Jolts of pain shoot through my brain whenever I stand up too fast. The story my legs are telling me involves some sort of sprinted mile yesterday of which I have no memory. The closest to running I am capable of is the cramped and desperate fifty yard lope to the outhouse. It caused quite a lot of laughter among the night watchmen at midnight last night. And at one o'clock, and two o'clock, and three o'clock and even four o'clock, too. I was grinning sideburn to sideburn the whole time: never have I been this happy in a seated position.

On February 13, 1858, Burton and Speke became the first Europeans to see Lake Tanganyika. Burton had spent most of the journey from the coast swaying in a hammock between two native porters, too sick to walk. Speke was unable to see the lake due to a flare-up of opthomalia. He had spent his time in the hammock, too. Burton was taking only liquid foods because of an ulcerated jaw. Both lasted only a few miles into the return journey before themselves returning the hammocks. Pleurisy and pneumonia brought Speke to the point of raving delirium. At the coast, they convalesced for several weeks before the ocean voyage, Speke by boat for London before Burton, who needed more time to gather strength. When Stanley found Livingstone, the latter did not stride boldy from his tent ("Dr. Livingstone, I presume?") to firmly shake the hand of the dapper journalist. He was laid up with one of many recurring bouts of pneumonia, which would finally claim his life. Stanley was probably not feeling too well anyway.

Times like these remind me that with all that western culture has become rampantly materialistic, self-absorbed, and individualistic, our children do not die of diarrhea. Most the people I have met in Tanzania have no concept for words like "ambulance" and "emergency medical technician." It is western culture that brought into being that angel in distress, Nurse Adkins, with his wonderful chocolate flavored laxatives that (with the help of a mango or two) brought an end to a painful week of debilitating constipation, and all it's attendant side effects: nausea, weakness, chills, muscle aches, headaches, being bedridden.

So it is with great thanks that I sit humbly on the long drop, "driving furiously" in the local parlance, glad to be moving again, and grateful that although disease and ill health is an inescapable part of travel, there are knowledgeable people looking out for me. It's also with a humble realization that I sit here: all over the world people die of diarrhea. Constipation. Malnutrition. Simple medical problems that are unaddressed for far too long. Things that I laugh at. The solutions to these problems are one aspect of western culture that I am cheerfully and anxiously ready to export.