As I write these stories, it sounds like I drank a lot of beer. I have never been much of a beer drinker, truthfully. I like the taste of it ok, but I really hate the feeling of being drunk. And three beers will give me an awful hangover in the morning. If you come to my house with a 6 pack, and there are two beers left when you leave, you can come back in 6 months, and those two beers will still be sitting in my fridge. At Peace Corps parties there was often beer available. But rarely did any of the volunteers drink to excess.

Beer, in Africa, had several advantages. It was pasturized, so it was unlikely to harbor bacteria, like most of the water available to you. It was palatable, once you got used to drinking it warm. It was available at most little shops, by the can or bottle. The African mass produced beers were pretty good. Lion, Timba, Carlsburg, Castle Stout (When in doubt, Drink Castle Stout!). In ZImbabwe, I had the best beer I have ever tasted, Zambezi Beer. It came in green bottles, and was often icy cold, which made it taste even more fabulous. I may have been tainted in my appreciation for it by the fact when I was in Zimbabwe, where it was available, it was bloody hot all the time, and after a day of sweating copiously, a cold Zambezi was heaven. 

But as I traveled after Peace Corps, the most important thing about drinking beer, was that it wouldn’t give me Giardia. I had Giardia twice while in the Corps. 

The first time was on Homestead visit, about 3 weeks into training. I must have drank something with river water in it, and the third day, I woke up at dawn with this one thought in my mind… GET UP AND GO OUTSIDE RIGHT THIS INSTANT OR YOU ARE GOING TO POOP YOUR BED!!! Galvanized into action, clenching my guts so as to not have premature expulsion, I leapt from the bed, and raced outside over to a clump of bushes, and barely got my pants down in time. The fecal stew shot from me at such a great velocity, that remembering Newtons Third Law of Motion, about equal and opposite reactions, I clutched a branch of the bush, promptly puncturing my palm on a thorn. It felt like I was going to take flight. I couldn’t imagine how all that stuff had been in me. As it passed, I felt like I was deflating like a balloon with a hole in it. I thought, “Holy Crap!” and it made me laugh out loud, at the absurdity of the expression, which pushed the last dribbles out of me. I went that day, and saw the medical officer who was staying with the big wigs in the Chief’s compound, and she gave me the Peace Corps Never Fail Cure for Giardia, Flagyl, to kill all the bacteria in your digestive system, and Bactrim, to put some healthy bacteria back in your system, so that you would continue to digest the food you ate. A day later I was feeling better. Not great, but better.

The other time that I got Giardia was at my school. It was exam week, and on friday, I was giving my last exam, recording the grades for the headmasters records, and heading into town for the two weeks break between semesters. On monday, I had been visiting some of the families of my students, and at one of the homesteads I must have drank some Orange Squash made with river water. Orange Squash came in a concentrate, and you would add it to a glass of water, to make a sort of chemical tasting orange-ish flavored drink. It was what you served to guests when they came calling. Tuesday morning I woke up with my stomach feeling unsettled. I got thru the day of exams, and went back to my house and rested, hoping things would mellow out. Wednesday morning I woke up with a temperature. I toughed it out, and drank lots of water while giving exams, and grading them, and recording the grades. I felt pretty crappy when I went to wake that night. I wish I could have said I had gone to sleep, but I laid there awake most of the night, my stomach rumbling, my burps tasted like sulfur. Thursday morning, I had a temperature of 101. I felt really sick, like I wanted to vomit all the time, and I had dairrhea. I gave exams in a haze, and went to bed as soon as I had the exams graded and recorded.

Friday morning I had a temperature of 104. My ears were ringing, and I had trouble focusing my eyes. I had stopped eating yesterday because I would just vomit it right back up. Water stayed down, with concentration, but seemed to go right through me and out the other end. Giving my last exams was a blur of distorted sound, fuzzy vision, sweating, and I knew that I was really sick. Somehow, I managed to get the grades recorded, and staggered out to the bus stop, to get the 12:30 bus into town. We had a flat tire, adding 45 minutes to the trip, meanwhile I was concentrating on clenching my guts, so I would not squirt into my pants and have to sit in it the rest of the way. I finally got into Mbabane about 5:30. The Peace Corps office closed at 6. I could barely walk, and my vision would not focus on anything, so I moved in a blur. Up the hill into the town center, and down the hill to where the Peace Corps office was. I was staggering. People were avoiding me like I was drunk. I arrived, at last, at the office building, where the Peace Corps office was on the 6th floor. I went in, and there was a sign on the elevator, “Elevator out of order, use stairs”. I had to concentrate to even read the sign. I groaned, and dragged myself over to the stairway, and used the handrails to pull myself up the 12 flights of stairs to the 6th floor, kind of moaning to myself as I slowly climbed. I was dizzy. As I staggered out of the stairwell towards the office door, CLACK! someone had just locked it from inside. It was 6pm. “Nooooo!” I moaned, “Nooo.” I threw myself at the door moaning Nooo, noooo, nooo, and weakly beat on the door. “Pleeeease let me in. Pleeeease! I am dying!” CLACK! The door unlocked, and opened, and I fell into the office. Fortunately Kiki, the medical officer had the lockup shift, and she quickly took me into the clinic, and gave me rehydration salts, and Flagyl and Bactrim pills, and drove me out to the volunteer hostel, where there was nice clean treated water, and put me to bed. I didn’t die, but I think I might have been close.

So, that is why I drank beer when I wasn’t sure of the water quality. Giardia sucks. I highly recommend avoiding it.

Trhoughout my time in Swaziland, I took lots of fotos with my Canon AE-1 camera. It was before digital photography was invented. So I was a common visitor to the Fast Develop counter in the Spar Mart. I could turn my film in, and get it developed in only two weeks. They sent the film to a lab in Johannesburg for processing. Most of the photos that I shot were of people. And when I got my prints back from the lab, I often gave them to the people who were in them. Nobody around my school had a camera. Nobody really had photos of their family. I kept the negatives, but gave the prints away. It made me smile to visit a family, and see the photos I had shot up on their walls. I did that as I traveled too. I would record the address where people got their mail in my journal, and mail the prints to them when I got the film developed. Knowing that they would get copies of the photos made people more open to letting me take pictures of them. I have a whole box of negatives in their plastic sleeves, that I always threaten to dig out, and make a coffee table book from.

Warm coke. It doesn’t taste very good. But it is liquid that won’t make you sick. Coke was available everywhere I traveled. Even a remote villiage I once stayed at had warm coke. Everything was brought in by pack mule, on trails. There were no roads. Yet there was warm Coke. The Coke in Africa was produced at a huge plant in South Africa. It looked and tasted just like what I could get in the States. Even the cans were the same. But warm, it fell below beer on the scale of enjoyment. Several notches below.

There was a nationally produced traditional beer in Zimbabwe. It was called Chibuku Shake Shake. It was made from corn, and was an ugly white-ish color with lumps. It came in a waxed paper carton, with red and blue writing on the front. For national consumption, it was pasturized, tho that didn’t help it taste much better. It was called Shake Shake because you shook the carton up vigorously, to bust up the lumps before you drank it. It was sour tasting, yet unpleasant. It would get you drunk if you could force down enough of it, and was cheap, which accounted for its popularity. You could even get a plastic family sized Chibuku Shake Shake container, which the people called Scuds, after the missiles that Sadaam Hussein was shooting all around in Iraq. It even looked kind of like a Scud. I tried it a couple times. It was not very good, and tasted just like the traditional Swazi corn beer, called Tjwala, that you could buy little plastic bags of the powder to make it from in the small shops all over. I didn’t drink it except when there was a circle of men folk, passing the tjwala bowl around, discussing the important issues of the day. It was served in a small black bowl, which the men could pass around the circle. And even then, I mostly just held it to my closed lips, and wet my moustache, and passed it on, so as to not be rude. Sometimes I would forget, and actually drink some. Ick. and I would remember to keep my lips closed. Until the next time that I forgot.

Beer. It’s not just for breakfast anymore.  

When in doubt, drink Castle Stout.