Africa Files-Part 13-A series of Unfortunate Events

Hello to al my friend in blog land. I have some less than good news to report, it involves borrwed cars, lots of speeding, needles, hospitals, scalpals, overweight nurses and the subsequent spunge bath, hours in the back of trucks and eventually and delicous avocado on toast.
So it began with a morning and beautiful morning at that. Upon waking I noticed a small red dot on my arm. Thinking nothing of it I relished in my newfound comfort of a shower at the campground. Went boulding as per-usual and felt very strong despite all day I never really accomplished much as I could not generate full power from my left hand. A little bit bummed by the seemingly unbalanced day of feeling realy strong but accomplishing little I retired to camp and jolined everybody to the bar that night as it was a friday and people were looking to get out of the mountains. I got to unleash my dance-bone and lets just say that Africa may not have been ready for a mix of me and euro-trash techno but they certainly jumped aboard quikly. BUt I had to crash pretty early because everything was just feelinga bit off. In the morning I woke and the light through my tent cast everything a red color so indeed my arm showed red but when I vacated the tent my arm was red for reasons independent of the light. There had been an incredible amount of swelling and I knew that something was going down in a bad way. I asked when people were heading into town and with no definate answers being given I convinced Danny a British climber to let me take his car in and grab him food/get me to the doc on the asap. I took his Daihaitsu to unpresedented speeds of the pass and later dirt roads. In other words I made a 30 trip in 14 minutes. Picked up my friend Matt in town and left him the car and booked it to the doctor. While explaining the urgency to the receptionist the doctor walked in and upon a first glance said that I would be heading to the hospital but as he is the only doctor for the hospital as well it was going to be a while until he could get around to helping me(ie-The Tri-Nations Rugby match was about to come on). Being a persistent young fellow that I am I convinced him to at least start the treatment in his office. The treatment turned out to be the doctor cutting my arm open on his desk with no anesthetic(Speachless Pain) and venomous ooze began to pour from my arm.
Okay, so now I though it is time to get to the hospital but when I stepped outside I couold not find Matt or the car so I bouced the Police Station and requested an immediate ride. So there I am now again in a cop truck in AFrica except this time flying through traffic with a hole in my arm. I got admitted and when they saw that underneath all of my dirtyness I was white they asked whether I would be paying or had a health card? I said health acrd and I was taken to a seperate wing of the hospital. I git an IV plugged in with antibodies and there I was upon another adventure. NOw it was just a waiting game to find out if we could reverse the blood poisoning and I just lay there watching my arm to see whether the streaks were indeed continuing up my arm or where now receading. The nurse seemed to be quite sure that all of this trauma was happening because I wore sandals and climbed rocks and have a mono dread and as a result she was insistent that I change cloths but only after being scrubbed by her. She made my homie Matt get me some new threads at the store(thanks Matt) and it was off to a spong bath.Sparing the detalis it was a humorous occasion.