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Kata drank today!! it was amazing. she's drunk nothing for weeks. We had to dip sugar cane in milk and feed her drop by drop. A couple more days and she would be dead. Then she woke up this morning and drank a whole bottle full of milk!! It was like she suddenly decided she would live and now here she is, eating, drinking and putting weight back on her skinny little bones. I was so happy I almost started crying.
Now Lomela has her amoeba and is sick, but Mama Henriette says Lomela can afford to lose a little weight because she eats and drinks all day long.
As for us, we're doing great. Tory is nearly finished. Here she is with her 250th vial of saliva. Incredible. If she pooled all her spit together, I bet she could fill a paddling pool with it. Gross.
Lots of people have written to me about working in Congo. I tell them, make sure you can stand the bugs. This one of the spiders that live in our house. One night Tory walked into the bathroom and there were one million babies swinging from the ceiling.
And here is the GIGANTIC mamba snake, yes the deadly poisonous one, that Alan killed 20 m from our house. If Alan leaves here, I am never coming back. He kills, like a snake a week. The last time we were here he killed a baby gabon viper, yes the deadly poisonous kind, on our front porch.
I saw the snake, screamed 'Alan, Alan' and in two seconds like some kind of super hero he chopped its head off with a shovel.
Brian used to keep snakes as pets, so he is like, oh, poor deadly poisonous snake, isn't it a beautiful colour, what a shame to kill it. I grew up in Australia where anything serpentine will probably kill you, so I am like, Alan, come kill this mf.
