Bone-itis

I don’t know if I’ve talked about this much yet in the blog. It seems like I’m always talking about it, so my memory tends to get a little hazy. Regardless, however, I’m fairly certain that it’s impossible to over-emphasize the point. Winter in Freedonia is cold. Damn cold.

They like to ask us what our expectations had been of Morocco before we came, and I like to answer with something along the lines of how I had tried incredibly hard to not have any. This is true, but that doesn’t mean that I succeeded. And one area in which I failed to not have any expectations is with the assumption that while living in a country significantly closer to the equator than where I had previously been I would not be concerned with the lower half of the thermometer. When we arrived, however, our program directors cheerfully explained that Morocco is “the cold country with the hot sun.” There has never been a better description of anything in the history of describing things. When the sun is out – even in the winter, even here in Freedonia – it’s hot. We’ve had a few days here in the past weeks when I’ve worn a long-sleeved shirt only because it’s a little inappropriate to wear short sleeves. When the sun isn’t out, however, because it’s raining, nighttime, or simply because a cloud has temporarily moved in front, it’s cold. This can be especially true indoors. It can also be especially true in Freedonia.

And what happens, as I’ve learned from speaking with other volunteers up here in the northern mountains and from my own unfortunate experience, when exposed constantly to this kind of cold (remember what I said about houses – they’re more-or-less the same temperature as the outdoors with the only differences being the presence of blankets and furnaces), is you get chilled to the bone. Literally. Your bones get cold, and this causes them to create horrible red rash-like manifestations on your hands and feet. It looks like eczema or similar everyday dermatological problems, but it’s not. It’s your bones being cold. Your bones. Usually it itches, and when you’re particularly unlucky, it just hurts. Other times, you can’t feel it at all – in a good way, not in an advanced-stages-of-frostbite way.

I’ve taken to referring to this condition as bone-itis, and I’m fairly sure that this is the correct clinical name (for more information on bone-itis, see Futurama, season 3, episode 21, “Future Stock”). And what’s the prescribed treatment? Spend four days somewhere warm. Good luck with that. This means that I can most likely look forward to several more months of my bones being cold enough to cause epidermal irritation and my hands exhibiting that look of general decrepitness you’d expect from octogenarians.

There is an upshot, however, to all this cold. Word has it that the summertime in Freedonia is paradise on earth, made even more so by the tales of volunteers in the south sweltering the season away, having to pour buckets of water on their beds before they can sleep. That’s the sort of vision that carries me through the long cold nights.
My only regret is that I have bone-itis.