Danielle Nierenberg: population and parasites.

• Author: Nierenberg, Danielle
• Position: WORLDWATCH FIRST-PERSON

It sounded like a good deal: an all-expenses-paid trip to Morocco, to take part in a reproductive-health study tour and accept a "Best Population Journal" award on behalf of World Watch from the Population Institute (PI). I would travel with the other 10 award winners from Mexico, the Philippines, Tanzania, Pakistan, Costa Rica, and Morocco, as well as more than 20 PI members, board members, and friends interested in reproductive health, family planning, and population issues. I'd be able to talk about Worldwatch's work on population and collect stories about Islamic Morocco's efforts to promote gender equity and greater access to reproductive health care.

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A few days later, trying not to throw up as our bus lurched through the Atlas Mountains--and thinking gravely about throwing myself under the wheels--it seemed just a tiny bit less wonderful.

This had to be more than motion sickness, or too much Moroccan wine the night before. It was, in fact, giardia, a nasty parasite picked up from dirty water. The symptoms--sulfurous burps, persistent nausea, gut-wrenching cramps, and diarrhea--appear 12 days to two weeks or more after infection, so I couldn't blame my misery on those dried dates I picked up at the outdoor souk in Marrakech. More likely, the culprits were an earlier trip to Mexico to look at factory farms, and my appetite for beans and tortillas.

Luckily, my seatmate was Dr. George Denniston, former associate medical director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and founder of a Seattle non-profit family planning clinic. George not only prescribed the medicine that finally killed the giardia, he also supplied a wealth of information about abortion procedures, sterilization, birth control methods, and a range of other family planning and reproductive health options. He also kept my mind off my troubles with a steady stream of even more painful jokes.

Other fascinating travel companions included Martha Swai, a quiet woman who dressed in beautiful African patterned fabrics. She was with us to accept an award on behalf of Radio Tanzania, which broadcasts a program about population and reproductive health issues to the country's rural population. Eighty-year-old Russell Hemenway, a member of PI's board, kept everyone laughing with tales of his days in the U.S. Foreign Service and...