I'm not sure what this says about my personality that this is probably my favorite Peace Corps story to tell. I just love all the juicy details.

I was in Bamenda, which is the provincial capital of the Northwest Province. My village was several hours away and I was in town to pick up my stipend check and do some shopping for supplies and stuff. A bunch of us went out to breakfast at this really great place in the market that sold incredible tomato omlettes. Oh my God, those things were amazing. You literally had to wait about 2 hours after you ordered it to get your food, but it was worth the wait if you were in the mood to be patient.

We ate and came back to the Peace Corps house in town. This was a pretty nice house (even by American standards) that all of us in the Northwest province chipped in on together and then could use when we had to be in town. Me and a few other volunteers were out on the lawn in front playing Trivial Pursuit. A game no one would play with me anymore by the time I finished my service because I had memorized all the questions from playing it so many times. This is what happens without TV, radio, video games, movies, etc. This is what happens when the original (circa 1982) edition of Trivial pursuit is your only entertainment.

Now that we're done with the preliminaries, on to the good stuff. So, I started feeling a little sick, almost like I might throw up. I dismissed this though, because I never, ever throw up. Sometimes I wish I could, but it just doesn't happen. I kept on playing Trivial Pursuit and demonstrating the fact that I spent far too much time in Bamenda. But after a couple more hours I realized that puking was most definitely imminent. I excused myself, ran inside, puked up my omelette and potatoes and was back in the game and feeling a lot better inside of 10 minutes. I figured random food poisoning or something.

But then, it came back. I was feeling all ill and went in again to clean out my belly. It lasted longer this time and was accompanied by a cleansing of the bowels as well. A rather forceful cleansing. I went back outside but was no longer as confident that everything was all cool now. We played for a bit longer and then I just had to quit. I felt horrible.

I spent the next hour or so with the porcelin god and thought I might make it. By this point I was getting feverish and everything was shooting out of me with tremendous force. I think I may have chipped the toilet. I finally just went to bed around 9 or so. I slept pretty well until about 2 in the morning. I woke up because I was dizzy. So dizzy that if I had been standing, I certainly would have fallen down immediately. I lay there for a while trying to get myself together. I needed to puke. I needed to puke immediately. I realized my time to accomplish this mission without puking all over the bed was very, very limited. I got up slowly and realized that I had another mission that was equally pressing. On my way to the bathroom liquid shit started dripping down my leg and dropping onto the floor in little puddles. I was barely keeping it together. I went in and sat down on the toilet. I was so dizzy.

The next thing I remember is waking up on the bathroom floor, a puddle of vomit in front of face, and diarreah gurgling out of my behind. I was so dizzy still that I couldn't lift my head off the floor and felt so bad that I didn't care anyway. I was really hot, my fever must have been pretty high. I lay there for several hours, puking and shitting uncontrollably, all over myself. It was a small bathroom and I nearly covered the entire floor with a thick layer of my expulsions. I started to get really scared when I had emptied myself of everything and was having very violent dry heaves at both ends. I was still extremely dizzy as well. My fever felt so high that I didn't think I would last much longer. I thought my brain would cook and I was barely holding on to consciousness.

At this point I started having thoughts of dying. I truly believed this was it for me. I was too weak to call anyone, they were all asleep. I kind of wanted someone to come find me, and kind of didn't. I was naked on the cold tile floor covered in vomit and diarreah. Anyone who found me probably would have puked all over me from the stench. Finally though, the dizzyness and dry heaving subsided. I crawled into the shower and rinsed myself off. I wiped up the floor as best and I could and crawled back into bed.

I made it through the rest of the night. The next morning I did my best to clean up the bathroom. I think I did ok at it. I spent the next week at the house, unable to do a whole lot. It was a serious effort to walk across the room. It was almost funny because it would take me a really long time to do it and it just seemed so ridiculous. I was like an old man or something. I could hardly move. I couldn't eat or drink really. If I ate anything, I instantly puked it up. If I took more than a sip of liquid, I had the same result. I found I could drink a Coke and keep it down if I spent about 2 hours doing it. Just one small sip every 5 minutes or so. Other volunteers were around and they kind of kept an eye on me and brought me Cokes and water. I lost about 10 pounds. I look white as a ghost and I probably should have seen a doctor, but this isn't America. The hospitals over there are extremely sketchy, I would have just gotten sicker in the traveling. And I don't think I would have gotten any better care than what I could provide myself in the house. I just rested. Finally, after a week or 10 days or so, I could eat again and I somewhat returned to normal and went back to my village.

This incident led me to be extremely anal about boiling all my drinking water and trying to be as clean as possible. For those few hours on the bathroom floor, I truly believed that I was going to die. I was not interested in repeating that experience. Unfortunately, my vigourous attention to water boiling led to the "The Burn". Another story you can read on my page.

The end.