First Sickness

Today I experience the worst feeling that I had possibility experienced in my entire life. I’m not sure exactly what the sickness was but it was what I understood to be a fever, the flu, food poisoning all at the same time. I woke up in the morning intending to attend school as classes hadn't started yet but we did have to go to the WARC for our last day of orientation. After showering and getting ready I went down for breakfast but I knew as soon as I woke up I didn't want bread and I only wanted tea to soothe my stomach. 

However as I was drinking my tea I started to get a little nauseous and ran upstairs after which I threw up everything from my very delicious traditional Senegalese meal from the night before, during which I indulged quite a bit. I then went outside told my neighbor and fellow MSID participant Jack that I would come to class later that day because I was feeling sick, little did he know that I had thrown up everything just moments before. I then proceeded to sleep for the next day, periodically getting up to throw up or relive my self.

The school actually called me in the afternoon to check to make sure I was not extremely sick with malaria or any other illness. It turned out that 4 other people in the program were sick as well and they thought that it was because of the unfiltered water that we had at lunch on Thursday. Which I remembered drinking a lot of because I thought it was filtered and I was extremely thirsty. Apparently everyone but me knew this was not the case. I knew that everyone warned against drinking the faucet water in a developing country I had never experienced the effects of it. Now I understood from personal experience. 

At some point during the afternoon and night each of my family members came into my room to see if I was okay and I explained that I had taken my medications and I would hopefully be better soon. My host sister in the late afternoon actually came in and when I told her I was hot she told me to get up and she helped me put my bed outside in the cool air because my room was so hot. Even after the stomach sickness and the the diarrhea ceased I continued to feel extremely sore all night and even until the next day. I continued to sleep until about 10:30am on Saturday (I had a slept a solid 20 hours by then) when my strength had returned and the soreness had ceased.