Day six - Monday

March 26

Today I stayed in my room in my bed. Two of doctors in our group produced some tramadol and urged me to take it – good pain killer, as I recall, a narcotic substitute.  But I had all the side effects of a narcotic.  The itchy nose and scalp occurred within thirty minutes paralleling the reduction in pain. At three hours, the pain is markedly diminished but the contents of my stomach came up once, twice and three times. Apparently, these side effects become reduce if a person continues to take it so I have a choice before me: will I endure the pain or is the pain reduction enough to theoretically endure decreasing side effects?  I'm concerned that my doxycycline may have been in the stuff that “bounced” up.

With my room mate, I worked on a letter from the president of the Swiss IPPNW affiliate to our African colleagues. And learned some of the vagaries of the German/Swiss languages. Sentences can run on forever, “you” is capitalized when being used formally and almost all nouns have “the” in front of them. Together we were able to turn a good letter into a fantastic one-pager.

And I began working on the grammar of a pamphlet made and translated into English by a young French woman.

Two went to the left-wing news conference and come back saying that they hadn't learned much except there was to be a pro-coup demonstration in the afternoon and that the parliamentarians used the word “révision” a lot (Indian non-French speaker reporting). They felt that prudence dictated a return to the hotel before the streets filled – if they did indeed fill. The looting of the presidential palace was presented as a positive action.

Tonight our Indian friend directed volunteers in the creation of a dangerously good tasting East Indian meal with minimum spices. (I couldn't be feeling too bad if I could appreciate the taste!)

The streets sound quiet. News arrives that an airline will be landing at 2:00 am with final destination Morocco so the usual scramble ensues to get onto it. My roommate and the prez pack up and leave only to be stopped by yellow ribbon barricade guarded by soldiers. Another failed attempt. There apparently have been a number of flights which have landed but the pilots have declined to take off.

Rumors state that there is a Brussels flight on Wednesday but the news from the German embassy is that Brussels Airlines will not be flying so Bill and I have asked the Canadian travel agency to book me on Sunday, April 1^st and hope that April Fool's doesn't interfere.