Welp, it's 3:30 AM and I've been up for the past hour. Why? I suppose it's my turn to deal with The Gambia Revenge because I vomited twice last night. I guess 1.5 months is my quota for being healthy because shit just went down. I'll start from the beginning. Yesterday went a bit like this...
Woke up. Twas cold. Got ready. Stumbled into breakfast. I was smart and didn't eat the onions and sardines and instead opted for the bread and chocolate bread option. We had language class and it really dawned upon us hard that there's only 2 more weeks left of training and a MILLION things to do. Fuck. We have three assignments due by next Tuesday - I gotta take some kid's Mid Upper Arm Measurement to determine whether or not they're malnourished, plan a one hour class about hand washing for kids and young adults in grade school, and some draft of a community action plan. On top of that, our final language exam is in two weeks! We had a bunch of sessions after that and found out that it was our last time in Jenoi, ever. My village site mate Elizabeth is a saint and mobilized everyone to chip in some cash to give to the kitchen ladies because they are so good to us - kind of like what the Resident Assistant's do with the maintainers at the end of the semester. I scrambled to make a mobile of cranes and one of the PCVs who were helping lead one of the sessions had pretty origami paper in her bag! Talk about great timing. I also found out this SAME PCV - named Colette - is from Cape Cod and transferred to UMass for a period of time in the 2000s! What a small world! We bonded over the small Western Mass. town and I told her all of the new stuff happening there, haha.
The sessions we had all day were technical and pretty fascinating - we sorted through trash and weighed babies. First, we talked about how to sort/deal with trash and how it's such a huge problem in The Gambia and there needs to be more emphasis on reduce, reuse, recycle, and we learned about creative ways volunteers have adopted to reuse trash! Seriously, it's brilliant. I hope to be a genius like that but I don't even know how inspiration for those ideas even strike. It was smelly and dirty and we even had a dying mouse that we had to kill in the trash we were tasked to pick. Awesome. After that, we weighed babies and tracked their weight on this "Road to Health" chart which maps an infant's health through their first five years of life based on weight.
Lunch happened - it was some kind of rice with a vegetables on top. After we ate, Elizabeth and I presented the gifts to the kitchen staff and they were very happy and did a little dance. Impromptu dancing always occurs. I even got to the a picture with my favorite kitchen staff of all! I snapped a few shots of the training camp, walked back to the kitchen to grab a few pieces of watermelon, and finished up with a lesson about personal health and nutrition in the Gambia. As everyone was packing to go home, my stomach started feeling a little weird, but nothing urgent. I applied some Chinese medicinal oil on it and put my hand on my stomach for warmth (I think this is just what my grandma accustomed me to when I was a kid, so I feel like I'm perpetually rubbing my stomach like a weirdo). We stopped in Soma so that the trainees could get a road gift for our families since we haven't seen them in nine days!!! I got a sizable pack of milk biscuits from the toubab/foreigner store. Ida also went with me to go fabric shopping for the Christmas gift I'm making everyone because unfortunately she didn't get what pattern I wanted in Kombo. However, I will use the fabric she got me regardless, and you'll see how very soon. I ended up getting scraps of see-through silk, three strips actually (2 turquoise and one sunburnt orange) for 25D. Not bad! I hope it'll suffice. The origami stars I'm making are small and it's a cute little travel present. I did just realize I have to make, like, 300 more... but that'll be saved for days where I have to wait forever for a bus to pass time. It's very important you always bring a book or something to do while you're waiting for something, because there will be waiting.
I arrived back home and it seems like every kid in Jalanbereh materializes out of thin air to greet me. Many of the kids from my compound rush out of my compound to hold my hand and lead me back home. Everyone was yelling my name, saying hi, it was such a warm welcome to be home. I feel like they're my posse, and they're my little force field against unwanted male attention which I get way too much of in Kulari. Anyways, I said hi and distributed the crackers to my family but rushed inside because I was racing against the sun to unpack everything before it set. Unpacking was a success but my stomach is feeling less and less of a success with every minute. I intended to go outside to take a quick shower but discovered and INFESTATION of these ant things where if you squish them they unleash this acid that can chemically burn you in my goddamn pit latrine. If you can imagine the horror as you see the silhouette of a hundred big ants emerge from a hole in the ground where you're suppose to have your genitals near, but they're red and have the potential to chemically burn you, you can imagine my horror as I dump water down it in frenzy. I was stupid to do that and waste water instead of insecticiding the shit out of them, but I'll remember to do it later. The battle concluded in a stalemate when I realized the sun was setting and ain't nobody got time to shower at night while bugs collide into you from all sides. I decided to resume mass destruction tomorrow. My stomach is really, really queasy after dinner but as soon as I stepped back into my house, dinner was delivered. I took one whiff of what was delivered to me and felt an overwhelming need to hurl so I slammed the lid back shut and sat down with my hand on my stomach, rubbing that medicinal oil again. I bet I looked like a loser from outside because I was just hunched over in my one chair with my lamp spotlighting me.
After 15 minutes, I decided to go out and explain to my family that I didn't feel well, I'm sorry I can't talk but I want to rest, but they were all so excited to talk to me! I felt bad but that but that feeling wasn't as strong as the need to barf. I set my dinner down, walked back into my house, bee lined straight to the back door, and hurled. I swear to God I hurled at least 1.5 pounds out. I could see and smell my lunch, in fact it was the same color and the rice wasn't even digested. It's weird that I could smell it, though. I was having like an out of body experience just watching myself retch and if you ever played Diablo, you know those monsters that barf out little crawly monsters to hurt you - well that's what I felt like with my hair in my face and just hurling my life out. I was like a fountain spewing gross red half-digested rice. As soon as I finish vomiting, I look to my right and see my compost pile. I think, "Damn. Why didn't I just barf there? My vomit is organic...right?" So the next thing I do is call my PCVL/RAs and asked if vomit could go into the compost pile. Lo and behold it can! I mean shit I didn't want to waste a pound of rice, that could be used. So then I grab my shovel and next thing I know there's a sheet of vomit on top of my compost. I felt really good but I could never imagine myself in a small country in West Africa shoveling my own vomit into a compost pile at night. You know after you barf, you have this moment of clarity? Moment of health? Well, that happened, and I was almost crazy enough to go back out but I decided against it and got ready to go to bed. This is at 8:30 PM by the way.
I couldn't really drift off to sleep even though I was tired yet happy that I vomited and got it all out. I kept on laying, laying, laying there waiting for sleep to take me over but at 10:30 an arrow of nausea pierced me in the stomach and I wanted to barf. This barf-feeling could not be suppressed and try as I did, I ended up throwing up in my mosquito net, all over half my sheets and blanket. SWEET. Halfway through vomiting I managed to throw out everything I kept in a zip lock bag next to my pillow and dump my stomach contents in there but to no avail because of course there was a rip in the bottom small enough for all my vomit to drip through. And back onto my sheets. Needless to say I am a mix of confusion, sickness, and annoyance at that moment but I kept it cool, mostly because I didn't have the energy to do anything else. I cleaned up my tent by using the rest of my sheet and blanket to soak up all the vomit. I didn't want the rats or ants or whatever lives in my house at night to get all up in my vomitty sheets so I just threw it in my empty water bucket and put the lid on it. I was drained but realized I still needed new sheets but I only bought ONE sheet to Gambia... but guess what Ida bought me... two meters of fabric which I'm not using which is also long enough to extend past the length of my body. I threw the piece of fabric down, laid down, and went straight to bed.
I woke up at 2:30 and haven't drank water since my last vomit movement. Why? Because I didn't have time to wash my water filter and I have absolutely no reliable water source since the tap was broken. I'm thinking, "Well shit because I know I lost a metric boat load of electrolytes but I'm not dumb enough to drink well water at this point because I know my stomach can't take it... what do I do?"I decided to journal, forget my overwhelming thirst, and promised to call Ida at 4:30 AM before the 5 AM call to prayer and ask her to send someone over with some packaged water. At 4:30 AM I called Ida and was she awake? No. So I feel like shit for making her get up, on top of already feeling like shit, and she said she would deliver the water to me and to call the Peace Corps Medical Office. I dialed them up after that but they didn't respond. It took awhile before the Nurse called me back and I told her the scoop and they told me to keep them updated with my status.
Soooo I'm lying in bed, afraid to get up less I barf again, but I'm dying to pee. I don't feel queasy but I also don't want to risk elevating my body. At 6:30 AMish, Ida personally comes to deliver water herself, I ripped three packages of water and dumped it all into my three water bottles, had 1 liter of water and 1 liter of water with Gatorade. Ida was nice enough to communicate with them I wasn't feeling well, leave me alone to rest, wash my vomitty sheets after I rinse them through first, etc. She also got me a small cup of tea but all I tasted was plastic because it was boiling water in this small plastic cup and ugh it doesn't taste good but it was warmth in my stomach which felt nice. I drank through the plastic, showed Ida out, and went back to sleep for another hour. I woke up and decided it was time to get the rinsing over with. I don't know how I mustered the energy to do so, or the brain power to figure out how exactly I would rinse my sheets, but it worked and now I have even more vomit in my compost pile. I took the sheets out, health waning, told them what was happening and my mom noticed that my skin was hot. Great. They told me to go back into my house and that they'd make white porridge/congee for me, hell yeah. I went back into my house, sat, drank a lot of water, and waited for my breakfast to come. One of the ladies came into deliver it and actually returned my bucket which I had the dirty sheets in, which means they washed that shit right away. That was really sweet they were on top of taking care of me. She told me to eat it all and I really tried but my biggest desire was to lay down and sleep. I had a couple of spoonfuls before submitting to my bed again and she cleaned my place up a little, too.
I went to sleep for another hour until Elizabeth comes knocking at my door to check up on me. My head feels a lot stuffier than last night and I'm a bit dizzy but I let her in. She feels my temperature and determines that I have a bit of a fever, so I lie down while she gets me Tylenol and Ibuprofen and instructs me to drink water. She is such a mom and I love her for it because when you're sick in Africa, it's really nice to have a mother figure to be there for you. It's really funny because every time she gives me something I have to get up, unzip my mosquito net, go through another mosquito net, take the thing she wants to give me, retreat back into my first mosquito net, zip my mosquito net back up, and lie back down. It's pathetic, but there are no bugs getting through here. YOU SHALL NOT PASS. Elizabeth was a saint and took care of washing my water filter for me, instructed my family to fill my bidong up again because I used all the water in it to wash my sheets, and left to go to Ida's. She said she wasn't feeling well either, really achey all over. I wish I could do more but I couldn't.
I went back to sleep until 1:30 when Ida came to deliver me lunch. At first I didn't hear her and I think I scared her, haha. I got up to let her in but the smell of food reminded me of all my vomit last night so I didn't take any of it. She brought my breakfast congee out that I didn't finished and got me a tall glass of hot water. I put green tea in it and damn did it taste good. She left after checking up on me and she wasn't looking too good herself. Concern? Or just felt like shit? I couldn't decipher, I was too lost in my fever. I took the tea with me to bed and drifted off to sleep... only to be woken up an hour later because I felt like my butt was wet. My first thought: Fuck, did I pee myself? Because I'll be really upset. It turns out I didn't wet myself, I just spilled my tea. No worries, so I just take off my pants and resume sleeping. Half an hour later, the woman who delivered my breakfast comes to check up on me and tells me that my sheets are dry. I'm lying in my bed with panties and a tank top on and think, shit, since I threw my pants across the room and she was looking in from my window. I wrap the fabric I used as my sheet around me, got up to get the clean sheets, threw them back in bed, and went back to sleep. Fast thinking. Bless you Ida for getting me those two clutch meters of fabric.
By 4:00 PM, I wake back up and I'm drowning in my sweat. I deduced that either my fever broke or it was actually hot. It turned out to be both. I sat up and drank a bunch of water... and actually felt pretty good. That's a relative term. I was still hot and clammy as hell but had enough energy to wash my tent from any vomit shrapnel from last night. It was a success and luckily there wasn't much that tainted my tent. My energy reserves were just ending as Elizabeth walked over. I let her in and laid back in bed. She was happy that my fever broke but took my temperature anyways. It was just below the normal which explained why I felt dizzy and was a bit clammy. Right after she took my temperature she asks me who owned a fancy car in my compound and I said no one, but a minute after that, wailing broke out which only meant one thing - someone died.
SOMEONE DIED. While I'm feeling like death. This fricken timing is ridiculous. I gather 5 minutes for myself and watch as a stream of people pour into my compound and more women join in on the chorus of wailing. It is loud and can't be mistaken for anything else - it is all mourning. I finally receharged myself enough to go outside and ask what happened. They were all dropping the word "death" and the name "Bambo." I recognized the name but I never actually met the guy. I knew he was the son to one of my dad's two original wives (not my direct mom or namesake) since I wrote it down during my family tree assignment. As soon as the car started driving out, the gates to my compound closed and the women all gathered in a group, crying together. I was consoling them while Elizabeth went inside to call Ida. Elizabeth passed the phone to the person I was consoling and then told me Bambo was one of my brothers. He was completely fine in the morning and was out with his friends until he literally dropped down and died. I felt awful because I legitimately didn't know who he was! Elizabeth deduced it was probably an aneurism. Ida informed me that Bambo was born physically deformed and my family encouraged him to stay out of my way because they thought his physical appearance would scare me. Of course it wouldn't! But my family didn't know that. So, he ended up as my NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR who listened to music in his backyard and I've never been able to see him.
Anyways, I hit another wall and and to retreat back into my house. After 20 minutes, I realized the sun was setting fast so I went outside to dump a few cups of water on my body and went back inside in time to catch Ida. She explained the situation to me. They think Bambo was sick internally but was perfectly fine on the outside so no one suspected anything wrong. It was just a perfectly normal day for him fetching firewood in the morning, going to his friends house, and while they were talking he just collapsed and died. The way death is so incorporated into every day life here is disturbing. It's literally a part of the circle of life. While my health is returning, my next door neighbor dies. While a child is born, another dies. It's hard to wrap my head around because it's so sobering. I even feel detached from it because it just happens all the time and it's absolutely awful. They absolutely mourn here for the dead but the body's usually buried before sundown on the day that the person passes, and life goes on. It goes on, albeit solemnly, but it goes on. In the States, if someone passes, it lingers on and the body usually isn't even buried until a week later. I'll have a deeper post about death in The Gambia and my feelings toward it later.
Ida told me to call the Med Office to update them, which I did. Both she and Elizabeth were on their way out since it was getting dark fast. As I was waiting for my dinner, Elizabeth ran back because she thought she left her keys in my house but it turns out she took mine, had hers all along, and had to run back. My dinner came and I felt bad they still had to cook for me even though there was a recent death. Crying would break out here and there, and I could see a queue of flashlights ambling in and out of my compound as both the men and women prepare for the funeral. One of the women came to deliver my dinner but as soon as I peeled back the lid, I saw a flurry of black specks all up in my congee and a twitching ant. I totally didn't blame them but I took the dinner back out and crashed in bed once again. This time, I fell asleep for 8 full hours and all I could hear while I drifted off was very abnormal silence that fell over my compound.
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