Hello everyone! I’ve been sick for a few days now with what can only be described as gripe rixu. Nearly every sickness imaginable here is referred to as gripe and many people pride themselves on their personal gripe cures. I thought I’d take the opportunity to share some of the remedies that I have been offered as my sickness as transformed from body pain and a fever to a sore throat and runny nose. Last Saturday, I had a fever and spent the whole day in bed wishing I had the energy to do something. The day was not entirely lost however because I was showered with kindness from my community and offered these cures for fever:
● Drink txeu (a lot of) fresh cow milk
● Make lemon tea
● Climb up the mountain, pick a weed that grows laaaaa riba (way up the mountain) and make a tea from it (As I was told this one, I couldn’t help but envision the epic hunt for the eagle eggs of Nacho Libre)
So after a few days of lemon tea, milk, and some non-aspirin fever reducer from my Peace Corps med kit, the fever was gone, but I was left with the same painfully sore throat that half my community has and a bunch of snot. That’s where the second round of remedy suggestions came in:
● Take a shot of hot (flaming is best) grog (local, barely refined, super forti alcohol made of sugarcane)
● more lemon tea, but this time mixed with sumu de tambarina (tamarin juice)
●Very bitter tea made from one of the grasses in front of my house… who knew that I was living on top of a natural pharmacy??
That’s when my landlord, a Cape Verdean woman who now lives in Boston, Massachusetts and is here visiting, intervened. She gave me her “bon remedi de America” – Dayquill, calling it the best medicine in the world and bringing my healing, cultural experience full circle.
Don’t worry, with all of the Cape Verdean remedies and a little help from my well stocked medical kit, I’m getting better and even have my voice back, which is convenient for teaching stuffed classrooms of teenagers! So who knows if it was the tincture from the mountain, the flaming grog, or the Dayquill, but Im glad to be feeling better! Love to you all and enjoy the picture of the mountain (actually the backside of the volcano) -home to the mysterious fever-reducing leaves!
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Glad you're feeling better, and happy to see you're rocking the Cal spirit!
ReplyDelete~Cindy
Good morning how are you?
ReplyDeleteMy name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys travelling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately it’s impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this I would ask you one small favour:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Cape Verde? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Cape Verde in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Calle Valencia, 39
28903 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours faithfully
Emilio Fernandez