Mefloquine night: Thursday, January 27, 1994

[Note 2010: Before I begin...Tonight I discovered some additional artifacts of my life in Malawi. Some letters I'd written to my mother, photographs I'd sent her (see below), and a paper on education in Malawi that I had written for my Master's degree back in 1995. I asked my wife what she would prefer reading: theories of education in Africa or details of a Mefloquine dream? She laughed her head off. Mefloquine, that nasty anti-malarial give-you-every-horrid-side-effect-imaginable drug easily won out. Here's my dream.]

5:30 PM


I know, I know. I haven't been writing lately. And I still owe a lot of letters, too. I sent a tape off to Sam last week after receiving one from him. It was great to hear his voice - the minute I saw the package on my desk I darted with it to my house and listened to the tape. He sounded sad, though. I guess I can understand that.


I had a weird dream last night. Yeah, one of those dreams. I don;t remember much of it, but what I do, I'll try to relate here.


First off, I'd like to stress that my dreams are felt more than seen, that is most of the time I don't know what's going on but I can actually sense the emotions in my body as the scenes unfold in my mind.


I don't remember how things started, but I recall being adored and cheered at by huge crowds of people lining the streets of what seemed to be a big city. At first I thought I might have been in a car going down a street waving at the people, you know the way Santa Claus waves at the crowd during the Christmas parade. But after a while I felt as though I were in a helicopter with the door open and I was waving at everyone, wearing a big smile. It was a warm, comforting feeling.


The sound of a radio announcer could be heard through the streets (hey, don't ask me how) and he was mentioning how proud my brother must be of me at that moment. And just as he was saying this, I looked off to a skyscraper with the blue windows (maybe the windows were blue, maybe it was the reflection of the sky, but it felt sunny) and saw my brother wearing a blazer and tie, waving frantically at me. There's something about having your own blood being proud of you that puts you on top of the world.


So the helicopter whizzed by the buildings and sort of zigzagged up and under one of them only to put me at eye level with my mother, who was on a large balcony on one of the buildings. She gave me that motherly smile that just can't be imitated.


I'm sure there were other parts of the dream connecting that part to the next one I'm about to describe, but I can't recall them.


I was in a bedroom, and it was presumably the same day at around 3:30 PM. It was light in the bedroom, shades of white and blue around me. And then there was Janis [Note 2010: not her real name, but it was someone I knew in Malawi]. It felt as if this part of the dream lasted the longest for obvious reasons. We were fooling around on the bed, the windows open as well as the door leading to a garden. Within a few minutes our clothes were off and we [Note 2010: You know there are some bits that are best left unwritten]...Although I noticed she didn't like me sucking her [Note 2010: I'm probably driving you nuts. Sorry.] so I concentrated my full attention elsewhere. Time was a problem, though: it was nearing 4 o'clock, and for some reason I had to be somewhere for 4:02. Yes, I was going on the next space shuttle.


No, I don't know why, but I was confident that they wouldn't lift off without me. So it was back to a naked Janis, and I'm sure I must have been smiling the whole time during my sleep because she was gooood.

Posing next to a sunflower in front of my house,
a couple of days after one of many "Mefloquine dreams."

So whenever I'm actually enjoying myself the usual happens: someone knocks at my door. I open the door (I don't think I was wearing anything) and a peasant-like woman wearing drab-brown clothes and hanging her head down silently gave me a shriveled piece of paper. I told her to leave and sat down next to Janis and somehow came to the conclusion that the note was written by Phil [one of my oldest and dearest friends]. It was a message warning me of a spy who was after me. Yeah, sure: helicopters, naked bodies, a shuttle mission, and now a spy. The dream actually felt more real than the comic way it may be interpreted. At any rate, I left Janis and found myself on some rocks by the bright blue sea close to a shore not unlike the beach I was at in Montezuma [Costa Rica]. There was a helicopter on the water waiting to escort me to the shuttle. But I felt sad - I knew something wrong was going to occur on the shuttle, and I knew what it was. Again, I stress the fact that I feel things in dreams more than see them.


Sam was on the rocks with me, seeing me off. He didn't want to see me go, but he knew I had to. I didn't want to go, but I knew I must, even though I was going to die. I embraced him as the water splashed on the rocks beneath us and I handed him a folded-up piece of paper and told him not to read what was on it until after I'd left. He promised and I was off. What was on the paper?


"Jesus told me last night that the shuttle will blow up, but I have to go."


Postscript 2010: Whew. Mefloquine is nasty. As I mentioned in a previous entry, I don't know why my NGO told us volunteers to take those pills once a week in order to prevent us from getting malaria. I've vomited, gotten sick to my stomach, had headaches, one hallucination, angry behaviour, mood swings, and vivid dreams. The dreams were the most benign side effect. The website drugs.com lists no less than 31 side effects caused by Mefloquine. Four years of that stuff and I sometimes wonder why I'm still alive.


But as I mentioned, the vivid dreams were the most harmless of the side effects. The other volunteers and I would joke about our "Mefloquine nights" and the kinds of dreams we would have. This one detailed in my journal entry is one of the few that I took the time to record. There are obvious issues at play: acceptance from my family and a need to be praised, strong ties to close friends back home warning me of danger (Phil's note of a spy) or being with me in times of danger (Sam before the shuttle blows). Being intimate with someone, as I was in the dream, had not happened since my arrival in the country. But it was not something which preoccupied my thoughts (although my subconscious was obviously working on it). As for Jesus telling me to go jump on the shuttle, that one remains a mystery to me to this day. If there are any dream analysts out there, I'm more than willing to hear your thoughts.