ETHIOPIA: Agony

What was I saying about “national food”? Forget all that. I am just getting over a bout of food poisoning or “traveler’s diarrhea” as it is known in the third country. Symptoms include diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, and cramps. Yup, I had the whole magila. It was the most miserable agony I have ever been through. And it’s only one week into my trip. Goddam, this better not be a weekly occurrence.

It may have been caused by a combination of altitude sickness (Addis is about 8000 ft above sea level), dehydration, and bad lamb. I’m fingering the lamb as the main culprit. (Yeah, vegans, I know you are saying I get what I deserve. Wednesday is supposed to be “fasting day” where restaurants have vegetarian options. I asked and they did not – in fact all they had was lamb or raw meat. But I am staying away from lamb from now on. Baaaaaa-d news.)

So Thursday morning I wake around six and have it coming and going. I took some Imodium to plug up one orifice, which worked fine, but this seemed to make the vomiting worse. I was doubled over; my gut felt like a clenched fist tightening and tightening its grip. Now, I am staying in Mr. Martin’s Cozy Place, a guesthouse, or a single room hostel, with shared bathrooms. It’s $12 USD/day and run by a tall, bald, genial German man. (“Hello, I am Mr. Martin” is how he introduced himself. Say that to yourself with a stereotypical German accent, like the Germans who bought Mr. Burn’s nuclear power plant, and you have him down cold.) Needless to say, a shared bathroom is not ideal for these circumstances. Added to the agony is now a worry that when I run out of my room across the hall, the bathroom will be occupied. Which did happen once much to my chagrin. Also, I felt that, as a shared guesthouse, decorum demanded that I be properly dressed when I scurried to the bathroom. So I’d have to put on shorts or pants before skitching out the bedroom door. This all made my agony worse. I am tempted to go into more detail about that agony but will not. To read other stories that highlight my preoccupation with toilet blog stories see here and here.

As can be seen from the repeated references to my agony (and there are more to come) I’m a big baby when it comes to this type of sickness. I lay in bed for hours, when not in the bathroom, curled up in the fetal position, wishing my mommy were nearby. At one point I realized, simultaneously, that I needed to fill up on fluids and that my lower back was killing me from lying in bed so long. Due to the location of the back pain and the worry of excess dehydration, immediately I had a vision that, perhaps, I would succumb to renal failure. This then led to a cascade of thoughts about what would happen if I did: Who would find my body in my room? How long would it take for my family in NY to be notified? Would the airline honor my return ticket or would new passage for my corpse need to be arranged? Maybe I would be cremated in Addis and my remains placed in a tight-lidded, handsome, Ethiopian pottery piece, as that may prove cheaper than sending my body back. If my ashes were disposed of this way, where would my parents place this pottery in their house or would they just dig a three foot hole in Calvary cemetery, and dump my ashes in, all the while hoping that it is not a windy day and my ashes don’t spread everywhere like in The Big Lewbowski.

This is just to point out how much agony I was actually in, that perishing from renal failure was more of a comfort to me than dealing with my immediate suffering. But these thoughts did make me uncurl from the fetal position and in the slow deliberate manner that only drunks and the sickly can manage, I rousted myself. After more agony in the bathroom, I drank some sugar-laden tea and an Orange Fanta and a bottle of water. I then took my prescription Cipro, which I did not want to use so early in my trip, to alleviate my agony. I slept again. Upon waking I felt slightly better, in that I did not run to the bathroom, and then drank some more tea, another Orange Fanta, and ate two bananas, which blessedly stayed down. (The bananas were recommended by a “traveler’s diarrhea” brochure, although in the back of my mind I thought the potassium would also stave off my impending renal failure.)

I’ll say this, Orange Fanta never tasted so good. In fact, the Fanta girls came and danced in my dreams that night. For those who have seen the annoyingly, cheesy commercials featuring the Fanta girls, you realize that this is only a slight upgrade from wishing for renal failure, but it was an upgrade I was willing to embrace at that time.

Day 2. Woke with a super duper headache and an empty stomach. Continuing my Cipro treatment. I had a breakfast of bananas and rolls, which I considered safe food. Still feel wiped out. Whatever I had took a lot from me. Then had a lunch of spaghetti with tom-ah-to sauce, a very spicy sauce and some bread. The Traveler’s Pocket Doctor book mentions carb-loading in these situations. And thanks to Mussolini’s Revenge, where Italy invaded and occupied Ethiopia in 1936 there are many fine pasta places around Addis. Soon after lunch my headache subsided somewhat and I feel I am on the way to a full recovery. I can live with a headache better than having my stomach buzzing like a junebug trapped in a burlap sack. Just have to remember to continue my fluid intake. So I think the agony is behind me.