TB and Other Paranoias (Sickness, Disease, and Sexual Repression)

i mention in my last blog my brush with medical personnel and their advice regarding malaria pills, etc. now i'll finish describing a few of my strongest paranoias while living abroad.

the american nurse, like most other american doctors and nurses (being either paranoid or prudent), gave me a two booster shots for measles, mumps & rubella as well as tetanus to prepare me for this trip to the tropics. then they gave me some 'literature,' which ...i'm not kidding... is 15 pages long and has sobering titles and subtitles such as 'avian influenza H5N1,' 'rabies,' 'crime,' 'terrorism,' and everything else that would prevent someone from coming to this country. in one section it actually suggests bringing one's own syringes, 'just in case of emergency' so as to avoid contracting hepatitis!

one section that really got my attention, though, was the TB section (of course i read the whole report cover to cover). when i went to latvia five years ago it was still considered a 'big' problem there, meaning that a few dozen cases were reported each year. an american friend of mine used to 'protect' himself by putting up his coat collar so as to avoid contact with the TB-afflicted while we stood in queue at the post office or cinema anytime someone coughed behind us. that made me laugh out loud. but now i'm not laughing.

according to this source, india has 'a prevalence of over 100 cases per 100,000 population, the highest WHO risk category.' that's a lot of people walking around with a chronic cough if mumbai consists of 14 million by day! it then notes: 'travellers should avoid crowded public places and public transportation whenever possible.' (how is this physically possible!?) later on i read that if i hear someone with a 'rasping or chronic cough,' i should immediately move away from that person. i'm going to try not to freak out about this, but instead perhaps see it as a kind of game or challenge until i manage to forget that statistic.

disease is fairly common, i suppose, given india is a developing country. i don't know if cockroaches actually do carry disease but i think they do in some microscopic way. rats do. piles of garbage, mosquitoes, the drinking water. so i'm surrounded by disease and remembering my danish supervisor's advice from jakarta. she said that if you take it in small doses, you should be fine the day you actually ingest it by mistake. so she brushed her teeth with the tap water, to the bewilderment of our scandinavian colleagues. but i didn't purposefully brush my teeth with the tap water here the other night...i'd just forgotten that i wasn't brushing at home.

finally, a great personal fear involves male behavior rooted in sexual repression. two years ago in jakarta i was walking on a 'safe' sidewalk at dusk (just outside of the UN building). i was distracted by a text message when suddenly, i felt a hand on my breast. the guy walking towards me had reached out, under my very conservative jacket (i was actually totally covered....since it's a muslim country), cupped his hand around my right breast, and squeezed. i thought, MY GOD! what friend is that? b/c he has a sick sense of humor! but when i turned around i saw it was not a friend, but a stranger. he wanted to cop a feel when no one was looking. but it was really probably the most disturbing sense of violation that i had ever experienced and i felt ashamed to be so angry about it (when many women get raped every day for no reason). well, this story happened again: yesterday. but this time it was not a man...it was a posse of 8- and 10-year-old boys! yes. i got felt up by a bunch of school boys, on a public street. this time, i was distracted by a toasted cheese sandwich which i was eating.

i was walking down the street from a flat i'd gone to check out when i passed a small group of what seemed to be innocent schoolboys. as soon as i approached they almost crept forward towards me, but then leaned in even more and then gently but quickly each put his hand on my breast (one one the left, two on the right, taking turns of course). it was too advanced to say that they hadn't done it before. but i realized my mistake: through my white linen shirt you could vaguely see the trace of a white bra. so i will def not be wearing that shirt /bra combo again while i am here, unless adorned by a scarf that covers my torso. and i will not walk down the street while simultaneously eating a sandwich.