Being Sick

Written on January 27th, 2010

Being sick is an inevitable, but unglamorous, aspect of life here as a PCV in The Gambia. Yet it is something that I feel like I would not really be compelled to write about due to its inherent messiness. Today was my first day being sick in village. Nothing serious, just a combination of a long bike ride in the hot sun, dehydration and eating of some questionable meat and rice. I woke up in the middle of the night every hour on the hour to go spend some quality time with my pit latrine. And once I woke up this morning I knew that my best option was really to just stay in bed. Six hours of lying in bed later I'm feeling better and as an indication I have begun to analyze the cultural aspects of being sick here.
In the US when you're sick its usually a given that people leave you alone, and allow you to rejoin the world at your own pace. I would not say that the same goes here. Notions of privacy are pretty non-existent. Though I had closed my front door as I lay in bed everyone and her mother from the village stuck their head into my open window to say matter of factly,
"Ramatoulie you are sick."
Yes that is generally what's happening when I'm sprawled across my bed with my arm flopped over my face. Not only did I have many visitors make astute observations of my invalid status, also at one point three small children were peering through the window at me as I tried to sleep, at another point one of my friends Ida came to my window beseeching me to buy panketos (small greasy doughnuts).
At around 3 my loud second mom Sarjo yelled at me through the window to: get up, open the door and eat rice. I opened the door, took the rice from her and sat in my backyard regarding the bowl for a while. I considered my options: take a couple spoonfuls, throw it down my pit latrine and pretend I had eaten or attempt to explain that I was the kind of sick where eating really only makes things worse. I decided to explain that today my stomach (not me mind you) didn't want food. She tisked and sent me back to bed. An hour later she tried to get me to drink strong sugary attaya but again I successfully bowed out by blaming my stomach.
Aside from being force fed while being sick the second interesting aspect of being sick here is the way you talk about being sick. In the US I would say "I feel like crap. I want to hurl." and you would nod and leave me alone.
Here people are so superstitious that even saying you are sick is kind of frowned upon. You say things like, "My head hurts," "My stomach is running," "My body is tired," or "I have a little malaria today." When someone asks you if your better you say you are, even if you really aren't/ This can make it all very confusing because I end up saying, "Yes I'm better, no I'm not sick my stomach is just running." and then flopping on my bed.
But I guess the best survival method is laughter and it is all pretty hilarious especially when you've made it out the other end.