Here's the story: two fridays ago I was sitting up in Jessica and Bethany's apartment. We were trying to figure out what to do with the evening when in a matter of minutes I went from feeling great to ultraqueasy. I tried to play it cool for a while, but then decided I'd rather spend the evening hugging my own toilet than someone else's. I walked down the stairs from their apartment, took a few steps towards the big iron gate, and couln't even muster the will to get out my key. I launched a volley of vomit into a bed of palm trees and other foliage. And then another one, and then another one.
I'm not a puker, so every time it happens I feel like I'm going to die. But once it was all out, I went home and actually felt pretty fine. Then a week later I woke up in the middle of the night feeling awful, and spent probably 50% of the next six hours on the toilet, hating life. I'm surprised my skin didn't turn raisin-y, I was losing so much liquid.
And in what seems like a pattern, today, exactly a week later, I woke up feeling half dead. Knowing that I was full of awful things that needed to get out somehow, I called Jes and Beth and said I couldn't work, spent my first marathon session on the can, and then tried to go back to sleep. Eventually, I heard a knocking at the door and in my haze, lying there in my underwear, I said, "oui?" The housekeeper just walked right in and started pitying me and asking what was wrong. Then she disappeared and my landlady came up the stairs, in full-on mother mode. I still don't know her first name. To me she is Madame Assali, or simply, the Madame. She loves telling me thatI'm like a son to her and taking care of me. And the food she cooks for me! I hit the jackpot for sure.
So anyways, she bursts into the room where I'm curled up in pain, still just wearing the underwear mind you. If I'd had my wits about me, I would have probably been really embarassed, but I mostly just sat there thinking, helpmehelpmehelpme. She asks a couple quick questions and then rattles off a huge list of things I should do. Then she disappears and comes back with something she called "tea":
I have no idea what was in that tea, but the awful taste would tell me that it was doing something good. I hope it's not assumed to be medicinal just because it tastes bad. Funny side note: in the office I take my coffee without cream or sugar, which Haitians refer to as medikaman: medicine.
So I choke this stuff down. Then I had a banana, because as awful as I felt, I knew I needed something in there. And bananas, like raisins or yogurt are supposed to slow down the plumbing a little, right? But when the madame came back and saw the banana peel, she tsk tsk tsked me, saying that when you're not feeling good, you shouldn't eat bananas unless they're underripe. So I'm not quite sure what to do with the advice. Sometimes, I just know she's wrong. Like when she told me I shouldn't have plants in my bedroom because they breathe oxygen just like me. I just nodded nicely. I can't argue with her, she's got an amazing green thumb. Her yard is lush with big leafy plants. But inside her house - not a one. I've since discovered this is fairly common for Haitians.
Later on she brought two more things. The first was lunch:
That's a sort of cornmeal chowder with pastries stuffed with aransol, a smoked fish from Canada. In the pitcher is hand squeezed lemonade.
The other thing she brought was laundry soap. She insisted that if I was feeling achy, I needed to take a shower with a bar of brown laundry soap and lather up twice. This goes back, I think, to the Haitian love of cleanliness that I've mentioned in another post. To me it sounded like washing your car when it needs an oil change. But I've got to say, I did feel significantly better after that shower. She then gave me another bar of soap and some fancy French body wash, because clearly, the blan has some hygiene issues if he's sick this much.
For dinner, this showed up:
That's a potato soup and a giant hunk of what I think is goat. When she unveiled it, I was reminded of that part in the flinstones opening where they get a side of dinosaur ribs and it tips the car over. I thought, there's no way I can eat this thing. But sure enough I sent back an empty plate and bowl. And because I did, this showed up next:
Why? Because there's always room. I'm not sure if there's always room for a liter of jello, but I eventually put it all away.
So I wouldn't say I'm back to 100% yet, but I'm definitely on my way. I owe some of that to the pill of ciproflaxocin I took after lunch, but I know that my Haitian mother's special regime helped too.
