Day 8/9: 3 Times a Lady

Have you ever puked on an airplane? I hadn't until yesterday. Then I did. Three times.

I'll get the ugly out of the way so as to not end on such a sour note. It was pretty heinous.

On my last night I took John & Esther out to dinner to thank them for letting me stay with them. I obviously ate something I shouldn't have because the next morning the diarrhea started (worst that I've ever experienced) and the next afternoon the vomiting started (while in the air between Amsterdam and Los Angeles). Praise the lord I'm better now, but if you think you get dehydrated during a 10 hour flight, try puking and pooing all your liquids out too. My lips started to chap, my hands were itchy, and I had cotton mouth. There was not an ounce of fluid in me. I felt like a saltine.

Plane landed, went straight to Budget, got my rental car, loaded up on Vitamin Water, bananas, and toast at Ralphs, and came home. Fell asleep to the TV and now I'm up and feeling 99% better than I was yesterday. Hallelujah.

So, flash back to three nights ago (Monday night). I left the internet cafe and raced home because I knew John and family were arriving from Nairobi. I managed to catch John and Michelle, but Esther and Xanti went to bed. As John and I chatted the Muslims started up. I learned that I was not hallucinating but they were in fact much, much louder and much, much longer than usual. Why? Ramadan. Apparently I chose the perfect time to set up camp next to a mosque. The holiest month of holy months. John and I chatted until about 12:30 when I told him I had to go to bed. It was nice catching up with him. He's a good guy and soooooooo not Kenyan. His attitudes are mentalities are so open and westernized. I mean, he's an atheist! It's not that I think atheism is "western" so much as that I think to march to your own drummer in a country like Kenya is insane. People are so religious there. So, good for him for doing what's right for him.

On my last mutatu ride to Dickson, they managed to fit 21 people into a 15 person vehicle. There were people hanging out the doors and sitting on each others' laps...it was CRAZY. One little bump and we'd have 3 or 4 SERIOUSLY injured people. But praise the lord, no one flew out the mutatu and I managed to get off unscathed. One of the housemothers, Monica, was on the mutatu with me. It's always so awkward when you're around someone you kind of know while on public transportation. Do you acknowledge them and move on? Go and talk to them? Ignore them? It reminded me of being in New York and someone you know but aren't friends with gets on the bus or the train. It's always like "Oh fuck. Now what?" I chatted with her for a few minutes, but thank God she was behind me so it seemed like I didn't want to stay twisted around to talk to her. That part is true, I wouldn't want to stay half way twisted around on a mutatu for anyone, but probably would anyway for most of the people I know. Anyway, I turned around and ignored her, but did pay for her ride which she seemed wildly grateful for, so that was nice.

When I arrived at Dickson I noticed the stupid teacher decided to burn a pile of garbage out in the backyard. The fumes were noxious and the kids were playing around them inhaling cloud after cloud of black poisonous smoke while she fed the fire. I made them come inside and was just pissed. How is it not INCREDIBLY OBVIOUS that a) NO ONE should be breathing in fumes (it's not like you're tricked into believing fumes are good for you because they smell flowery or something) and b) that uncontrolled, OPEN FLAMES are inappropriate around children under 5 years old. Idiot.

I absolutely LOVE Joram. He is the most attentive, quiet, patient, responsible boy.

We were kicking around an empty 2 gallon water bottle like it was a soccer ball and I accidentally hit Emmanuel-Charles in the legs with it kind of hard. He was pained but didn't cry. I got a perverse joy out of hurting him. It's not like I planned it! It was 100% an accident and not like it really hurt him. But that kid was a total douche this trip and I saw it as karmic retribution.

At lunch time I walked over to the Mwingo Academy and picked up the kids from school for lunch. This whole walking-home-for-lunch thing would NEVER work in the US. The kids are SUCH dilly-dallyers and I had to keep rushing them along to get them home and back in time. And here, you get caned if you are late! And they still pick flowers and kick rocks and just dick around on the walk over and the walk back. If I knew a caning was waiting for me, I'd likely never be tardy. Unless Channing Tatum was doing the caning. Then maybe.

When I dropped the kids off back at school this group of slum kids hanging out on the road freaked out. They had never seen a real, live white person before.

Upon my return to Dickson, I promptly had to chase away an aggressive monkey. With a stick and my flailing arms, I got the monkey away from the kids. It was a very "Wow. I'm totally in Africa" moment.

When we were doing afternoon lessons in the classroom downstairs, Emmanuel-John farted and I had to leave the room. It was as though rotten eggs and roadkill had a baby and then smeared that baby on all the walls of the room.

While I was talking to Elizabeth, one of the housemothers, she pulled out her breast and began breastfeeding her child. It was like looking directly at a sci-fi monster. Her breast was like a double D to begin with, but now that she's lactating it's ENORMOUS. One of the biggest I've ever seen. It was almost as big as her 1 year old child.

In the evening I stayed late because the oldest kids don't get home from school until 8pm. I wanted to see them and say goodbye. It was actually really too much. They sang and danced for me. All sorts of thank you songs that incorporated my name and then did a circle of saying thanks. My eyes kept welling up but I managed to keep myself from crying. The kids don't understand at all. When female volunteers cry about leaving the kids say things like "If you're so sad, just come back next week." They don't get how far it is and how impossible it is. They all said their thanks and were just so great. They asked when I'd be back next and I said I didn't know. At that point I had viewed this trip was the hardest one ever and I wasn't even sick yet. It's just a really fucking rough journey and I don't know if I can make it every year. But then, I guess being an orphan in a third world country that makes white people violently, violently ill after just 1 little meal is pretty fucking rough too, so we'll see.

I covered dinner and illness, but not the schizo. I had gotten 2 hours of sleep the night before flying so I was looking forward to zonking out on the first two legs of my flight. However, the person sitting next to me from Mombasa to Nairobi did not let that happen. He was a very agitated schizophrenic. When he was putting his stuff in the overhead bin I noticed what looked like shit stains on his underwear (his pants were sagging incredibly low) but told myself that was ridiculous. Then he sat next to me and smelled like shit and I thought "Oh God..." and then he started talking. Not to me. Not to the stewardess. Just talking. Then he proceeded to read articles out of the newspaper out loud and have discussions with himself about them. When we got to Nairobi he just sat in his chair and I had to crawl over him to deplane.

I RAN to the nearest toilet and my first bout of sickness began. I was feeling HORRIBLE and begged the ticket agents to change my seat to an aisle seat so I could run to the toilet if needed. They did. I was one of the last people to board because I had to keep running to the toilet at the airport. So disgusting.

As I was boarding I saw schizo was trying to board the plane. He was in a huge argument with like 5 or 6 flight attendants and security. I told one of the flight attendants that he was sitting next to me from Mombasa and that he obviously has some serious issues. She thanked me and lead me to my seat. Praise Jesus I had the aisle seat and no one in the middle. At least I could comfortably run back and forth from the toilet.

As soon as I got settled in, he started walking towards me. DEAR GOD, NO, NO, DEAR GOD, PLEASE NO!!! Yup. Schizo came and plopped down next to me. I was too sick to care so I put in my ear plugs and put on my eye mask and tried to doze off. I awoke 12 seconds later to him shrieking for a stewardess. He had broken his headphones (he took them apart!) and kept screaming for the stewardess to bring him another one. I marched to the front of the plane and asked for the head flight attendant. I told her I was extremely sick, that I had to sit next to that guy from Mombasa to Nairobi, and that I needed my seat changed. They gave me a knowing look (as I said, they were arguing with him outside the plane) and moved me to a different seat. I noticed midflight that the person sitting next to him on the other side had abandoned his seat too.

Arrived in Amsterdam and my hotel was 1 train stop away from Schipol. Yay! Just a few more minutes and I could lie down. Being the idiot I am, I hopped on the first train that came. It was an express train and it breezed right past my stop. Blurg! What should have been a 20 minute ride turned into an hour ride. The hotel was not "a few minutes walk from the tram" as the website claimed, but rather 12 minutes from the tram. I think anything over 5 minutes cannot be claimed as a "few" minutes. I had never ridden the trams in Amsterdam before, just the trains and cabs. I think trams are amazing. They may very well be the mass transit solution to Los Angeles. They go above ground, can turn up and down streets, and run pretty quietly. They're amazing.

I picked up water, saltines, and Gatorade at the grocer near the hotel and promptly went to sleep. I woke up intermittently but managed to sleep until the next morning. I awoke to a top 10 Madonna videos countdown on Holland's version of MTV so I knew it was going to be a good morning. Then I looked outside. I don't know if you guys noticed the weather report in Amsterdam yesterday, but it was rainy. Very rainy. And windy. Very windy. So I had to walk for 12 minutes with luggage, while sick, through the windy cold and pouring rain to my tram stop. I felt slightly defeated at that point but managed to buck up when I got to Schipol. I told you about my horrid flight home (puke, dehydration) but here are my final thoughts.

This was really hard. One of the hardest things I've ever done. But I'm now home, enjoying the luxury of living in America, typing on my Apple laptop that has internet that comes directly into my home. I was able to stop at a Ralphs, which is larger than the largest store in Mombasa, and buy all of the products I needed to make myself as comfortable as possible. If I weren't feeling better today I could go to a doctor who not only would treat me, but treat me well. I would have access to the medicine he prescribed and health insurance that would cover it all. My 9 days of discomfort (and they were QUITE discomfortable) were nothing in the grand scheme of my life. I got to see the kids, met a few new ones, and had a wonderful, wonderful time. Each of the children at Dickson deserves a world better than the one they have. They did nothing wrong. All they did was be born and they had the unfortunate luck of being born to some very irresponsible parents in a very fucked up country. The children should not be suffering for the crime of simply existing. They are good, hard-working kids and I would gladly suffer 10 bouts of cramping, vomiting, feverish diarrhea if I knew that it would somehow help. I'm already back to my normal life, almost 100% better and they're already back to their loveless lives of poverty. They are good, sweet, smart, amazing talent kids and I am so, so, so happy I got to see them again. Thank you everyone for all your support and love and help. I can't imagine who I'd be or where I'd be if not for my first trip to Kenya. It was life changing and each subsequent one even more so. Thank you so, so, so much. Peace and love to you all.

xoxo
n