I am Weak

Not everyone is going to want to read this one. It is a little gross.

I have had a great time in Africa when I have gotten together with friends that I have made within Peace Corps. Peace Corps volunteers are a great group of people. One thing that we can all ask each other is why are you doing this? Everyone has a different reason to that question, but they are usually fairly similar too. I like hearing why others joined Peace Corps. I joined because I wanted to do something exciting, I didn’t want to work in an office, I don’t care about having a career, and I love helping people.

Making friends has never been too hard for me and I have made a lot of friends in my village (which is the one thing the Peace Corps administration wants us to work on the most, it is important that I teach but integration is top priority). One of my friends told me that I am the ‘star of the hood’ because everyone knows me. This was in response to another friend asking me if I could find him a job in Kigali in agriculture. I asked him how I would do that and he replied with, “you’re famous.” I wish I could help him but I don’t know anyone in agriculture or even ever seen anyone on a tractor here. I really like my friends in Mulindi, but I also love my American friends in the rest of Rwanda that I get to see a lot less often than the ones in Mulindi.

Recently every time I get together with other volunteers I become weak. Last time I was brought to them when I fell off of my bike was badly injured. When I was recovering I really should have spent time alone, but I forced myself to be social.

Yesterday I returned from a weekend in Gisenyi where I enticed to come out by the promise of pizza, beer, the beach and friends. All of these promises were fulfilled. Leading up to the weekend I was deemed one of the four horsemen by Steve. Sera decided which of the horsemen we each were and there is a good reason behind each one. Pat is pestilence because he is always intoxicated, I am famine because I have lost a hundred pounds, Steve is war because he is always fighting everyone and Sera is death because she is better than the rest of us and trumps them all with the result of the suffering that rest of us cause. I had a hard month in May so I was looking forward to a good time at the beach with a lot a great friends.

I was really enjoying myself until Saturday evening when we were hanging out by the lake and a fever set in after dipping my feet in the water. I had ordered food that I no longer had interest in eating and the others kept trying to buy me another beer when I hadn’t even finished a third of the one that I had been nursing for over an hour. Hope gave me her fleece to wear after talking about how the bar didn’t give me my change and I revealed how cold I was. After that I got the key to the room from Sera and called it an early night at 9pm by walking the two miles back to the hotel by myself freezing. I arrived at the hotel and climbed into bed after sitting on the toilet for a half hour.

I couldn’t sleep because I was too hot under the covers and too cold without them. About an hour later Hope and Hannah brought Steve back because he had literally drank himself under the table. They put him in the bedroom with me and grabbed me some water. Before Steve fell asleep I called him a mess and he responded graciously with thank you. I couldn’t drink the water they gave me because I felt nauseous and I didn’t want to cause myself to vomit also they used iodine to clean it and I hate that taste. After lying there for a while longer, not too aware, before all of the others returned, Steve peed in the corner of the room even though the bathroom was only twenty feet away. I hope I am not violating his privacy by posting this on the internet, but I’m sure he’ll let me know if I am. This is just too funny not to include in this story.

I felt like I had been lying awake for a long time so when I heard voices in the common room I assumed that it must be morning. Turns out it was still the middle of the night and they had just gotten back from the night that I missed out on. Had I known this I would have just stayed in bed and suffered the rest of the night, but it was good for me to join them. I walked out to a series of symptom related questions and the first one that I told them was that I didn’t sleep at all last night. No one corrected me that it was still night but based on their responses I was able to figure it out. When I sat down I was comforted by all of these great women that before this only my mother has ever comforted me like this (and my buddy Chris’ mother the one time I got sick at his house). They all had medicine to give me. Kayla gave me pain killers, Kim gave me nausea medication, Sera gave me water and another stomach settler, and Genevieve gave me a eucalyptus pad. I took some of the painkillers and put on the eucalyptus pad which together I think induced the vomiting that followed. I threw up more with more force than any time I could remember. If I had been entered into a contest of longest distance for projectile vomiting I would have won first prize because this stuff flew twenty feet at a horizontal at a rate of seventy miles per hour. When it started I tried to cover my mouth with my hand and it was like when you put your thumb over a hose and the water sprays in all directions all over myself and everyone who was there caring for me. I was able to make it to bathroom before I got any more on anyone else to vomit all over everything in there. I went back into the common room and swallowed another handful of pills. Everyone did their part cleaning up after me and Jonathan gave me a clean pair of shorts to put on. Everyone started going to bed now, but I still wasn’t tired. Sera put on a movie for me and I watched it for a while before the drugs finally knocked me out.

The next morning all I had for breakfast was half a roll and yet I spent more time in the bathroom than out of it. I finally called the doctor and told him all about what I had been going through while sitting on a toilet that was missing the seat (a step up from the hole in the ground that I use at my house). He told me that I needed to drink a lot of water because I was losing it all to the diarrhea. After everyone finished breakfast I caught the bus back home with Sera. She gave me another water and more medicine that put me to sleep for a lot of the ride. We then made it to Kigali where I would go north to Mulindi and she would go south to Nyanza.

I made it to Mulindi around seven thirty and went to my neighbor’s house because a week before I promised I would come and let them use my camera, but I only stayed long enough to finish the tonic water they gave me and told him that I needed to go home because I was really tired.

Today I am taking the day off from work to try and recover. The doctor has me taking really strong diarrhea medication and is calling me periodically to check on me. Since I am on such strong stuff I feel like I can go ahead and eat something so I ate a whole box of Special K with chocolate pieces in it that my mom sent me. Now I just have to worry about throwing it back up.

Being put into these situations of where I can’t be myself because I’m injured or sick are humbling. My friends kept saying that they wished I wasn’t sick and even though I felt really terrible I was extremely apologetic. I felt awful that my feeling terrible was making others feel bad. When I am this way I want to be alone so I don’t concern others. I love to help others, not the other way around. Although there are times when I desperately need it I don’t want others to help me. I don’t want others to help me because I don’t to be seen when I am weak. I don’t want to be seen when I am weak because I don’t want to be weak. This is my struggle. I have so much pride. God keeps putting me through these humbling situations so that I will be humbled. I hate being humbled, but I need to be humbled. I am weak.

I am very grateful to everyone who was there this weekend and took care of me. I have developed a bond with the other volunteers that is unlike any connection I have made with any other group I have ever been a part of. We are sharing such a hard and special experience. I have been able to be completely open and vulnerable with more of them than I have been able to be anywhere else. The reason they are were so prepared to take care of me like that is that they had ALL gone through the same thing already. Maybe they didn’t vomit on their friends, but their symptoms might have been worse and they had to deal with it on their own. Our training had a freshman year feel to it and once we had all gotten the chance to know each other we started working separately, but in close contact. I love them all and each time I get to see them I am reminded of why. I really hope that I didn’t contaminate the rest of them with whatever I have.