The Silent Killer

This is a common topic among PCVs in this part of the world, but one that I have yet to address on this blog.  The silent killer of which I speak is called "The Current."  In America, we would call it wind.

Here, the Big C has taken on almost mythical proportions.  It kills, it maims, it lays the healthy low, and is the cause for just about any health problem from the common cold to a stroke.  [Seriously, another PCV's family insists that the reason half of their grandmother's body is paralyzed is because a few days before it happened she was outside and exposed to the air.]

This is more than just the typical American mother telling her child to bundle up before going outside to play.  This is closing all windows in cars and houses on the warmest days and nights.  This is wearing hats and sweaters when I'm dripping in shorts and a t-shirt.  This is wrapping babies in so many layers that even their fingernails sweat.  The Current is a deadly adversary against whom all must be on their guard.

I think one reason why the threat of the Current is so tangable here is that the other causes for illness are perhaps too difficult to face.  Why does Junior need an operation?  Is it because his mother can't afford to buy him nutritious food or doesn't understand that so much oil and fat and alchohol and candy are bad for his health?  Is it because the well water is unclean due to the proximity of outhouses?  Is it because the mercury in the house during the winter never rises above "I can see my breath?"  These possibilities (or probabilities) call into question the ableness of a
family or community to raise a child, a tough pill for any culture to
swallow.  Far easier, though ultimately less productive, to blame it on some some supernatural, omnipresent, and unstoppable force.

The recent upshot of all this in my life is that all modes of transportation (save my bike) have taken on a striking resemblence to a saunas on wheels.  There's rarely air-conditioning available, and if there is it is most certainly not on.  Windows are closed.  On public transportation, tiny sun-roofs that can be pushed up about two inches (for the very purpose of letting fresh air in, I might add) are quickly clamped down once a bus starts moving.  We're packed like sardines into these mobile steamrooms, most of us smell bad to begin with, and by the time we get out we're worse.

I think it's far more likely that people get sick due to breathing in everyone's germs in this sealed environment than from cracking a window.  But that's just me.  And while I do believe that eventually this belief will fall by the wayside, it certainly won't be during my two years of service here.  So, I just try to get a seat by the window or stand by the sun-roof and through the glares of "What the hell is he doing?!" and the occasional protest, I open a crack to let in just a little bit of our nemesis.  Our wonderful, refreshing, cooling, invigorating nemesis.

ps - How many people can you fit onto a marshutka (minibus)?  One more.