Dengue

31 July 2005

Want to talk about Survivor?  We have been playing a new game: “And then there were two”.

Elly left with her crew of teenagers, and promptly got sick.  She is due back today, but is unsure whether she will be able to work tomorrow.  The group she is working with came down two weeks ago to volunteer with a number of different projects, including doing some work on the site.

And predictably, their luggage got lost.  At which point, the claims agent took their claim tickets and said that they would be ready on Monday.

Monday came, and I was headed into Flores for an unrelated reason, and gave Elly a lift to the airport, where she had a fight with the (different) claims agent, who said that without a claim ticket, he could not release the bags.  Elly only knew that her mom (the camp director) did not have the claim tickets any more.

She presented the passports of all nine people who needed their baggage.  No.   I recognize all of the bags.  No.  One of the bags has medicine in it that the student needs to take.  Softer: No.  I will call American Airlines to get the claim ticket number.  Do you have the number? No.  Do you have a phone book – I'll look it up.  No.  I see one there, can I borrow it? No, I have to leave now.

Is there anything more frustrating than a bureaucrat in a bad mood?

She finally got the bags without resorting to violence, bribery, or threats.  And I went to Flores to run my errands at the internet café.  And the power went out.

Perspective.

Matt was misdiagnosed as having dengue by the doctor he saw after I left him in Flores last week.  So this week, on Tuesday, he was feeling better and went out to the field. 

And was pretty much carried out.

Immediately after lunch, one of his workers came up to me, really concerned, and said, “Crorey, come quick!  Matt is sick!  He didn’t want to eat his lunch!”

I, of course, know that Matt never wants to eat his lunch, and was not exactly impressed with Bilo’s (Bee′-low’s) description of his symptoms.  I was then told that Matt needed me to drive him, and that I needed to pick him up at the gate.

One problem with that.  Since Matt drives the car after letting me out, he keeps the single Club key on his keychain.  So I chase him around the site for a while, and finally catch up with him at the car.  He is, in fact, in bad shape.  His fever is back with a vengeance.

The project director, who I met for the first time at that moment, was planning on staying at the site for about an hour or two, and then heading back in to Flores.  After we got Matt back to the camp and splayed him out on the couch (shooing away the gathering audience at the same time), Antonia offered to take him into Flores with her when she went.  They threw him in the back of the truck (Freddy would not let him in the front) and drove him in to see the doctora.  While in the doctora’s office, Matt passed out, and woke up on his back in the middle of a large puddle where he had knocked over the water cooler on his way down.

Lab results: dengue?  Negative.  Malaria?  Positive.

And, as Ingrid put it, we have been sharing needles at the site every day, no matter how much repellant we put on.

So he has been holed up in a motel next to the doctora’s office (she comes over twice a day to check on him) and has become increasingly bored and restless.  He is still seriously anemic.  We took over a steak from La Luna and he went from ‘not hungry’ to ‘ravenous’ with the first bite (the body really tells you what it needs, doesn’t it?) He also has a pretty bad case of flojo, but that is to be expected.  They had him on an IV for the first two days because he was dehydrated (they hung it from the top of the window casing in the motel) but didn’t set it up right.  Over the course of two days they kept adjusting the needle to try and get the solution in a vein, with no luck.  He finally drank enough to rehydrate himself and tossed the IV aside.

Most of the rest of the week has been crazy, with trying to help Ingrid cover Matt’s excavations and doing my own.  The only real excitement in my excavations was the fact that someone passed through on Tuesday night and stole half the tarps covering my units.  They had grabbed all of Christina’s the night before (she is working about 3km away) and made off with mine next.  But whoever it was did not want all of them; they left the second large on behind, and have not come back again.  The hunter (there were dog tracks that my guys pointed out) was also interested in becoming an archaeologist.  I had articulated a wall; he dug out a hole of soft dirt under the wall hoping to find something, and also spaded the dirt at the base of the test with his machete.  Not much damage, considering what he could have done, but irritating nonetheless.  If he wants to dig, we pay people to do that.  He doesn’t have to do it for free…

Don Paco

Another neat bit that I got to do this week.  Papatulo mentioned in passing that Don Paco, once a chiclero, is not bothered by bees, and that he will pull the honey out of the hives.  I am fascinated by bees, and immediately offered to help the next time he needed it.  And later that day I spotted an Ek nest.  Ek (Yucatec Maya translates it either as “star” or “black”, but here in Itzá Maya it is just “star”) is a type of hornet that builds a large  paper nest, just like hornets in the states.  The difference is that the grubs are a delicacy and the honey (yep, honey) is prized.  So when I found an Ek nest nearby that was as big as my head, Paco was all ears.  We went over, and he started drooling, describing the delicious grubs, prepared on a comal (griddle) with lime, chile and salt…. lip-smackin’ good.  I did not have my camera, so I asked if we could put it off until the following day.

The following day, we took off during lunch, grabbed a bunch of palmetto leaves (finding another species of edible bee nest in the process) and headed over to the nest.  I helped him clear out access to the hive, and snapped pictures when I could.  The hornets were excited and all got out of the hive quickly, but did not sting.  Paco’s hands pulled the nest out slowly, carefully, and even without smoking them out (the purpose of the palmetto leaves), he took their nest away.

The reason they were so docile is that the eggs were not laid, and the honey was not stockpiled.  We replaced the nest so that they could repair the nest, but apparently the nest was not worth saving.  They had moved on by the next day.  But I got some good shots, including some of the swarming bees after we took the nest. 

The archaeology this week was tough, but not without reward.  We found a few nice pieces – a drilled deer tooth, a piece of worked shell, and uncovered a couple of walls that make little sense at the moment.  The information is good, and we are being careful, so I will be able to make some interesting comments on commoner residences at Trinidad. 

I also came over to help Ingrid at one point.  She was trying to figure out how to deal with some architecture she found in a 1x1 m unit, and together we decided to expand to the north, away from the architecture (she is digging middens).  That expansion, as is always the case in archaeology, means moving the pile of screened dirt.  As I began moving the dirt, I grabbed up a round form, and wiped it off to show the prettiest green bead you ever saw.  Apple-green jade.  And it was found in the backdirt pile, so there is no associated context.  Oh, well. 

I am headed to the Belizean frontier today – I have to renovar my car papers again.  I will be taking Carlos and Benito for the ride, so that I am not doing it alone.  Everybody else is staying behind to get shopping done, and we will all meet back at camp.  And we will find out whether Bilo brought home his girlfriend.

The current soap opera at the site is whether Bilo (real name: Cesar Alonzo Ramos) is really getting married this weekend.  He claims that he asked her dad if he could take her back home (common law marriage) to live with his family.  He has saved Q1,195 – roughly $170 - from the money he has earned working for us (working, in Bilo’s case, is a word used very loosely).  That means he spent exactly 5Q on one drink. 

We have a number of bets going as to whether he is telling the truth or not.  I tried to smoke him out at one point.  “Bilo!  If you are getting married, you can’t do it without a party!  Don Arturo!  You have a marimba band; how much does it cost per hour to hire the band?”

“Q100 per hour.  And you would have to have at least three hours of playing,” he answered.  Any of you who have been subjected to endless marimba can wince with me.  Marimba music is the black hole of music – the closer to the band you are, the more time stretches until it simply stands still.  Standing in front of the speakers, five minutes is an eternity.  Three hours?

“Great.  I’ll rent the band.  What else do we need for the reception? Food! How about a pig?  How much for a pig?”

Everybody got into the ribbing.  “Well, for one that is this tall (shake-hands-with-a-three-year-old gesture) it will be about Q300.”

“You would also need a place for the reception!”

And so on.  I ended up telling him that I would need to go to the bank to get money to pay for the things he needed, so please let me know what he wanted.

The excuses flew.  She is Evangelica, and wouldn’t want music.  Answer: Papatulo’s group can play evangelico music.    He would ask her what she thought about the reception.  Answer: call her – I need to know today.  I don’t have my phone.  Answer: Ingrid will let you borrow hers.  I don’t know her number.

You don’t know her number?  What do you know about this woman?

Her dad alternately was, then wasn’t, evangelico.  Bilo’s brothers have not met her, and do not know anything about the “wedding”.  She is known only as Alicia, and she lives in the next village over.  

Best guess is that he is lying, and providing us all with some entertainment for the week.  But he, too, is Evangelico, and we even asked if Evangelicos were not against lying as much as they are against drinking…

At least it has provided a welcome break (for both him and us) from talking about how terrible his work ethic is.  I will be interested to meet her.