This past week sent me flash backs of miserable days in grade nine when my stomach knotted itself into a small ball and refused to unwind. On Tuesday Richard drove me home from work early after, as Clair says, I “sounded awful,” as the lunch I had eaten half and hour before came back up into the porcelain of the squat toilets. I spent the next two days laid out in bed moaning and feeling like an idiot. Jenna had gotten over whatever she had Sunday night and returned to work feeling fresh as a Daisy on Monday. That’s when my stomach situation started to deteriorate. I stayed away from bananas (not an easy task), I avoided avocados, I did not feel too stressed, and yet, my stomach revolted. Monday started out well. Jenna, Richard, and I conducted site visits to see how families were doing since Salama Shield had given them goats. The first women embodied the ideals of Mbuntu. When we arrived at her land Richard introduced her as one of the Snaga (aunts) in a program that Salama Shield had for youth. While she talked to us about how she had used the goats she sold to buy tin roofing material to build a sturdy house and school supplies for her children, Jenna and I noticed that there were children running around the yard. When we asked her about this she told us how the children were not hers, but her neighbours. She promised to watch them while their parents worked in the field. We also noticed another structure being put up near her house. When we asked her about this she said that she had extra space on her land and a recently widowed friend had no place to live. Because of this she allowed the friend to build a house on her land.
We saw a few more people before lunch then headed back. I ate at Jenna’s house and ate pineapple as I stared at the cute chickens clucking about in the yard. I felt wonderful up to that point, and quite thankful that my stomach had not given me issues… Two hours later that pineapple would come back up into a farmers patch of pumpkins. Though we stayed on the main roads, the afternoon drive felt more akin to off-roading than the usual drive down the dirt road. I also had to go to the bathroom. When we stopped I needed to stretch my legs, but found myself hunched over in a heap instead. I could feel something moving out of my stomach, but I could not tell which direction it wanted to head. As Richard scolded the father for not having taken care of his children’s gingas (paracites that live in fingernails and cause them to grow massive bumps) I had to run and yack. I walked down the dirt path to lie down in the truck. Richard thought that the sight of the nails undid my stomach, but it would have happened anyway. I lay in missiry the rest of the drive. Each bump caused my stomach to lurch and grown. It went beyond normal carsickness. As I walked home with Eliza most of the pain abated, and for most of the next day in the field it felt fine. Once again at lunch though it revolted and up came my lunch. When I came out of the stall I saw Claire standing in the doorway to the washroom. She had followed me down to make sure that I didn’t pass out in the stall. When I walked back to the room where everyone else had gathered Sandra had a cold Mountain Dew for me (I had said how I felt very hot), and everyone encouraged me to go home. Week and exhausted I agreed. I felt like a wimp, but I knew I wouldn’t be any help.
I spent the next day lying in bed. I read more of The Shinning than I expected to read up to that point, but my computer had low battery power, and I had too much energy to sleep. I felt ok in the morning so I walked down the street to buy a bottle of water then back to sleep. Chief (the six year old boy) also stayed home from school so we played a bit outside in the shade. At one point my 19-year-old brother returned for lunch and handed me a small little roll. He told me “this, this is Africa.” I asked him what it was. “Taste and you’ll see.” Skeptical I took a bite. It was rice wrapped in curry powder. I shared some with Chief then went in for lunch. My stomach felt fine until around 2:00 when it started to knot up again. When Agnes returned home at around 5:00 we took the five-minuet walk to the hospital.
The hospital terrified me. To be honest it looked more like a rundown train station than a hospital. The reception hall had walls on two sides and an off shooting hall. No doors, though, separated this room from the surrounding courtyards. Long wooden benches filled the waiting room, and people moved in and out in a hurry. Faded posters about the importance of getting checked for STDs and other diseases plastered the walls like wallpaper. I attempted to read a few of the ones in English, but many were only parts with the rest torn off. The nurse took a few minuets to arrive at the reception desk, and looked un-amused to assist us. She then in true bureaucratic style, took all the time she desired to draw new lines into the collage ruled notebook that served as the inpatient registry while my stomach growled. I nearly collapsed onto the floor from the heat and the pain as I waited for her to ask for my name.
That only complicated the situation. Addison. Seams simple enough right? Well in Uganda it’s not. Over the past two weeks I have come to introduce myself as Ari to save time in introductions. They think Addie is Ari anyway. I didn’t realize how odd my name was here until the nurse tried to write it down. “Name?” She asked. “Addison Kramer.” I then watched as she wrote down Edison. “No Addison,” I told her, “A-d-d-i-s-o-n.” “So two d’s” “Yes, no it’s an A in front.” She gave me a bewildered look. “A?” she asked. “Yes A.” She then went back and scratched out what she had written as I spelled my name again. The whole ordeal took over at least two minuets. Eliza later told me that when she called me later with Agnes’ phone she had saved me under Edison as well.
Once the nurse wrote my name down I shuffled into the hall to the left of the desk to wait for the doctor to end his session with the person in the office. That did not take long. Privacy in the doctor’s office did not exist. The door remained open (at the doctors request) as it had done for the person before me, and Agnes after me. I told the doctor of my stomach woes. He glanced at my prescription anti-malarial drug said, “this is making you sick take these instead,” and passed me a prescription. He said to come back the next day when the lab was open to get a malaria test. I then shuffled four steps down the hall to the pharmacy, handed in the note, then took a seat on the bench as I waited for my prescription to be filled.
As I waited my breathing increased, and my palms sweated from more than just the heat. A strange man looked at me and smiled. I smiled back. Another man stood less then five feel away from me with a cloth covering his mouth. TB is a common disease in my region. The thought that that man might have TB unsettled me and sent shivers down my spine. This fear only worsened as the man exposed the bright red backside to the white gauze. He proceeded to throw the rag into the garden out of the doorway he stood near. The red and white contrasting with the brown and green of the ground as it waited out in the open. For a moment I believed that the blood could have only been a cut in his mouth, but then he continued to cover his lover face; his handkerchief loosely draped over his nose and mouth.
I sat in a hot daze. I did not realize that the pharmacist tried to get my attention until the third time he called “Madame.” I stood and went to the counter. The pharmacist shoved three bags full of colourful pills into my face, along with one packet of malaria pills. “Take these three two every eight hours, and this every 12.” The eight sounded like 80, and when I asked eight or eighty he said eight(y). I asked three times then decided it was eight. Agnes picked up her drugs and we walked back home. My stomach felt better on the walk back, so I decided to sit outside with the family. The 19-year-old brother asked me to join him for a walk so I did. My stomach felt better afterwards and I managed to get a decent amount of food in for tea (a whole plate of eggs and tomatoes with onions). I had a bit for dinner, and went to bed feeling pretty ok.
The next morning I woke up with what I would image having a handover and the stomach flu would feel like (seeing as I don’t drink though I have no idea what a hangover actually feels like). I sat around for a bit waiting to ask Eliza if I should go to work or not. She told me not to push it and that was good advice. I slept on and off all day. Benen, Claire, Jenna, and Sandra stopped by around 10:30 o say hello. Sandra told me that my skirt and shirt that I had made the weekend before were ready and that Eliza would bring them home for me. It was nice of them to check in on me. Agnes came back in the early afternoon and brought me a cardboard pouch of milk to drink Doctors orders (she had overheard him say I needed milk and fatty foods for the malaria medication I decided not to take because I didn’t have malaria). Chief, who had been seated next to me, disappeared inside the house and when he re-appeared presented me with a straw. It felt good to sit on the side of the house in the shade on the cold cement, and drink my milk. I went back to sleep till around four then got up to sit with the family. I had started to feel better by the time Eliza had returned home.
On Friday I felt fine. In fact my stomach didn’t hurt above more than a dull ache all day. At work I attempted to work on the video project, but my computer didn’t want to work. After lunch (which I didn’t really eat) all the Mzungu visited the Salaama Shield (yes two a’s in the middle) Vocational school. I felt a bit hot and fatigued, but nothing too bad. The school looked nice enough to rival some schools in The States. The buildings still shone like new. We talked to a few students and were shown the grounds. When I told the second year students that I do athletics (track) they all went “ooo a sports girl.” Benon described the future of the school to us. He showed us where the teachers would live, where the students would live, and where the interns would live. The brick lying and carpentry students would help to build all the buildings. The students were in the process of building a school cafeteria at the moment. The school had tens of chickens and cows for the agricultural students. The spot that I envied, however, was the joinery students shop. It made me wish I could go back to my junior (grade 11) year and retake cabinet making. My stomach made it the long walk back (an hour) to Salama Shield, and in fact the rest of the night.
The next day the six of us mzungus piled into a full, but not yet crowded matatu to Masaka. For those who don’t know a matatu is a 15-person van taxi that travels along the streets from one spot to another. A man shouts the destination out of the window and you climb in if that’s the direction you’re going. For the seventy-minuet drive it takes to get to Masaka I spent sixty-five of it with most of my upper body out the window because of lack of space to fit it inside. The matatu was stuffy though so I didn’t mind too much. I did mind having to clench my butt cheeks for most of the drive, as I was smooshed between a large Ugandan man and the side of the car.
In Masaka we saw Richard one of our co-workers at Salama Shield. We said hello then wandered the city. We bought fabric for skirts at prices that even our Ugandan family members agreed were steals. After Jenna discovered that bookstores in Uganda are actually school material stores we tottered off to lunch. Being the fried food out mzungus we are we decided to eat at a restaurant run by a Danish NGO that served “American food.” I had yogurt made in house with muesli and fruit. We talked and laughed for two hours seated in the shade. We were the only people there. We decided that Jenna won for most interesting person. She couldn’t stop making us laugh. My stomach felt overjoyed to have a light and fresh meal inside of it.
Well until 2:00 anyway. Like every day except for Friday my stomach started to feel as if it were eating itself. We purchased some articles from the craft store they had then asked the waitress how to get to the hospital. I was in luck. The walk took around 10 minuets. The hospital resembled a university campus. Instead of a towering building there were smaller one to two story buildings scattered inside a gated area. Most appeared to be closed, and though I would not have considered my stomach an emergency, we went to the emergency ward.
It looked like a real hospital. Just inside the large double doors (they had doors) stood a large desk. The floors were linoleum, and there were hospital beds lined up against one wall. Because it was a Saturday the hospital had one nurse to triage all the patients who walked in. She came over to check on Courtney and I. Everyone else decided to stay outside. I told the nurse of my troubles, and that the other doctor said it might be the Doxy (my meds). “You’re taking Doxyand your stomach hurts?” Yes. She provided me with a simple answer. “You’re taking it on an empty stomach. That’s why it hurts.” She gave me instructions to take it on a full stomach half an hour after I eat. Whoever had told me that I needed to take it two hours after I eat had provided me with the incorrect information. Since Jenna told me the two-hour thing and not a doctor I didn’t argue. The nurse also wrote me a prescription for an anti-nausea medication and told me to consume plenty of fluids.
The pain in my stomach went away for the ride back to Lyantonde. We hired an eight-passenger van to take us back home for 1,000 more than a matatu. What a bargain! Not! Well it kinda was but the middle seat continued to be packed with people until seven people sat in the middle row meant for three. Lucky for the two of us who had to sit in the middle the row did not stay crowded the whole drive though.
I have not filled the prescription for nausea yet, but taking the Doxy at night has seemed to do the trick.
