to get in line for a hamburger, one of the agents beat me there and turned around to say, "I get disability." "Good for you. Why?" "He replied, "I showed the government how to make a better bomb."

#

Other harassments I recall...

I learned to ride a bike again, a favorite part of my life. I was always happy when riding my bright yellow bike with the white helmet, tinted goggles, fingerless gloves and pied riding clothes. I wore normal shoes because now, I frequently fell and did not need to be secured to the bike.

One day as I rested at a park, a new vehicle drove in and I moaned, "Oh No! Not another one of those!"

He got out of an old station wagon, keeping his eye on me as he groped for his bike in the rear of it. It was obvious that the last time he handled a bike, it was a trike. He rolled it right over to me and asked which way was Ft. Worth. "It's that way - pointing - "Seven miles on the trail. Want to go with me?"

He did.

But he could not ride on the right hand side when coming to a hill even when I mentioned it to him and a sign suggested it. He could not make conversation. He rode with his knees out! What a clutz! How embarrassing! I quit talking and tried to distance myself from him.

But on the way back he said, "You aren't handling your bike too well." "Nah! But it's better than one would expect. I had a disease which bungled me up."

Then he suddenly blurted! "What did you do with the letters the government sent you?"

I smilingly gloated, like the spider in the web which finally induced her malicious prey into her quarters. "I kept them. And copied them. Every scrap. And sent full copies to Tanzania, Kenya, Florida, my Senator Lloyd Bentsen and my Representative Joe Barton."

Instantly, he stood up on his pedals and pumped furiously all the way and never looked back!

Weeks later, as I ran off the trail ramp, an old man began talking to me as he walked in the same direction I was going, his back to me. Something about a hot day. I agreed it was an unusually scorching day.

By this time we were at his stylish late model sports car with his foot on it as he bent over to retie his shoes laces. He said he walked here daily to keep himself in shape.

I didn't say, "I ride daily. I never saw you."

He added, "Today I walked to Hulen Bridge," pointing in the wrong direction. His city dress shoes were spotless and his dress shirt with tie had not one spot of sweat.

I said, "Well, I'm so proud of you," and shook his hand. He preened and drove off.

They say that once a person gets on their list, they are on it for life. A decade later I wonder if I am still on their list…therefore, I don't know if I'm paranoid or not.

#

The venue for my Federal court hearing to obtain the Lump Sum Settlement they offered me, was changed from the usual location to one further away. My lawyer thought aloud as he drove us to the new location, wondering why the venue was moved.

By now, very experienced and alert, I said, "There will be no elevator and someone will run out and watch me to see how I use the stairs - not offering a hand."

That's what happened.

Along with the long years of being tailed and harassed, I had my phone removed. Then, my computer began getting un-usable replies to questions I had asked. By this time in 1991, Senator Lloyd Bentsen was providing solid help bimonthly – literally everybody else I had visited, having told me not to ask them again - and twice my surface mail to him was confiscated.

I developed my own communications systems.

#

When I had served ManKind freely for so long; when what I had paid in for 27 years to be there when I needed it, was withheld; when I won the Lump Sum Settlement offered by The United States Government if it did take ten years - and they changed their rules after the fact - something snapped within me. It became more perplexing when later I discovered that Congress had passed a law against the giving of lawsuits won against the government. So why was I given the rules?

A United States prosecutor spent 83 million dollars on a personal matter, turning it into porn and spreading it throughout the entire world. Congress needed just one day to declare war - that is, to purposefully cause destruction. Later, the same senators were smilingly and handsomely giving their guesses on TV as to when bombs would start dropping on Iraq, while paid up benefit accounts were ignored at home. It says what our leaders were doing to us. Where was the chief prosecutor, now that people were being murdered in Iraq for whatever reason they called it? Why was food aid to other countries sent across the ocean, while our own starved from lack of their paid up pensions?

There are so many contradictions that make up my civilization. Perhaps the most basic one is an organized religion quandary. "Over 80% of Americans profess belief in God and a religion... you know... "Love your fellow person." And "80% of Americans demand the Death Penalty!" What do these statistics explain?

There is a huge gap between what we are taught as children in Sunday School - taken to church to specifically learn - and what we are expected to know when we are suddenly shafted because of exposure to unusable rules. The teaching suddenly changes when we find ourselves in a legal quandary." "You should have known better. You're a Big Girl now!" However did such an accepted contradiction take hold?

What would happen if we made a specific choice of loving our fellow person, or of being a liar - so that we would quit straddling the fence.

#

In 1989, 2 ½ years after I came back to USA, after I had been to a large number of AMA doctors, I knew I was dying. The only recourse I had was to do the cycle of establishment doctors again, as I died. I did not know about Alternative Medicine, the branch of medicine which healed you. But friends warned me against going to the only hospital in reach, saying I would die quicker there.

They had kept me in their homes as I awaited promised monthly pay, and now it was time for my largest Lucky Star to appear… my sister Francey, called to ask about my condition.

She had just gotten past her own insurmountable problems, just enough to be able to call, and she said I should move to Ft. Worth where she could keep an eye on me.

I moved from Eastern Shore to Ft. Worth.

In a matter of weeks I located a doctor who was highly recommended by all thoughtful persons I asked. I was already spastic on my right side, and by this time, my right leg dragged, my right eye was crossed. My right arm was not useful. I was swollen all over. I could not hold conversation.

The doctor had a list of degrees which provided hidden-from-me ability. Voluminous plaques on his wall included certificates of Doctor of Osteopathy [DO], Master of Public Health [MPH], Fellow American College of Preventive Medicine [FACPM], Fellow American Osteopathic College of Preventive Medicine [FAOCPM], and Doctor of Homeopathy [HD].

What was not hidden from me, was that the entire treatment was between me and this doctor. A treatment which was currently needed, rather than what the doctor once read in his old training school manuals which included a Desk Reference of pills to sell.

That he was a happy person; he laughed a lot. He asked me what I wanted to do with my life, turning my attention away from my misery. Along with his degrees, and happiness which became infectious, he used the Chinese medical system which included herbs and acupuncture. Later, I used food supplements including vitamins and minerals, and when I was able, resumed my old habit of "eating to live," not "living to eat."

I emphasize "When I was able," because I was well into months of treatment before I made a statement of my own volition. I had been that close to total loss of my faculties. It was gently brought to my attention when this doctor chuckled and quietly said, "I didn't know you could talk."

He manipulated internal organs. He prompted ordinary conversation, positive con- versation, and worked around me in the middle of his office. For over two years I had drifted from day to day in a fog, trying to find a way to help myself, but being shunted from office to office and having no idea what to do about it. Now, this doctor caused me to center myself… my life.

He prompted conversation on how I could again take responsibility for myself. There were no inane questions about my last doctor; no giving approval for old records being sent, being passed around, never being through, and not getting something done.

He said things like, "You are grieving," not "You are a label." Nor, did he say things like, "People don't survive Falciparum, therefore you didn't have it." Nor, "You are a psychiatric case for thinking you survived Falciparum." Labels were not the issue. My thinking, or the lack of it, was the issue.

I was moving up the line from, "I am what I eat," to, "I am what I think" which included "I am what I eat," to realizing I was a result.

Eventually, I saw that habitual anger was a habit, that angry thoughts, and grief, controlled my thinking and therefore my body and health - via internal organs - and affected my road to recovery. How good overcomes evil became plain to see. It's inside the person. It feels good to think and do good. That's how good overcomes evil.

There were several single statements he made, any which could have knocked me over with a feather but the one I remember is, "You can get the same thing done better, if you are not angry." It was one of those sage pieces of advice which after thinking about the simplicity of it, one explains with compunction, "I knew that!"

#

I was with this doctor for a year - for a total of seven treatments - when he said, "I can do no more for you. You have to do the rest."

But, he had given me so much to think about, that I discovered a decade later that I was still reaching for his tidbits of counsel.

I left his treatments in high spirits, good humor, and with plans. Life was laughable, I walked and talked with a degree of dignity, and made much conversation!

I was ready to resume life.




Click on a link below for more stories on PCOL



When this story was posted in January 2005, this was on the front page of PCOL:

Peace Corps issues appeal to Thailand RPCVs Date: December 30 2004 No: 354 Peace Corps issues appeal to Thailand RPCVs
Peace Corps is currently assessing the situation in Thailand, anticipates a need for volunteers and is making an appeal to all Thailand RPCV's to consider serving again through the Crisis Corps. Also read this message and this message from RPCVs in Thailand. All PCVs serving in Thailand are safe. Latest: Sri Lanka RPCVs, click here for info.

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The World's Broken Promise to our Children Date: December 24 2004 No: 345 The World's Broken Promise to our Children
Former Director Carol Bellamy, now head of Unicef, says that the appalling conditions endured today by half the world's children speak to a broken promise. Too many governments are doing worse than neglecting children -- they are making deliberate, informed choices that hurt children. Read her op-ed and Unicef's report on the State of the World's Children 2005.
Changing of the Guard Date: December 15 2004 No: 330 Changing of the Guard
With Lloyd Pierson's departure, Marie Wheat has been named acting Chief of Staff and Chief of Operations responsible for the day-to-day management of the Peace Corps. Although Wheat is not an RPCV and has limited overseas experience, in her two years at the agency she has come to be respected as someone with good political skills who listens and delegates authority and we wish her the best in her new position.
Our debt to Bill Moyers Our debt to Bill Moyers
Former Peace Corps Deputy Director Bill Moyers leaves PBS next week to begin writing his memoir of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Read what Moyers says about journalism under fire, the value of a free press, and the yearning for democracy. "We have got to nurture the spirit of independent journalism in this country," he warns, "or we'll not save capitalism from its own excesses, and we'll not save democracy from its own inertia."
RPCV safe after Terrorist Attack RPCV safe after Terrorist Attack
RPCV Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, the U.S. consul general in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia survived Monday's attack on the consulate without injury. Five consular employees and four others were killed. Abercrombie-Winstanley, the first woman to hold the position, has been an outspoken advocate of rights for Arab women and has met with Saudi reformers despite efforts by Saudi leaders to block the discussions.
Is Gaddi Leaving? Is Gaddi Leaving?
Rumors are swirling that Peace Corps Director Vasquez may be leaving the administration. We think Director Vasquez has been doing a good job and if he decides to stay to the end of the administration, he could possibly have the same sort of impact as a Loret Ruppe Miller. If Vasquez has decided to leave, then Bob Taft, Peter McPherson, Chris Shays, or Jody Olsen would be good candidates to run the agency. Latest: For the record, Peace Corps has no comment on the rumors.
The Birth of the Peace Corps The Birth of the Peace Corps
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Your vote makes a difference Your vote makes a difference
Make a difference on November 2 - Vote. Then take our RPCV exit poll. See how RPCV's are voting and take a look at the RPCV voter demographic. Finally leave a message on why you voted for John Kerry or for George Bush. Previous poll results here.

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This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Tanzania; Writing - Tanzania; Malaria; Safety and Security of Volunteers; Writing - Tanzania

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