The Landlady and the Home Remedies

This may come as a surprise to you, dear reader, considering I'm such an intrepid and fearless traveler, but I get sick a lot. I'm not quite sure why. Perhaps it's the climate, or the microbe-infested dust that is everywhere, or the fact that I don't get enough sleep and am stressed out most of the time. Whatever the reason, I get sick a lot and have local people fuss about it.

My current illness is less than a week old, though comes less than a month after my last cold. It's probably just a cold, or some sort of virus that just has to work itself out, but it's got the locals panicked. My co-workers are besides themselves with concern. They insist that my apartment must be cold, and that's why I'm sick. [Please keep in mind that it still is in the mid-70s everyday... not exactly cold.] They bustle around and force me to drink black tea, because green tea isn't good for you when you have a cold, and buy copious amounts of milk whose “biotic qualities” (whatever this means) are supposed to cure me. It's all wonderfully thoughtful, but needless to say, I'm still sick.

Yesterday my landlady came over. She has tended to do this more and more lately, calling me up with 15 minutes' notice to inform me that she's in town and is going to spend some time pretending to fix things in my apartment and, hence, will be spending the night. It's annoying, but not the end of the world. My Peace Corps-honed flexibility and patience allow me to shrug off this frequent invasion of privacy and get on with my life. At this point, the problem isn't that my landlady is in my apartment. The problem is that my landlady is in my apartment and knows I'm sick.

To fully understand the dreadful situation this puts me in, you have to understand how much people love home remedies in this country. The minute anyone finds out you're sick they're suggesting you drink vodka with honey (or salt, or pepper, or dill), inject yourself with various medications, buy a very specific kind of herb sold by a certain lady that has a stand on this certain street and if you leave now she'll probably still be there, soak your feet in milk, drink raw eggs (and yes, they have to be raw because they lose their healing properties in the cooking process), go visit a fortuneteller, etc.

And when people here suggest a home remedy, they mean business. Anything less than immediate use of their remedy is unacceptable. None of this “thanks for the idea, I might try it later” crap. I tried that once tonight with my landlady, tried to quietly brush her suggestions aside and get on with my evening. Nice try, American, you will use their home remedy, and you will like it. So here I am, sitting on my bed typing up a training accompanied by a plate of freshly sliced onions and a clove of garlic that's on a string around my neck. The onions are for my sore throat, and the garlic is supposed to “heat up my chest” and stop my cough. All I can say for home remedies is that 2 hours in I feel exactly the same as I did pre-home remedy, but smell quite a bit more foul.