I have been home for a week now and the African adventure truely came to an end tonight as I took my final malaria pill. You have to take them for two days before the trip and a week afterwards. There were 23 pills in all and over the last three and a bit weeks these orange pills have served as a kind of countdown. Each pill meant another day of the experience was gone and that another day of my life had gone with it.
On the positive side at least I probably haven't got malaria ,though this week I have taken my pill late three times - if these were contraceptive pills and I had had sex and had a womb I could be pregnant now. It's a chilling thought. So close. Only three parameters away from disaster. As it is I might just die, which isn't as bad obviously.
But this week seems to have flown by without me even noticing it and it got me thinking about how we measure our lives out sometimes. Pills are a good way to spot the passage of time which might otherwise go unnoticed. I take Welman Vitamin Pills each morning and they come in a foil pack of 15 pills on each sheet. This foil sheet gives you a very good visual reminder each day of the countdown to death and each time you have to get a new packet out you realise another half a month has gone by. Each empty compartment is another empty day. Time goes by so fast. And if you're full of vitamins the hours just seem to go even faster.
It wouldn't be so bad if you got the correct number of vitamin pills at the start of your life, so you could have the passage of time in more perspective. If you could see how many more there were to go you might buck your ideas up a bit - or maybe I guess if there were loads of them you might actually get less done, so it's only a good idea for those who will get taken young. Also if this is how life worked and you had to eat all your vitamin pills before you died, then you could just accidentally on purpose forget to take the pills some days thus extending your life. Though of course what kind of a life would you have without all those vitamins swimming around in your blood stream. Do not try and trick fate. It will win in the end.
