Don’t get hospitalized for a severe adverse reaction to a malaria prophylactic. If you do, find comfort in the fact that the drug’s other possible side effects occur in up to 25% of patients and include severe depression, anxiety, paranoia, nightmares, seizures, peripheral motor-sensory neuropathy, vestibular damage, central nervous system problems and suicidal ideation. So really, be happy about the piercing headache, nausea, vomiting and insomnia, because you’re getting off pretty easy.

Don’t get hospitalized for a second time because your symptoms aren’t going away even after a horse’s dose of IV ketorolac tromethamine. Don’t find out that the initial diagnosis was incorrect, that you’re not actually having a reaction to Lariam, and that it’s likely just a severe stress-induced migraine. Like, say, one you might incur if you were the only OLPC person on the ground in a country scheduled to deploy a quarter million laptops with the first shipment arriving in two weeks. Don’t subsequently spend a day having a bottle of IV fluid pumped into you — after the nurse took four attempts to find your vein — because you can’t actually keep down any food or liquids.

Most of all, don’t have a near-death experience in an Andean hilltop hamlet when you’re asked to help disassemble a VSAT satellite terminal perched atop a school roof whose sun-scorched tiles can’t withstand the weight of one person, let alone two, and particularly not when they’re carrying said VSAT terminal. Extra hint: don’t have the tiles start crumbling and breaking under your feet as you scramble maniacally to walk to safety without falling through the roof while also not dropping the antenna.

Oh, and don’t miss your flight to Uruguay because security holds you up for an hour and a half without any explanation whatsoever, allowing you to reach your gate exactly 3 minutes after the plane has left. Particularly when there are no other flights you can use for two days.

For fuck’s sake.