This past month, our newly formed team experienced what would be considered a World Race nightmare. It all started with a dinner full of nshima (a traditional Zambian staple food), cabbage, bugs, and laughter. However, it ended with our entire team of seven, plus two of our squad leaders, admitted to the hospital.
Yes, it may sound like a terrifying experience, but it is something our team has certainly bonded over to the point where we look back and laugh. Here is a compilation, told by the members of our team, of the events occurring over two and a half days of bus rides, puking, IVs, malaria, and stool samples.
Forewarning: Our story details are not for quesy stomaches.
It all begins with what we like to call “The Day of a Thousand Vomits.”
4:00pm, Thursday January 14th (Zack)
I felt bad on the bus from Kabwe to Ndola. Catherine kept asking me questions. I just told her “I hate buses” and fell asleep. I woke up in Ndola, still feeling sick. I sat down next to Lizete, who was already sick; I saw her face in a plastic bag which was quickly filling with green puke.
I then I saw an ice cream cone and though, “man that looks good.” .And then I went to the bathroom and had to pay some guy to use a flashlight in a bathroom with no seat on it. It had toilet paper, which is always a bonus. I came back outside and got into a car with my team and some guy I didn’t know. Our ministry host kept asking me questions, but I really just felt like I was going to barf in his lap.
We rode in car for what felt like sixteen hours and when we got to the Serve Zambia office, I threw up about ten times. We drove to the mission house, where I still felt sick, and over the next several hours I threw up multiple times about every thirty minutes. Lizette and I were left at the house while the rest of the team went for dinner and grocery shopping in town.
4:30pm, Thursday January 14th (Catherine)
We just arrived in town to get food and groceries. But as soon as we got to the restaurant it all went downhill.
In less than five minutes of sitting at the table, Abbie went to the bathroom. I went to check on her, only to find she had just puked. She came back to the table, feeling good for a moment, but was back in the bathroom quickly. I was starting to get a pain in my stomach and was feeling really uneasy. The rest of the team was happily eating their dinner at the table, while Abbie and I tried to hold it together.
We finally finished diner with only half of us feeling well. We head over to the grocery store to shop for the week. Jon, Louise, Josh, and Kristen are put in charge of the groceries. Abbie, Jake, and I wait outside, ready to puke any minute. We find a nice little spot by the trash can, leaving the lid open as a precaution. Not long into shopping, Louise leaves the store and joins us outside feeling sick and ready to puke any second. She ends up bent over the trash can while Jake is on the phone describing Louise’s puke to Bekah (Our other squad leader who was calling to check up on us).
On a Friday night, the town hot spot was this very grocery store with taxi drivers, customer, beggars, and drunken men everywhere. Louise and Kristen puke outside the store in the trash can with people all around watching us. We waited outside for about an hour for the groceries to be bought. Finally, Jon and Josh finished the shopping and we all piled in the car with our empty plastic bags in hand ready in case of an emergency.
We return to the house, with only Jake, Jon, and Josh feeling well. We spend the evening re-hydrating and relaxing in hope a good night sleep would cure us. We call it a day around ten and all head to bed.
12:00am, Friday January 15th (Abbie)
My eyes wake to a bright light in the hallway. I hear footsteps, whispers, and the bathroom door open and shut. I check my watch. It is midnight. I sigh. I was hoping for at least a peaceful night after such a chaotic afternoon. It had only been two hours since I had turned off the lights and I had called our ministry contact to tell him everyone was okay and sleeping. We were hoping a good night’s sleep would bring the team good health in the morning.
“I should get up,” I kept saying to myself. “I need to go help them.” All of a sudden, Catherine sat up and dashed for the trash bags I had set out for both of us before I went to sleep. Now I knew I really needed to get up. I walkedinto the hallway, where I stumbled upon a scene you think would only come out of a late-night comedy. Catherine and Kristen were both vomiting. Louise and Lizete were trying to clean up all of the puke while trying to hold it together themselves.
My stomach started to feel funny like it had earlier, but I ignored it, knowing I needed to help my teammates. I went to Catherine; I rubbed her back. But I needed to go to the bathroom before I helped in any other way. I turned around to head to the bathroom and things started to get extremely fuzzy. I had to fight my body to take the ten steps to the bathroom door. I passed my other teammates and tried to ask them if they were okay, but my words started to slur together. I started to breathe heavy. I stopped in front of Kristen, who was sitting in her doorway, exhausted from vomiting everything she had in her. I started talking nonsense, trying to ask her if she was okay.
“I’m going to pass out,” I thought to myself. “I need to tell someone I’m going to pass out.” I stood against the wall, still facing Kristen, and positioned my back to catch myself in case no one heard me. My head started moving in slow and long circles. “Tell them! Tell them,” I yelled to myself. Next thing I knew I was sitting against the wall with Louise and Catherine around me.
“Did I pass out?” I asked very slowly. They told me yes. I blacked out again. Next thing I knew, I was on the floor with my shirt off. My squad leader, Lizete, was fanning me with a silver tray she found in the kitchen. I slowly started to regain consciousness. I told them I wanted to cry but then I started laughing. Louise started laughingwith me. After they had caught me, my teammates realized I was burning up. They took me outside to cool down. Everything was still slow, I felt like I had been hit by a bus. We were all sitting in the quiet dark of the night when we decided we needed help.
1:00am – 7:00am, Friday January 15th (Louise)
All the girls were outside cooling off because it was hot in the house. Jake and I ran to the ministry host’s house with a flashlight. We knocked on both the front and back door. When he finally answered, we told them we were still really sick.
When we got back to the house, Zack had his shirt off puking outside, Kristen was still puking, and Abbie was sitting outside. Everyone was looking like a hot mess. Our ministry host, Pastor Andrew and his wife Patricia, showed up and said, “We need to go to the hospital.” Jake, Catherine, Abbie, Kristen, and Zack load into the SUV to go to the hospital. I stayed at the house to help Lizete clean up. The house smelled so badly of puke and the air was so hot, I decided to set up my tent on the porch to sleep.
When I woke up at 6:00am, Lizete told us the rest of the team needed to go to the hospital. When we arrived at the hospital, they checked us in and covered all the basic medical procedures. Everything was fine until I was sitting in a crowded exam room getting an IV. I was sitting to the left of a desk in a wheelchair facing Abbie, who was passed out asleep on a hospital bed. The nurse tried to find a vein on my arm. I started getting nervous because she looked like she didn’t know what she was doing.
When I sat down, Lizete was about to get an IV. I get this ghetto IV in and blacked out. I remember waking up and being really hot. I turned back to Lizete and she was doubled over, looking like a mummy. I’m not sure if she passed out too. I was still profusely sweating. I told the nurse I needed to go to the bathroom and one of my teammates wheeled me out. While I was wheeled out, two nurses had Lizete’s seemingly lifeless body and were carrying her to a hospital bed. When I made it to the bathroom, I realized the hospital had no running water…
9:00am, Friday January 15th (Jon)
I remember getting to the hospital and seeing everyone looking half-dead. Half of my teammates were in an exam room. Zack was walking around with an empty fluid bag still connected to his IV. They checked us in and started calling us in one by one to get IVs. I refused to get an IV. I didn’t want to get an IV after all the trouble I saw everyone else go through.
Eventually, the entire team ended up in large infirmaryroom. It was very spacious with open beds lining the walls. It looked like an infirmary from a movie. Everyone immediately passed out after lying down in a bed. A nurse came to change Louise’s IV bag and give her a fresh one. Louise started screaming something like, “OHHHHHH, it’s so cold! My arm is freezing.”
Jake decided he was going to lie down to sleep because he had been up all night. I figured I didn’t have anything else to do, so I decided to lie down on a hospital bed too. An hour later, Pastor Andrew showed up with food so we could take oura ntibiotics. A couple of us got up to eat.
I started to notice Jake was beginning to act very delirious, possibly from the lack of sleep and not receiving fluids. He would try to eat his oatmeal, but couldn’t get the spoon to his mouth and would just fall over on his bed. The nurse came in and we asked for fluids for Jake. Jake was lying in the bed backwards still acting very strange. By then, they started moving the team into the “high cost” part of the hospital one by one, and I started to help move them.
2:00pm, Friday January 15th (Kristen)
By the time we had moved to the “high cost room,” I feltcompletely fine. I had been 100% since about 10:00am. Everyone was still passed out, trying to sleep off the sickness. There was an Indian soap opera on the televisionfor the whole afternoon, until a storm came and knocked out the satellite signal.
When someone woke up, Jon and I would be there immediately to ask if they needed anything. We would grab food for them or whatever they needed. Many doctors came in and out asking us questions about what we had eaten to make us sick. No one was coherent enough to answer them in the women’s room, so after they would try to interrogate a teammate, I would answer all of the questions. The most entertaining part of the afternoon was holding IV bags for teammates as they used the bathroom!
At one point, they told me five of us would be released to go home. But no one ever discharged us. When Pastor Andrew came to check on us and said he would see us in the morning, the look on mine and Catherine’s faces had to of been priceless. We knew we were in for a long, boring night in the hospital.
The the highlight of the evening was when Lizete fixed the TV and we all sat together watching a U.S. college basketball game and more of the Indian soap opera. After this experience, never again will I leave my Kavu bag at home with all forms of entertainment.
9:00, Saturday January 16th (Josh)
When we arrived at the hospital the previous morning, I really had to go to the bathroom. But they didn’t have any toilet paper. I walkedinto an exam room and saw Abbie lying on a bed half awake. I told her there was no toilet paper, and she pointed to some gauze in the corner. I head to the bathroom and take care of business. I found out later, that multiple teammates had gotten in trouble for the mess I had made in that bathroom.
I had been stuck in my hospital bed forever, asleep or incredibly out of it. I really only remember small pieces of conversations. When I finally woke up for good, it was the day after arriving at the hospital. At about 9:00am, the nurse finally took out my IV. It had been in for a full 24 hours. I walked into the women’s hospital room and I felt like I hadn’t seen my teammates for days.
We were finally discharged. I remember getting back to our ministry house and it was like nothing had happened. Louise and I played with the kids across the street. At one point, I pulled the hospital discharge slip from my pocket and realized it was real; we really had just been discharged from the hospital the same morning.
It was for sure an interesting African experience.
