I’ve been sick with diarrhea and fever for
the past 3 days. Everything is different in Benin, including illness. The
diarrhea I experience here is unlike anything I knew back home. I’m talking 72
hours of yellow colored water shooting out of my ass. Yes this may be TMI and
sorry if you’re eating but at least you can drive to a Wendy’s or Panera bread
and get chili or soup to ease your discomfort if you so choose to do so. At least you can run to a toilet and throw-up
or shit instead of being stuck to a plastic bucket for most of the day. At
least when you buy frozen chicken you know that there is a temperature that
that chicken has been kept at and you don’t have to worry so much about getting
salmonella poisoning from eating it. Ok, I’ll get back to my story now.
Despite being sick for most of this week
I’ve been determined to get work done because most of June I was away from my
village. So I went to my ONG on Monday, Health Center on Tuesday, and planned a
Moringa session for Wednesday. BTW, riding a bike with diarrhea is not a good
idea and that is my main form of transportation. I’ll just leave that at that.
Monday morning had my weekly meeting at my ONG and stopped by my health center
to inform the head that I’d like to do a session on Moringa transformation. He
was all on board and said he’d inform the staff. Monday night things started
going downhill and the chamber pot came out and stayed out for the remainder of
that night. Broke out with a fever in the night and then Tuesday morning pulled
myself out of the bed, popped two aspirin, and visited the latrine before
heading off to go do some growth monitoring. I scarcely made it through that
and rushed back home for the rest of the day.
I woke up 10pm Tuesday night so hungry and
realized I hadn’t eaten anything all day. I didn’t have my tools on hand. I
usually have some bread or hot cereal on hand to eat when I get sick, but
because market day wasn’t until Wednesday l was not prepared. It was
raining so I went to sit on my porch and enjoy one of the things that bring me
a little comfort here- thunderstorms. I’m sitting on my porch trying to hide
its cries with the sounds of the storm when I get a text from a village friend,
my English club work partner. He was sending it to check in but since he was
the only one that had that night I was honest with him (maybe not as honest as
I’ve been with you all) and told him that I was sick and hadn’t eaten all day.
I thought I scared him away and then 15 minutes later he called me letting me
know he was on his way over. He had told his wife about my situation and she
cooked me hot cereal and sent that over with some mint vodka infused with
medicinal roots. This act of kindness was made even more special because of the
fact that it was raining, and Beninese are known to stop everything when it
rains; school, work, I mean seriously everything. So I was very grateful and he
hung out with me for a good 20 minutes. He is an English teacher and speaks
better English than I’ve heard come from some Americans I know and so I was
able to talk to him in English about my problems. At the end of the night I
went to bed relieved, full, and slightly buzzed.
My landlady woke me up Wednesday morning
from a very sound sleep talking about the electric bill. Or rather I should say
trying to cheat me out of my money. Normally I get my bill see the amount, we
divide it between five houses and everyone pays their part. I don’t know why
this morning she felt she could call me up give me a price and just expect me
to pay it. No, no, no. So I drag my still very sick and tired self out of my
bed to go meet her and discuss the bill and lady isn’t even at her office. I
was heated. Mind you this is the same day that I’ve scheduled a training on
Moringa with my health center. My plan was to stay in my bed and save up energy
until I had to go and do that. Now back
to this electric bill business, this is a common problem among many volunteers.
Their landlords will try and unfairly divide the bill and give their friends a
small amount (sometimes nothing) and get the volunteer, who in their mind is
rich, to pay the bulk of the bill. As I said, not I. I end up talking it out
with my supervisor and the next day everything was settled. Later on Wednesday
afternoon I show up at my health center and of course the head of the center
who I spoke with Monday has not informed anyone, everyone is clueless, he
himself is off travelling somewhere, and on top of that the Midwife is a bitch
(this is nothing new though) and ignores me when I speak to her. After dealing
with my landlady that morning I had no more energy to expend on being angry. I
just chuckle, go back home and get in bed for the rest of the day.
Frustrations like that may seem small to you
reading this, but these are the things that really make me miss America. In
America, we have laws and regulations for how things need to work and if people
do not follow these laws and regulations you can call the police or some other
higher up and they will go to prison or at least get fined. Here, yeah there
are laws but hardly anyone including the police follows them and those who do
can be paid off so they might as well not even exist. In America time is money.
If someone is late are doesn’t follow through with a task they can be held
responsible, you have the right to be angry with them. Here, no one even
understands why you’re angry and say things like “God doesn’t rush”. Bitch I’m
not God. There are many things that happen here every day that I don’t post on this
blog because I don’t want to give a tainted vision of Benin. Because I honestly
do love this country and I love what it is doing for me as a person. But there
are times when everything happens at once, when you miss your family and
haven’t talked to your mom in 4 months, you’re sick and your comforts aren’t
around, you want chicken soup but you can’t trust the chicken, you want chili
and there is no Wendy’s or ground beef to be found, or when you just want
things to make sense and nothing does.
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