wow. so all in all the world race has been a great experience. i’m learning a lot and i’m growing…and i get to see the world. but boy oh boy, when it rains it pours. it’s honestly kind of funny now that i think about all of the comicly suck-tastic things that happened this week… hopefully you’ll think so too. that way at least some good can come of it.
well…here we go.
so we left kenya for a three day retreat of sorts in jinga, uganda to go white water rafting on the nile. pretty cool huh? how could that be the catalyst that set off one of the most hilariously bad weeks of my existence? wait and see. for background information i need to let you know that in kenya i got my hair braided to be cool like the africans. it looked good, but itched like crazy, so first thing in uganda i decided to take those stinkin’ things out. shouldn’t take long, right? wrong. the entire second half of our first day there was spent with me unbraiding my hair until my fingers went numb. i was nowhere NEAR done. but no time for that because now it is rafting day. some background on that… i’m not the best swimmer and i haven’t really spent much time on boats, but these people are professionals… they won’t let me die. that’s bad for business. so off into the river we go. the majority of my boat wanted to do the more “wild” rafting option (woo) and it turns out that (as i suspected) despite the fact that i did push ups the entire month before in hopes to prepare myself – i STILL can’t pull my big ol butt back into the boat myself. so my team has to haul my behind in. that’s not embarrassing. at all. but that proved to be the least of my worries. my life (more aptly named death) jacket was a but too big so when we went over the first of several CLASS FIVE rapids and the boat flipped it got caught up over my helmet and pinned my head under water …almost literally drowning me. (luckily i was rescued by one of those, quite worried looking, professionals) so for the remainder of the 8 HOURS of the trip i was scared out of my mind. absolutely terrified. and when (praise the lord) we finally stopped for lunch our exceptionally smart boat captain decided that instead of the stairs we should climb the slippery rock face of doom to the picnic area. lucky me slipped on the FIRST step out of the raft and bit it on the nasty dirty nile-funk covered rocks and busted my toe open. it proceeded to bleed everywhere while i climbed through the mud up to the lunch spot.
now one would think that that would be enough, but it isn’t at all. the raft guide just poured some water on it and sent me back out on the river. (there was no other way home…we were on an island) oh, and did i mention that my only pair of shorts got caught on a D ring from the boat and ripped from the waistband to the leg so my behind was hanging out this whole time? yeah.. you can’t make stuff like this up. after lunch (aka walking around trying not to weep openly in front of my entire squad) we got back in the rafts to finish the last 4 hrs or so of the day. i’m not kidding when i say literally 4 minutes… 5 minutes tops after we get back in the boat a random bee flies up and stings me in the face. yup. a bee stings my face. this is my life. and the girl in front of me kept randomly beating me with her oar in the rapids. i currently have a bruise the size of my open hand on my right thigh. so let’s round out that day with another evening of unbraiding my stupid weave and call it finished. that day anyway. the next one was spent, save two bathroom breaks, in its entirety unbraiding my hair. from 8:30 am to 7:45 pm in the same chair. yeah, suck.
meanwhile there is apparently a wicked infection breeding in my toe so the next day i go to the clinic in jinga and the doctor proceeds to stab (seemingly at random) under my toenail in order to clean it out. i may or may not have squeezed a hole in one of my teammates hands during the process (thanks jeremiah). after being sent home with some antibiotics i thought that the whole ordeal was over. nope, not yet. not even close. (feel free to read this blog in chucks if it is too long…it was a really bad week)
I then find out that someone lost my camera charger so my camera is useless for the rest of the race and that we have to leave jinga at 5am for our new home in northern uganda. and for some (still unknown) reason the tip of the middle finger of my right hand decided to start swelling and hurting like crazyness. it got so big that i was honestly afraid that is was going to bust open. and thus begins the part of my story where my body starts to fall apart.
on the bus ride to kampala my chest starts to hurt. but only when i would eat..so that’s easy to remedy – just don’t eat. by the next morning it hurts to eat or drink. and then all the time. so off to ugandan clinic number two in our home town of GULU. this doctor (without so much as running a single test on me) tells me that i have a bacterial infection in my chest, another infection in my toe, and a fungal infection in my finger. great. so she gives me two MORE antibiotics (that makes 4 now) and tells me to come back in SIX DAYS. and when i reminded her that i couldn’t eat or really drink without being in intense pain (and hadn’t eaten at all in 3 days) she told me to just try harder. so on the brink of tears i rode the 45 minutes back to our compound in lakodi.
that night the pain spreads into my back and is too bad to sleep so the next morning we hop a bus for the 6 hour journey to a “real” doctor in the capitol, Kampala. when we finally arrive he isn’t there so we crash at another team’s place (thanks guys) and go back again in the morning. to remind you this is my 5th day of basically no food and only enough liquids to keep me alive. so i’m weak and light headed and honestly a little pissy. but before we can get to the doctor i get a call from AIM staff informing me that if i don’t get $2,000 more in my support account by the 31st of THIS month i’m being sent home. great. and it it really easy to get internet in the bush. *sigh* but let’s continue our story. so our van breaks down and we have to catch a boda boda (scary motorcycle) to the clinic where, upon arrival, i proceed to fall off and land on the ground in a giant mud puddle. the only mud puddle by the way. i’m a lucky girl. but we eventually make it to the doctor where he proceeds to worry a lot about my toe and not very much about the fact that i am slowly dehydrating to death. it turns out that instead of having some cool tropical disease i have a hereditary condition (thanks mom) that causes my stomach acid to eat giant holes in my esophagus. so he gave me some pills for that which will clear it up in TEN MORE DAYS. ten more very hungry pain sprinkled days. and who said that i’d gain weight in africa? he then proceeded to have the nurse cut a big ole chunk of skin off of my toe and tell me to come back this monday. on the bright side i get to spend a few more days in kampala…they have pizza hut here. it’s just too bad that i won’t be able to really eat for 9 more days. at least it’s a good story. what do you think?
*oh and by the way, if you have any extra jars of change laying around that are just taking up space on those precious counters of yours…i really need some money in my support account. i’ll be cutting my journey short soon if i don’t get some funding.
