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Published: July 27th 2009
In BOD we trust
Lions on TV & cold beer in the fridge. Marvellous!We made it to Addis, but then the problems really started!
On the Tuesday night we (Sara, Allan, Clare, me) and a lady called Jill - who does the weekly homeless person food run in Addis; and is quite famous for it - all headed off to the Armenian resturant in Arat or Sidist Kilo (I can't remember which).
Food was great but my guts spent the next 5 days fighting a running battle with something nasty trying to get a foothold in my digestive system. Just like the Great Doxy vs. Corner Bar Sambusa battle of last year, my belly was playing music all day ("is that classical or modern music?" the Ethiopians say when someone's tummy plays a tune 😊
Sara was not so lucky.
Oh-dear-oh-dear-oh dear.
Not good.
The world just fell out of her bottom Starting Wednesday evening she was horizontaled. Nasty stuff emerging from both ends in a rapid and uncontrollable fashion.
No sleep for either of us on Wednesday night and no improvement in Sara all day Thursday - and we had a 12 noon flight to catch back to England the following day.
Al & Alex
My Romanian buddy at University in Canterbury Uh-oh!
She was getting more and more tired and dehydrated. Anything I gave her (we are taking doxycycline for anti-malarials) - pills, water, porridge - just reappeared again 30 seconds later.
All of this was conducted without electricity!
(It's 4am. It's pitch black. It's not your house. You have to find and light a candle. Then get to the bathroom....and you have 10, 9, 8, 7 seconds...)
In the end I had to press the panic button and involve VSO - who were excellent.
As Sara could hardly stand up, let alone walk, Tamrat came to pick us up and we were whisked up to see the doc at the British Embassy (the 20 square mile compound with a 6 hole golf course and huge ancient tortoises pottering about in super slow-mo. I think I mentioned it about, oh, 65 blog entries ago?)
The doctor was equally businesslike. Syrup for the vomiting. Blood test for malaria. Stool test for microbial infection. Lots of water with rehydrating salts (we discussed a drip but with a flight coming up that might have been tricky).
Once she had stopped vomiting and took on some water
Alex, Skinny Sara and a Diet Pepsi
Had forgotten what Diet Pepsi tasted like!! (Stella tasted better ;) she started to look less like a ghostly rag doll and more like a human being.
The tests came back. No malaria but an unidentified bacteria that could be eradicated by these antibiotic horse pills that gave my journeyman pro doxy pills a serious inferiority complex.
We should say that in general our life in Ethiopia is much healthier than our life in the UK.
We don't drive anywhere, we walk (well we take the odd Bajaj tuk-tuk), we eat freshly made, locally grown food, the air is better quality - Addis excepted - and we drink much less booze. In fact my blood pressure readings are perfectly normal over here. As soon as I go back to the UK, the processed food, additives and lifestyle redline it in a matter of days.
That said, when you get ill in Ethiopia you REALLY get ill! As Sara was QEDing.
Getting Jigga with it While she was waiting for the tests to come back, lying on the clinic bed, I suggested she got her dodgy toe looked at.
For the last few weeks she had been watching this bump on her middle right toe
My old pal, Mr Whippy
E-Number I up, landlord! get larger and develop an impressive white head. I had suggested it might either be a 'toe zit' (you can tell I studied microbiology at university) or some interesting fungus.
Assosa is the home of good fungus and when you are on broad spectrum antibiotics as anti-malarials they stop your 'good bacteria' from giving them fungal spores the good news.
You fight a constant battle with weird and virulent strains of athelete's foot - blasting them fungi with a range of sprays, powders and creams to keep the suckers down. Many locals have fingernails warped and ruined by fungus. The kids continually swap different forms of head fungus. Adults come in to the office and ask me if I have anything for this (strange white ringworm thing) growing on their shoulder.
Quite reasonably I suggested she give the bump the good news with our arsenal of anti-fungals ;but after a month or so of chemical warfare the bump seemed to be thriving.
Not wanting to bother the doctor with additional medical burdens Sara was reluctant, saying she'd see a doctor in the Uk, but I suggested that if it was anything weird and wonderful, your man
Hastings Fishing Fleet
Salty old sea dog in the middle ground... here was more likely to identify it than a family GP in suburban Bristol.
She finally consented and the good doctor took one look, scratched his beard, asked where in Ethiopia we lived and said "Hmm. Assosa. Well, it looks like a jigga worm"...
A whatta worm?
After some debate in Amharic with the medical nurse, he slid on some latex gloves, produced a fresh syringe and began digging and stabbing around in Sara's toe.
Satisfied he'd got the wriggler, the Dr called me over and showed me a hole, out from which a thin trail of white eggs was slowly dribbling...
He smiled and congratulated us on asking him. There was no way Doc Smith from BS16, Bristol would have ever identified that; not without the help of a tropical diseases laboratory!
Ok, let's just get the hell outta here Still, jigga worms were the least of the worries in Sara's world. Temporarily back in the saddle, we got her home to the the Gin Palace and I tried to nurse her through packing her bags, continuing to rehydrate with water and keeping her antibiotic horse pills down.
She was now
Grime on the ancient mariner
Three baby albatross nesting in the foc'sle completely exhausted after over 48 hours of non-stop vomiting/diahorrea and just drifted in and out of sleep.
Saying a few prayers that she'd make it for the flight tomorrow I went to bed too, having just finished marking the last of the 57 English exams and running as many of the pre-departure errands as I could manage on my own.
Come the morning Sara was hardly in any better state. She had kept the antibiotics down but still couldn't eat and even the anti-nausea syrup was making her retch.
Somehow we got packed, down to a taxi outside the mosque near Allan's house and into the airport. For the next 3 hours she would slump into a nearby seat before darting in and out of the bathroom and putting on a brave half smile every time we had to make contact with an airline or customs official.
I knew that once she was on the plane we were home and dry.
We were going to Chris and Sue's house in Hastings and they both teach nursing at University; plus we would have lights, electricity, water you can drink without boiling and filtering and if it
The youth of today, eh?
Should be out drinking Thunderbird and scaring old ladies! came to it, a staffed and working hospital.
(VSOs in Ethiopia are either flown to Nairobi or London, if they can make it, rather than have treatment in Addis. If you are treated in Addis it is an emergency. And if you needed to use the hospital in Assosa? Well I'm afraid it would probably be en route to a casket...)
We were both exhausted. Sara was seriously ill, my stomach was bubbling away, we had been in panic rush mode, we were worried about missing our flight - trying to reorganise the flight through the administrative procedures in Addis would have been a nightmare I really didn't want to contemplate - and the powerless days of darkness, erratic phone network, unsafe water had finally got to us. We just wanted to go now.
Beam us up Scotty. Please.
So very fortunately the flight was half empty and I had asked for and been given seats near the rear toilets because "I, er, suffer from travel sickness".
There were so many empty seats that Sara could lie down and try and get through the flight. She had to use the air-sickness bag but at least
Deja Vu!
Hastings Pier again the stewardesses - who had asked me if she was OK - had seen that plenty of times before.
The flight was fine. Sara even perked up enough to taste some of the in-flight food and half watch a movie.
We arrived at Heathrow, where Sue (Sara's Dad, Chris's wife) met us and we were down the M25, A21 and in Hastings before we knew it.
Sinking down into a familiar confortable bed I stuffed in my earplugs (no crazy vicars - just lots of seagulls) and looked forward to a few relaxing days in Hastings with the "Chris & Sue" side of the family.
Finally.
After a week of hiatus and three days of food poisoning hell I relaxed, closed my eyes and let a long, slow and deep breath out...
Blog-ilogue (or is it an Epi-blog?) - Sara is still not right, over four weeks later, but it's more of a background noise now - rather than a Marshall amp in your face - and probably what the majority of Ethiopians suffer from everyday.
No sign of the jigga. Which is good.
- We had discussed the food poisoning
issue with several people who said it had become a common problem in Addis because of the power cuts. Fridges and freezers do not work and food goes off, particularly at Ferengi resturants that are maybe not so busy. The solution? Eat freshly prepared dishes from a local mugub bet!
- We need to thank Allan and Amy for doing all they can to help us make our flight and the completely relaxed manner in which Allan took the pre-departure whirlwind of trauma that rushed through The Lodge. We also need to thank VSO, particularly Tamrat and Ato Galeta, who fixed everything when we needed a fix.
- Even though it's four weeks later I can still recall the stress, frustration and worry. It also reminds me how gracelessly I took it all - inside myself or to Sara, if not to other people directly - and how gracefully Ethiopians take all of the challenges thrown their way daily - over water, power, sickness, sanitation, transport, accomodation, bureaucracy and even noise. And for them there is no Scotty waiting in the wings with a finger on the magic button...
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Hector
non-member comment
Yeesh!
Whoa, that sounds like a seriously rough time! I've had many experiences with a dodgy belly abroad, but this sounds way tough... Get well (back to 100% that is...) Sara!