It has been terrifically hot the last few days, but finally last night the rains came again and cooled things off significantly. Fortunately i had been out earlier to buy eggs, so I had all the stuff necessary to make pancakes, which turned out delicious and are serving as breakfast as well. There is no butter or syrup, but honey almost makes up for it.

But mostly I’m writing this post to report that my possibly mefloquine induced late night fears have returned. One night last week I woke up at 04:00. I had possibly been dreaming of that movie The Strangers with Liv Tyler. If you haven’t seen it, a few people in white masks terrorize and murder a young couple. My mind kept imagining one of them walking out of my bathroom with a big kitchen knife in his hand. Then last night I woke up at 02:00 thinking for sure there was a ghost or something and it was going to start throwing my things at me while I lay in bed. There was another night that I don’t remember well, but it involved hearing some kind of weird noise and distorting it and becoming freaked out.

The pattern is familiar, and while I reached a point in Forecariah when I was having these experiences where I was able to recognize them and wait them out, it has taken me a while to recognize this latest set. I wake up in a sort of fuzzy state of anxiety, thinking it must be morning, but when after looking at the clock wondering what it is that woke me up, which then leads to being afraid of whatever my overactive mind is conjuring up. Once I realize what is happening the fear becomes easier to rationalize, but it doesn’t really go away. There is nothing to do but wait it out.

Having never taken any medication for mental stuff and subscribing more or less to the idea of taking as few medications as possible overall, it is weird to see what seems to be a mental effect of the mefloquine. The Peace Corps is careful to tell us that reactions may be due to stress and the new environment and we can’t be sure that it is the mefloquine, mostly I think because they don’t want us to stop taking our prophalaxis. How does that chemical lead to no noticable changes (to me) except that I have these weird episodes of fear? It doesn’t seem like a chemical would have more of a blanket effect on behavior.

Anyway, I don’t mean to scare anyone. It seems to be only once or twice a week when it does happen, and it doesn’t really affect my day to day life. Since it doesn’t always happen, I am going to start looking at connecting factors. Maybe I only have an episode like this if I eat some specific food when I take my mefloquine pill or something.

On a completely different note, I forgot to mention that I received my first endorsement of “the little bit of crazy” over the weekend. Peace Corps volunteers have a reputation of being a little “off” after they return, and some older volunteers were saying they were beginning to see it in me. It seems to be mostly based in the excitement with which you talk about some things. In this case I was trying to describe why I had wanted a GPS recorder, so that I could make maps of where I had gone and what I had done. I think it goes back to how I was talking about being generally calm and happy, but having these sort of manic emotions that lay pretty close to the service. I think maybe its this that people are talking about when they mention the little bit of crazy.

It seems like a bit of a badge of acceptance, especially since the region of lower Haute is referred to by some other volunteers as “the pit of crazy.” It remains to be seen whether my stage of volunteers will live up to that name.