Pure. Bliss.

I killed it!  (Knock on wood)  I remember I was at my friend Sergio's site in August and I told him "I got something today, but I'm going to the doctor next week so I'll just deal with it then."  I had gotten stomach bugs before and the feeling was familiar.  The doctor gave me pills even though the tests came back negative.  They didn't work.  I wasn't debilitatingly sick so I put off figuring it out.  The tests in January came back negative and the doctor told me I was "healthy".  Wrong!  So I took some over the counter pills that cleared out everything.  Which was exhausting but effective!

The theme song of today goes something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvY7Nw1i6Kw

I feel remarkably better.  I shouldn't get too excited, it's only day 4, but I have so much more energy and I'm not feeling nauseous multiple times a day.  It feels like a gloomy cloud has been lifted.

The majority of the people I work with will contract these preventable illness multiple times in their lifetime.  They will loose time working or learning because they are too ill to do so or too ill to do so effectively.  When you work as a subsistence farmer, less days working means less food for your family, less food means less energy, less energy means less work.  It's quite the cycle and we didn't even add in the down pouring rain, the crippling heat and sun, or the steep hills that are climbed on foot because there simply aren't roads.  Life here is hard enough without being sick.

I am very thankful to be feeling so good (i.e. normal) but it's also a reminder of the importance of the work that we do everyday to educate people on their health as it relates to water and sanitation and to help them build and maintain the infrastructure required to consume clean water.  Seguimos.

Good bye, old friend.  And good riddance!