degrees of comfort -- guest blog by jon rudnicki

The infirmary door opens, I hear a “Co co co…”, (the burkinabe equivalent of “anybody there?” when entering a room) as someone rounds the corner toward the sickbeds. Its two fellow Peace Corps trainees, Molly and Coleman, coming to check on the downed soldiers. I like to think that they came out of sincerity and concern however it might have been more for their amusement or in Molly’s case even for karma sake considering she’s seemingly the only trainee out of 32 who hasn’t been sick yet. (jinx) whatever it was I was happy to see them after they were finished with training classes for the day. I think I may have been reading at that point, starting to feel better, but still staying the night because hell, I earned it from the previous two sick nights spent in my village. No one was going to move me from that bed. “We just wanted to see if you were still alive”, after a quick health status update and their sympathies they were on their way back to village.

The infirmary in Ouahigouya is a small medical building with a little white room that can just barely fit two beds, where people go to moan and whine about little sicknesses, that, because we’re in West Africa, make us think we are actually dying. Even though we sit through medical courses in the first weeks we arrive where we are repeatedly told that “you are not dying”, I had to disagree.

Charley, who I now refer to as my “old war buddy”, had the fortune of passing the time with me in the sick house. The short occasions between his spells of freezing in the fetal position rocking himself to stay warm and telling me that his “skin was on fire”, we would share our war stories. These are the stories that granted us the privilege to be lying in the beds we were currently occupying. And also allotted us the convenience of indoor plumbing with a toilet! (by the end of this story you’ll have a better understanding of why I chose to use an exclamation point there) We even had a functioning fan in the room. We were rockstars. Albeit at the expense of our ailments, I can easily say more than one time I wouldn’t have minded a minor sickness for the use of such luxury items here in Burkina Faso.

Charley didn’t have to do much explaining of his purple heart tale. As he lay there, malaria positive, splayed on the bed sweating and groaning I was humbled knowing he had just pedaled in an hour ago on his bike from village five miles away in 90 degree heat. Although I arrived in a less heroic fashion, I’m not going to let that undermine my epic war story.


Two days earlier I just finished dinner, which was plain cous-cous and water, which I have learned to be excited about, low dirt content. You can’t help but consume the red African dirt everyday being in the sahel, its in the air, you breathe it, you sweat and it sticks to you, forming a layer of fine dirt on your skin. It unavoidably gets in and on everything, it just happens to be more noticeable in soft foods but you quickly learn to live with it. Shortly after dinner I started feeling ill with stomach pains, headache, and nausea. So I told my host brother that I would be going to bed soon. I shuffled into my concrete room took some ibuprofen, started drinking oral rehydration salts (essentially this is drinking salt water, mmm… oceany) and got under my bug net to try to sleep.

All symptoms got worse as the night went on which prevented me from sleeping. All night long I tossed and turned and moaned and groaned until sunrise. When my brother came to the door I let him in which required me to get up out of bed and open the door because it remains shut from a latch on the inside. painfully and nauseously I shifted up and unhinged the door in a manner that must had semblance of an arthritic 95 year old. I explained to him my current state and that I was not going to training classes today because I wanted to rest and get better in my bed.

Shortly thereafter, my host mother came to the door, so I repeated the laborious processes- slowly sit up regain balance, untuck mosquito net, feet on floor – stabilize annnd stand,, creep to the door - unlock, phew ..all without throwing off the delicate equilibrium of my stomach that could have erupted out of my mouth at any moment. she only speaks the native language but I could understand she was giving me blessings because she kept using the word which means God. Ok thanks mom, time to rest, now. I lay back down,

“Co co co…” now it is my host father. Repeat process. Except add a sigh somewhere in there.
“Co co co…” now it’s my host uncle, repeat,
“Co co co…” now it’s my host brother, repeat, insert an “ugh” somewhere
“Co co co…” now it’s my host neighbor? Or a host stranger? I don’t know I’d never seen him before, I’m sure he told me who he was in his language but I wasn’t able to hear. The fact that I was so sick beyond the point of making any effort to do anything except for use every ounce of energy I had to keep getting up and unlatching the doors and not throwing up on my guests who I think were now making pilgrimages from other towns.
“Co co co…” now it’s my language teacher. Ok, I was actually happy to see him. If something goes wrong during training he is all over it. But he couldn’t do much in this situation. I was 3 seconds away from vomiting on him.
“Co co co…” now it’s a muslim priest, I feel awkward, do I kneel or something? It’s probably culturally insensitive to keep coming to the door in a blanket and not even speaking the same language to mumble something incoherently and point to my stomach to this community’s high chief but I WAS SICK. Forced insincerity. I assume now there is a sign up in front of Mecca that says DETOUR and points toward my house. So this is called integration because, please note, I haven’t said anything negative about their ways of handling situations. It’s nice to know people care and they support you. See, that was even a compliment.
My host brother came to the door one more time and at that point I could muster no more energy and just yelled from the bed. “I’M GOING TO SLEEP NOW (…please inform the entire town this fact)”

Miraculously, there was a lull in the visitors, like I was in the eye of a storm, like a metaphor, but then a real storm came, like a terrible thing, in real life. A sandstorm hit pretty hard. I was too nauseous and bereft of strength and energy to move my bed away from my windows that can’t close all the way. But I could wrap my sheet over my head so I could still breathe. So I laid there in my bed, with a sheet around head, waiting for the storm to pass, while it was raining sand on me and my bed. This, as one might imagine, was uncomfortable.

Later that day, language class was held in my little room, so I could still participate. It’s not as bad as it sounds, my condition somewhat improved, after I dug myself out of my bed. That was an exaggeration it wasn’t that sandy, but I did have a sandy mouth for the rest of the day. It was good to interact with English speakers even though we were supposed to be speaking French.
“I’m getting better” was my optimistic mantra that evening. However my stomach had a different mantra. It was something more like “DIE JON”. I am now going to describe my latrine, so you readers can get a visual of where I spent most of the night. About 15 paces out my front door is a mud brick wall with an open entrance. So upon entering there is a half wall so people who don’t “co co co” will only see half of your naked body. 5 foot walls surround you in the open air …which is nice because:
* The sun can shine on you
* The stars at night
* Breezes
* You can see the trees around you
…Which is bad because:
* The kids in those trees can look back at you
* Chickens fly in
* Cockroaches
* Rain
In the middle of the latrine is a hole. One must not look down the hole for obvious reasons. The not so obvious reason is that typically these structures are like 10 feet deep, so it is kind of like you’re on a roof pooping into a room. Which adds another dimension of scariness thinking about the floor giving way and falling in (which we have heard tales of).

Anyway, to spare many details of my second night of no sleep sickness, me and my flashlight frequented the latrine, that I share with the rest of my family, somewhere around 15 times this night. It’s funny when you decide to give in and call the Peace Corps Doctors because nobody really wants to inconvenience them but you think there is a strong chance you are legitimately dying. So needless to say my pain/etiquette scale had started tipping heavier toward the death side around 3am. I didn’t have to say “I think I am dying” because surely it was just assumed based on how hard I was trying not to say those exact words. The white land rover donning the Peace Corps symbol like superman’s “S” swooped into my village and picked me up within a couple hours. Admittedly, I felt a sense of guilt and dejectedness for failing so badly at the integration thing I was being physically removed from my environment like a broken human figurine on a train set.

I had notified my host brother where I was going so I didn’t doubt for a second that the entire village would be gathered to watch when I made the move from my little house to the car, because this was like a two for one deal, not only do they get to see a car in their village but they get to smile and laugh at the white foreigner. The Burkinabe’s humor is the “laugh with you kind” as they LOVE to set you up for cultural faux pas or situations that Americans have just never experienced and then laugh at you when you look most uncomfortable. Which is what they relish, American awkwardness. So you can have an idea of how to gauge this moment in their eyes, on the American excitement level it would rank somewhere around New Harry Potter book and superbowl. I hesitated at the door before leaving, running through most tactful ways to convey to my driver “stop the vehicle I’m going to ‘vomit/have diarrhea/pass-out’ ‘on the dash/in the seat/now”. This message seemed eminent considering there wasn’t actually a “road” to our village, there were means of access for bikes but that was even rough going on good days, so needless to say I was in for a turbulent ride. Then I realized that I was still going through the motions as though at this stage of my sickness I had any remaining pride. Without sleep or food for the last two days completely drained of energy, pride was the last thing I had on my mind as I crawled into the front seat. As the rover drove towards the infirmary, the villagers stared, fastidiously observing all movements, the last one they saw from the reclining passenger was an arm slowly rise to give a thumbs up.