CHAOTIC NOT RANDOM FAN MAIL!

Well, not really. But I did get a letter from my second biggest fan on the African continent: Friend of Kilgore and Peace Corps volunteer Tim Shriver, who teaches English in Morocco. Tim wrote the letter on the backs of pages photocopied from the Peace Corps Handbook. These pages illustrate "Ways to Tell Whether a Home Remedy Works or Not". Among the remedies against which the Peace Corps cautions its volunteers:

• Smearing the brains of a vulture on a goiter does not work. Neither does rubbing the goiter with the hand of a dead child, or tying a crab on the goiter, or smearing human feces on the goiter.
  
• Taking a drink made of rotting snakes does not work to cure leprosy. Neither can syphilis be cured by eating a vulture.
  
• Smearing cow dung on the head to fight ringworm does not work, and can cause tetanus or other dangerous infections, advises the Peace Corps.
  
• If you are bitten by a dog, it does not work to drink tea made from the dog's tail.
  
• Putting powdered rattlesnake's rattle in the ear does not work to cure deafness.

Tim also has this to say about the role of religion in Morocco: "I don't even think about all the times I mention God in a day here. Whenever anyone asks me how I am I have to thank God... a greeting could conceivably go like this:

Hassan: How are you? Everything good?
Khalid: Well, my eardrum burst and is leaking blood, my youngest child had her arm bitten off by a dog, my wife left me for a leper, and I have a rare virus that will kill me in 24 hours.
Hassan: Thanks be to God.
Khalid: Thanks be to God.

Tim also advises that grilled stomach is good. Thanks be to God!

+posted by Lawrence @ 1/17/2004 10:00:00 AM