In Sickness...

Anyone who has ever spent time in a place were sanitation isn't what it could be knows how quickly and easily you can get sick. In Benin for example all Peace Corps Volunteers are told by the medical office to filter and boil their water for 3 minutes, thus killing all bacteria and parasites that may be present. We are also told to bleach our vegetables before eating and also to wash our hands on a regular basis throughout the day such as, before eating, after going to the bathroom, and after holding hands with the neighbor kid.
Unfortunately even the most careful volunteers come to find themselves puking into a pit latrine. Getting sick is something that is unavoidable here. You can take preventative measures such as eating only the food you cook but then you come to find yourself in a situation were you need to eat and you haven't cooked anything, your stomach growling and your mouth watering. The street food vendors rice and beans start to look pretty good at this point, my story is very similar.
As volunteers go I tend to think of myself as pretty careful when it comes to food and water. I boil my water, some volunteers after a time choose to stop doing this, I cook 90% of the food I eat, my house is generally free of fruit flies and rotting food (food rots a whole lot faster with a refrigerator). I stay away from street food that doesn't look sanitary, and I wash my hands a lot. All this week I have been pretty f'ing sick. Something is amiss. As I have had many hours to contemplate my current afflictions I've felt like a detective, retracing my steps. I have a few current theories that I'm working with.
The first theory is that during the whipping fete the entire group got pretty dehydrated. I was feeling it bad, and I had run out of water, I had eaten the Beninese version of a popsicle, and had an orange. That was it for liquids that entered my system. The day was brutally hot and we were all in desperate need for water. So we go to a bar (here bars are the places that will most likely sell water) and ask for some water. They don't have bottled water. They have pump water. Pump water is considerably cleaner than well water, but I still hesitate to drink it. But here I was, in the middle of nowhere, nobody had bottled water, I was dehydrated beyond normal levels and there was a bottle full and cold in front of me. I had meant to bring my water purification tablets with me but I had forgotten then at post. So I figure what the heck, if I get sick I'll just be dehydrated in the comfort of my own home. I drank it. It lingered in my system long enough to become something that my intestines couldn't deal with any longer and now my body is punishing me for giving into temptation. Although if I had not accepted this water I really don't know if I would have been better off.
The second theory comes from my own water supply. I was making sun tea the other day, I really enjoy a good cup chai sun tea every now and again, and with the excessive heat and sun here it only take a couple of hours to make a good cut. Best of all I get tea and I don't feel like I actually did anything. I brought the tea into my house and left it on my table for only an hour or so. I then noticed that there were bubbles in the top of it. This was disconcerting. What made my water bubble, I had only put a tea bag into it? I then dumped out my water supply, bleached my bucket and boiled more. The little microbes could have been living in my very own water supply!
A third theory is that I ate bad food. Thinking back the street food that I had eaten last week, there were a few questionable sauces and starches. Also I remembered the server had used her hands to dish out rice. How clean were those hands? I had reheated curry one day from my own cooking, this could have been a problem as well. But it seemed to taste fine.
The fourth and final theory is that it came from my just walking around. I ate off the plates of the street food vendor, my own dishes I wash with water I wouldn't drink. I thought about all the children I had held hands with, knowing how they clean their behinds I'm positive none of their hands are clean. Are my hands even clean? I'm sure at some point I touched something less than sanitary and then ate street food with my hands.
I'm not too sure what I'm to learn from all this. Because I don't think it would be in my best interest for example not to travel for fear of running out of water, or not to eat the food on the street for fear that it is not clean. I certainly would offend my neighbor kids if I didn't hug them or hold their hands. The point is that no matter how hard you try, sickness will catch up with everyone. I refuse to live my life in fear of intestinal parasites. This doesn't mean that I'm going to stop being careful and throw caution to the wind, but I'm not going to let it hold me back either.
The Continuing Story...
Oh I thought the story would come to an uneventful end too, but no never in Benin is anything that simple. I called up the doctors and they told me to do a MIF kit, which means I give them a sample of my poop, lovely I know. If anyone is thinking of becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer and would have a big problem giving a poop sample then they probably shouldn't be a PCV, they should actually stay away from 3rd world countries all together. Back to the story. So I do a MIF kit, and my plan is to put it on the Peace Corps shuttle.
Peace Corp has a vehicle that goes around Benin once a month, and it carries things like packages, fixed bikes, volunteers, anything and everything that needs to go north. It makes a stop at each of the work stations to bring things back down to the main office in Cotonou. I'm never lucky enough with timing to actually use the shuttle a whole lot but luck was with me and the shuttle was going by my house the very same day the doctors told me to do a MIF kit, it was the simplest solution to transporting a MIF kit down to Cotonou without actually going myself.
Well I get a call from my friend who accidentally forgot to tell the shuttle it needed to stop by my house and pick up my package for the medical unit. Things happen, it's cool. So I call the PCVL of my region, sort of like an RA for Peace Corps, and he tells me that I should put it on a bus down the next day. OK, that's pretty simple. There are many buses that come through my post between 9:00-9:30 this shouldn't be a problem.
I write down the information that the bus will need to contact Peace Corps when it has arrived in Cotonou, phone number, name of person picking up the package, city, all those logistical things. I then go to bed and wake up feeling mildly better, sit up and my stomach does a loop-dee-loop around my intestines. That mildly better feeling is gone. I still have to actually get up and get to the bus station. After dragging my feet and wondering whether or not I should leave the house at all I get on my bike and go 8:55, I'm cutting it close but the buses usually stagger in. As I'm going down towards the bus station a bus passes me, it's OK it's probably the first there are lots of buses. I turn the corner and see the place where the buses stop. There is one waiting and it's even a pretty good line! I then remember I've forgotten the MIF kit at my house. I bike back as fast as I can and get back to the bus station. On the way all but 2 bus lines pass me. They were of course actually on time today, every last one of them showing up at 9:00am sharp! The one time where the Beninese are more timely than I am, figures.
I get to the place where the buses stop and there's my least favorite bus line. The once charged me 30% more for my ticket than everyone else and their reasoning was 'because I was white.' I vowed back then to never take them again, to boycott them. And here I was, should I not send my MIF kit today or trust this bus line which I hate with a passion. I decided to give the bus line a chance to redeem itself. If they stole the package, what would they have, my poop sample? Why would they want that? Then as I'm walking up to the bus line the one and only bus that's late, my absolute favorite bus, Intercity, it was the new bright orange bus too! It was coming down the road. I would wait and trust this bus which is nice, air conditioned, and I take it whenever I can. This bus because it was so new and shiny would have the best chance of actually making it to Cotonou without breaking down. The other buses state wasn't inspiring much confidence. I had one of those moments were the heavens open up and angels sing that 'aaaaaahhhh...' sound. I waited on the side of the road, thanking karma for helping me out today. The damn thing didn't stop it just kept right on going. I shook my fist at the sky for dramatic effect when it did this. OK crappy bus line, here's your chance, if you blow it I will never use you again. Not even to transport my poop. I give the guys the information and they say 'oh it's no problem it's going to be 1000FCFA though' OK whatever, not a problem. I hand over the money its' not really that much. I then wave goodbye to the bus.
When I get home I realize that I didn't get the buses phone number. Thing start to slip when you haven't been able to absorb any nutrients from your food in a week and half. I then think to myself it's a well known bus line I see it everywhere, Peace Corps has on file loads of transport agencies they should have this one. I feel confident that it will all work out. I call Peace Corps and tell them the name of the bus line it's on. They've never heard of it. Seriously guys? It's one of six bus lines in the entire country and you've never heard of it, or have the offices phone number on file? Nope. I call the PCVL for Cotonou and they don't have the phone number either. And so the wild goose chase begins! Nobody has the phone number. This is maddening. I speak with the guy who picks up packages from the buses and he says that the bus is obligated to call them when it arrives in Cotonou, he was very confident it would arrive. This is just how the package system works on the buses, it's standard procedure. So now it is totally in the hands of the bus line, which has yet to prove itself. The only thing it has to do is call the number I gave them and let Peace Corps know when they are in Cotonou and where they can pick it up. It's not rocket science.
I call it a day, because I can't do anything about it at this point anyway. I call the office in the morning and ask if my package did or did not actually arrive. It never arrived. Bus line, you fail, never again, I mean it this time. Peace Corps is still searching for the phone number (there aren't phone books in Benin) and they have still yet to find it. Apparently there is one person in the office who has it, but he's not in the office for the next few days so it's useless. When I get off the phone I have a good laugh about it, I'm not really feeling much better health wise, but the whole scenario that has been born from my sickness was pretty laughable.
The day goes by, I resign myself to believing that the MIF kit is lost I'll have to do another one only this time I'll wait and give it to my supervisor who is visiting me in the next few days. At 4:45 I get a call from the doctor. “We have the results from your MIF kit.”
I was pleasantly surprised. “Glad to hear you located the MIF, what's the diagnosis?”
“You have an intestinal parasite. It will go away in 2 days.”
“But I've had it for closer to 2 weeks, will it really go away.”
“From my diagnosis your body should fight it and win in 2 days.”
“Should I call you back in 2 days if I am not feeling better.”
“Yes.”
“Oh OK, we'll try that.”
“I also want you to send down two more MIF kits to make sure the diagnosis is accurate.”
We'll see what kind of fiasco my second batch of MIF kits gets into....
The Story Continues... again...
So I get the MIF kits together and yesterday morning I leave my house and double check to make sure I have the MIF kits, make sure that the paper that is on it has the phone number of the Peace Corps office, make sure I have the correct amount of money to give to the bus line... and I do. I lock my door and head on over to the bus station. Today unlike the time before I am early by a good half an hour. I brought a book in case I had to wait for two hours. I ask the ladies who sell things to people on the buses as they come by, they tell me that only the bus which starts in Djougou has gone by but none of the Natitingou buses have. I feel better and find a comfortable place to sit and read while I wait. The morning is already hot and I'm sweating, I buy some cold water from the store and I feel better. 9:00 no buses. I read some more, sweat some more.
Then a bus comes! I can put the package on the bus and get the buses phone number and then go home. Then I realize it's that crappy unreliable bus line that I vowed never to use again, regardless of the situation. I might actually stay a day longer in a place than take that bus line at this point. I let it pass without even getting up. They aren't getting any more of my money. I then see it, like last time the big orange Intercity bus which is both reliable and one the Peace Corps Volunteers frequently use. I know that Peace Corps has the phone number for them and that Intercity has delivered packages for them in the past. I then remember it went right on by last time. I don't hold my breath. But I do stand up. The fates decided it was time to give me a break and the bus stops. I run over to where it is and ask to deliver a package. The woman makes this face as if Intercity is above delivering packages. I know they are not as other volunteers have done this. I explain that it needs to go to Peace Corps in Cotonou if they dropped it off at their office that would be great as their office is near the Peace Corps office. I show them the phone number, that I have written down the information for them. It's simple they just have to call that number when they arrive at their office. No problem. The woman asks for 2000 CFA. I give it to her. This is double the price that the other bus line charged me, but if it does actually arrive it was worth it. I wave as the bus leaves knowing full well that there is a very good chance of it actually arriving. After all this is how many Beninese get things from place to place, they wouldn't use this system if nothing actually arrived. Peace Corps wouldn't have recommended me use this system if it didn't work in the past.
I call Peace Corps and let them know that I sent the package down on Intercity lines they confirm that they do have the phone number and that all should be well. They are confident that the package will actually arrive without incident. Obviously I wouldn't be writing this post if it arrived like that.
How hard is it to send a package down to Cotonou? Really I want to know if any of them actually arrive like they're supposed to. The package should have arrived Thursday afternoon, which would give Peace Corps the morning to analyze it and get back and tell me if I have an intestinal parasite as before or if I actually have something else. Peace Corps is only open until noon on Fridays but because of the way everything was supposed to happen this isn't a problem. I get a call around 11:30 from Peace Corps. “Melissa, you sent a package down yesterday right?”
“Yes.”
“On which bus line”
“I put it on the Intercity bus which left Natitingou”
“Did they have the phone number of Peace Corps?”
“Yes I gave it to them and I wrote it down on the outside of the package in neat big letters.”
“hm....”
I wait... although I can already see what's happened.
“The reason why we ask is because we never received the package.”
“Well I put it on the bus, and I know that there are many people in Peace Corps who have the phone number for Intercity”
“Yes we have the phone number.”
I was getting frustrated and really wanted to say “What did you think I meant yesterday when I called you to let you know that there was a package on the Intercity bus lines? Did you think I meant that I hadn't put a package on the bus, or that I had put it on another bus, or that I had put it on the bus the day before or planned to do it the day after? And have you even called Intercity to ask if there is a package for you at their office where I told them to leave it, as you do actually have their phone number and if you can't find it I can tell you where it is posted within the building so that you can call them. Oh and if it was supposed to arrive yesterday why are you calling half an hour before you close for the weekend asking where it is? Shouldn't you have called in the morning so that maybe this could have been straightened out by now?!” But instead I took a deep breath and said “OK, well I can't really help you very much other than tell you what you already know.” (For all I know they could have actually been looking very hard to find the package all day and called me after every other attempt to find my package had failed. I do realize that this is very possible.)
“OK we will look.”
They hung up the phone and I shook my fist at the sky for dramatic effect again. Seriously Benin, I just can't win. This whole putting stuff on a bus, regardless of busline has proved to be something that I clearly can't put my trust in. The only other bus line that I will try to use to carry packages to and from Cotonou is the one that is run by the post office. I figure it's their job to deliver mail, they should have it figured out by now. Maybe I will have the opportunity to test this system in the near future when my second package proves to be hopelessly lost and I have to give Peace Corps two more MIF kits. (Note it is now Tuesday of the next week, the MIF kit saga started on Sunday when I couldn't get it the first one on the shuttle.)