22 September 2010
Last night I stood in the bathroom and cried. I couldn’t help it; I sobbed, tears hitting the dirty floor. I was thankful for the constantly running water in the toilet to cover the sound of my pitiful whimpers. How did I get here? Again!? I was three for three now, three weeks in the country, and three episodes of diarrhea. This was even worse than before because I was also throwing up, my fever was over 100, and this time it was clear that it was my host family’s food that had made me sick. No one else was to blame, no foreign restaurants or mystery street food. It was the Polov from the night before. There’s just something about a fever and having the shits for 8 hours straight that saps the ‘grownup’ right out of me and turns me into a tearful little girl who needs her mama. In this regard, I was actually in luck because I had Bibi, her daughter-in-law (aka Kelim), and her daughter (visiting from Uzbekistan with her three children, 2, 12, and 16) to care for me.
I dabbed my tears and headed back to my room, but found myself walking back to the kitchen where everyone was sitting, making dinner and chatting, screaming, whining, etc. I stood there, and everyone looked up as another tear fell. The look on their faces was difficult to describe, a combination of confusion and concern. Was their 32-year-old Mehman really crying in their kitchen? I started laughing at that point after I tried to say I wasn’t feeling well. They knew I was sick, but until that point, we had been speaking in vague euphemisms and hand gestures; now it was serious. Bibi asked what I had eaten—I didn’t have the heart to tell her directly that it could only have been their Polov from the night before, so I said I didn’t know, I just breathe the air and I get sick.
I was starting to shake and had a chill, so I asked for tea and headed back to bed. Bibi and Kelim brought me mint tea (from their yard) with sugar, crackers, and plain rice with salt. Bibi kept quizzing me on the nature of my illness; she asked if I was also sick like this in America—I won’t lie, I’m a weak link when it comes to gastrointestinal issues—but this, THIS I had never experienced with such ferocity and frequency anywhere else. I tried to be vague, as clearly Bibi could not conceive that her home cooking was making me sick. She finally settled on a cause for my illness that she could believe in: I had taken a shower that morning. She got a cold after all the Eid festivities and blamed it on having taken a shower (something she does about once a week).
While sweating in my bed with a 102 fever, I listened to “The Kite Runner” as an audiobook, a gift from my sister, and it helped immensely in loosening the grip of self-pity. What a fascinating story; you can always count on the Afghans to provide some perspective on suffering. In the heat of feverish delirium, my mind drifted to extreme measures: maybe I will only do one semester here, I considered. This friggin' sucks! I recall telling friends and coworkers that I needed to go on an adventure because I was getting too comfortable and complacent in my bourgeoisie life in suburban Virginia. I remind myself that I also said that I knew it would probably suck—in fact, that was the point, but I would learn so much! Be careful what you wish for.
Next week, we’re going to the Pamirs, the semiautonomous mountainous region to the east. They tell us to be prepared for it to really, actually, probably suck in many ways but also to be really amazing. Sounds like another great “learning experience.”
26 September
First off, I apologize to my gentle readers that my blog has become more about my bodily functions than I would have liked, and I hope I have not alarmed too many people or scared anyone off coming to Central Asia! With the miracles of modern medicine (Cipro) I recovered quite rapidly and composed this poem for the occasion:
A Haiku to Cipro
White pills in my hand
Years of progress manifest
Pain is forgotten
28 September - The German Doctor
I wish my dear readers did not have to hear yet another tale of gastrointestinal distress, but sadly, that’s the most important thing in my life right now, and I've come this far, so why stop now? It’s starting to remind me of those days in Army Basic Training when I thought, I can’t do another push-up, I can’t run another foot, and yet again, I would be called upon to do just that. I think I’ve reached the promised land of ‘gastrointestinal assimilation’, but yet again.... Though the analogy breaks down when I remember that my dining experience in Basic Training, though often rushed, was one of the best in my life. I fondly recall very satisfying meals of Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast (a treat even at home), delicious dinners, and once, the best mango I’ve ever had for dessert. But I digress.
I stayed home on Sunday and tried to sleep off a sore throat I was afraid was coming around to me, and I wanted to make sure I would be in tip-top shape for the Pamirs trip on Thursday. This meant eating three meals from my host family. The plan backfired completely when I awoke at 4 am on Monday, vomiting my guts out. This continued for six hours or so. Eventually, the program director convinced me to go to the famous Western-style “Prospekt Medical Clinic” to be sure I could be cleared to travel to the Pamirs. The clinic was just as advertised, “Western-Style,” complete with friendly and professional multilingual staff.
I was almost eager to meet the German doctor who many other students had spoken of. He poked his head into the room where I was getting my vitals taken, said “Hallo” then went away. When I finally saw him, he was a slender, blond-graying man with a slight stoop and a nervous demeanor. My visit consisted of him giving me several pills from his vast pill closet, and me showing him my little portable pharmacy pill box—he nodded approvingly to my Cipro and Anti-histamine and tisk-tisked the Imodium. He said in a disapproving tone that we have all been over-prescribing Imodium, and it should only be used for serious situations—such as in the Pamirs. We had what has now become a commonplace lamentation conversation about the lack of food hygiene habits among Tajiks, and he warned me that he knew a case of a perfectly healthy Austrian man who had developed pancreatitis just from eating the local diet. He counseled me not to eat oil, meat, potatoes, or even the delicious white bread for a while. Hah!
More than one person has suggested that I’m going on my very own “Pray, Eat, Love” trip; I hope we can put that myth to rest now with me getting doctor's orders not even to eat the local food. Now that I was sufficiently freaked out, I decided maybe I would wholly reconsider my plan to ‘eat local’ and experience everything Tajikistan had to offer. The German doctor was very interested in discussing the current pedagogical situation in Tajikistan. He said they intend to switch from Russian as a first “second language” to Persian, and then English would remain third. This might not be such a good idea in this part of the world where Russian is the lingua franca and Persian is not. English isn’t even close!
As I sat in the waiting room, I was suddenly reminded of a book I read probably 18 years ago—a novel called “Caravans” by James Michener. It’s about an American woman in the 1950s who marries an Afghan and then goes missing; the story is about the people searching for her and their travels in Afghanistan. At some point, they meet a German doctor living in poverty helping the locals—it turns out to atone for his sins of working in Nazi death camps. (The book satisfied my morbid interest in the Holocaust at the time and my continued fascination with Afghanistan). Not to suggest that this kind German Doctor had a particularly dark and evil past, but one always wonders why someone would leave a perfectly pleasant first-world country to come to Tajikistan, a not-so-pleasant third-world country, and continue to be amazed after four years there that they still hadn’t learned hygiene. Everyone has their demons, I guess. Why am I here, afterall?
I went home and burned out my fever for another 12 hours, apparently causing my Bibi’s blood pressure to rise even further. She puts your stereotypical Jewish mother to shame with her ability to guilt-trip me. Her downcast glances, knowing nods, and short sentences in passing say it all. I did not cry this time, sick as I was.
So here I am, sitting at Café Segafreddo—first real post-sick meal out of the way. Not quite totally better, but I’m eager to keep trying to have a good experience here in Tajikistan. Part of that would be going to see the Pamirs, and I’m not sure I’ll be up for it. Just imagining being stuck at home with the shrieking children might be enough to make me find the strength to go. How bad can a 24-hour jeep ride to the middle of nowhere in the mountains really be?
29 September 2010
My health has returned enough that I am actually excited to leave for the Pamirs tomorrow. Just two days ago I could not imagine leaving my bed. Perhaps the sounds of screaming, whining, crying, shouting, pounding, hammering, blaring television through the door, and generally carrying on could also have contributed to my ego’s sincere desire for health, equanimity, and escape from Dushanbe. How much worse can a 24-hour jeep ride be than the sounds of a Tajiki household with children? At least they don't have a dog, and the neighbors don’t have roosters, chickens, and goats, as one of my fellow students has reported.
Hopefully, when I return in six days, I will be fully ‘acclimated’ and have many more stories about the ‘roof of the world.’1
Stay tuned for Tajik Tales #7 - things get better in the Pamirs, I promise!
The Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan are formed by the intersection of five mountain ranges, including the Himalayas, earning it the name “Roof of the World,”—also the moniker for Tibet.