February 10

Reguince woke me up several times in the night- at one particularly bad moment he yelled "merde' several times before jumping out of bed with a lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth and switching on the overhead flourescent-

He admitted being unable to sleep- he could only think of the walls caving in, the ceiling falling toward him; the vibrations of the overhead ceiling fan felt like aftershocks- (illustrated by standing, crouched, legs close together, shaking arms and torso- like charades for "really freezing cold" x10) visibly rattled, reguince diverted us with a creole lesson- vocab; body parts, leg foot ears eyes...

After going thru the alphabet three times (once each, spanish, English, creole) I begged off to sleep.
I don't think reguince slept at all- I heard him rustling all night- and the occasional waft of tabac menthols.

At one point the tv was on and he was blasting our theme song "prisoner" by Lucky Duby. It occurred to me that reguince was a horrible travel companion, and then I saw that it was just after 7am- he was softly waking me at the appointed time.

We traveled to the hospital in the capital- another four hours or so it seemed..

Reguince was overjoyed to see the fam- more on the hospital and conditions later- I have to sleep now