Christmas Memory #22: Projectile Vommiting in Africa

Warning: Do not read this if you get sick easily.

Christmas time always makes me nostalgic - setting up mandarin oranges for Santa (yes our family put Santa on a diet), swearing you heard reindeer hooves on the roof and waking your parents up at 2:30am to open presents, the joke gift tags claiming that Taylor Hanson put a CD Stamper under the tree for me, and the precious tantrums my sister threw when she got something she didn't ask for from Santa "What the hell is this? I didn't ask for this!" (all caught on video camera, of course). The memories are so near and dear to my heart.

But there is one Christmas I'll never forget. Three years ago, I chose to forego the tree, the lights, the wrapping paper, and family and friends for that matter. I got off a plane and stepped foot on the red soil of Ghana, with 15 classmates that I had only met a couple months prior. It was the best decision I had ever made (despite what I'm about to tell you), and it was decided in the manner in which I make all huge decisions in life- on a whim.

After seeing a flier in the bathroom about a class being offered that included studying abroad in West Africa at the end of Fall Quarter, I knew I had to do it. Even though my mom firmly told me no, American Express firmly told me yes. So I bought my plane ticket and told my mom what was happening, and that was that. Okay, so maybe it wasn't THAT rigid, but long story short, my stubbornness beat my mom's stubbornness for the first time in history, and that is a victory to be celebrated and exaggerated!

"You're going to get sicker than all your classmates," my mom jinxed me. Being that I am the most accident-prone member of my family, it was really expected of me to come back with some rare, never-before-discovered disease, despite the six shots I had received beforehand and the malaria meds I took everyday while there.

Side story: the day I got all of my vaccinations, I went to work afterward where I was cashiering. A lady came through my line, eyeing the six bandaids up my arms, turned to the gal that was bagging groceries for me, and says, "Is she dying?!" as though my shots were an indication of a deadly, contagious disease, contracted by directly speaking with me.

"Ma'am, if I was dying right now, do you really think I'd be standing here cashiering?" I said. Because that's what I'd be spending the last moments of my life doing: serving the thankless, godforsaken public, while working for The Man. A public servant's dying wish!

How dare she assume my co-worker had the 4-1-1 on my medical file. The nerve! If I had it my way, that woman would have been dead that day.

Okay back to the point. Ghana. I went there for three weeks, and there was definitely an adjustment period before I got used to the following: limited electricity, cold showers, drinking bags (not bottles) of water, accepting that I was second class because I am a woman, that it is normal and appropriate to wear long-sleeved shirts and long skirts in the equatorial heat, in addition to eating chicken, rice and plantains for every meal. Being the feminazi that I am, it wasn't the machismo culture that was the hardest to adjust to, but the way food was valued differently (at that time, I was the Fatties Fo Life President, remember?)!

Food was probably the one of the biggest things I realized we take for granted as Americans: we have the luxury to eat what we want, when we want it. It really is an amazing and unnecessary indulgence. Tonight for instance, my boyfriend and I were deciding on what to eat for dinner. He wanted Mexican food, and I really didn't want Mexican food, so we settled on Mongolian Grill. That would never happen in Ghana. Eating has only one purpose, and that is to survive. While there are restaurants in Ghana, it is not nearly the booming, money-making industry it is here, but rather a clandestine extravagance for the few who can afford it.

While we were indulging in restaurants as tourists, I somehow contracted a bug that made me sicker than I've ever been. When did it hit? Christmas Eve.

I was on a Butterfly Sanctuary tour (which is hilarious because I absolutely hate butterflies. They scare the crap out of me.) when I started feeling...off. I started feeling weaker and weaker, and all of the sudden I collapsed in the middle of the rain forest. Our small bus driver Kujo, who was about 5'1" and 110 lbs, attempted to carry my overweight, sickly ass back through the jungle and to the hotel. I was beastly in comparison. I kept trying to tell him to put me down, that I could walk, but he insisted that he was going to suffer while hauling this heifer a quarter mile out of the forest.

Once back at the hotel, I was down for the count. I spent the next three days, including Christmas, projectile vomiting, trying to control my uncontrollable bowels and essentially, trying not to die. I had horrible food poisoning. But then it got worse. I couldn't keep anything down, including liquids, so I became severely dehydrated. It took energy just to wake up, nevermind get out of bed.

I attempted eating Cliff bars, only to see them moments later. To this day, I refuse to eat a Cliff bar.

I was like this over a 12-hour bus ride back to the coast, and when we finally landed at our destination, my professor said, "You are going to the hospital. Right now."

We took a cab and went through military checkpoints on the dirt, pothole-ridden freeway towards the hospital. Once there, I was rushed into a room, even though there were many other patients who appeared to need immediate medical attention over me. I was given preference as an American tourist, which even in my fragile state, I did not like. It was not right for me to be seen while a man crawled into the hospital vomiting thick, brown goo and blood.

I was placed in a large room with four other patients: a sleeping old woman, a pregnant woman that screamed out and cried every five min., and a crying baby. I was there until 4 in the morning, where they administered a drip IV of saline to rehydrate my body. The hospital bill was $27 U.S. (see, even Ghana has found a way to make health care affordable!).

Before I was home free, we were met with one more obstacle- someone had closed the gates to our hotel. The cab dropped us off, and all I wanted to do was go to bed. Might I add, this hotel had crocodiles living in the pond surrounding it. We called and we yelled, but no one was up to let us in. So we had to jump the fence and pray that after all of that, we wouldn't be eaten by crocodiles.

Luckily, we survived, and the next day at 7am, I was 100 feet above the rain forest floor on a rickety rope bridge course, and later carrying buckets of rocks on my head to help build a foundation for a school in a village. I never felt so alive! I was so glad I got to get better for that.

This past weekend, I had a chance to reunite with my fellow classmates who traveled to Ghana with me. We share a bond that can only be formed when you know way too much about each other's bowel movements, or share a bag of water with someone.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but I will bring some Imodium when I go back to Africa!