Food Poisoning Day

It started as a normal day. I already had my episodes of traveler’s diarrhea which is common. But that was nothing like the experience I had on Wednesday night. Kurt, Janine and I headed to the office around 8:00am. They had scheduled some meetings in the PCI offices during the morning and a visit to PACT and the souvenir shops in the afternoon. Janine invited Kurt and me to lunch at a restaurant nearby. Janine and I ordered pizza and Kurt ordered some meat with rice and vegetables. The pizza was good but I couldn’t finish it. It was too much food. But right after eating the pizza, I started to feel tired. It was a pretty weird feeling.

Later in the afternoon, Baheru, PCI’s driver took us to PACT. Baheru and I would wait in the car because the meeting will not last for more than thirty minutes. But we decided to go to Kaldi’s coffee shop. Interestingly, the coffee shop has a similar logo to the one of Starbucks coffee. At Kaldi’s they serve coffee, tea, ice-cream, pastries, sodas, and hamburgers. We got some ice cream and headed back to the PACT offices and wait for Kurt and Janice. Soon after, they came out and we were on our way to Churchill Avenue to the souvenir shops. We spent around two hours looking around for interesting pieces. I was feeling tired all this time. Then, I had a light headache. I bought a medium-size Ethiopian flag (~USD 3.50) but didn’t buy anything else. While we were shopping, we say a little girl selling tissue paper. She was very cute and we decided to take pictures of her. She smiled to the camera and she was constantly trying to sell the tissue paper to us. We gave her 3 ETB (USD 0.33). As soon as she got the money, she ran to an old lady (maybe her mother) and gave her the money.

It was late and Baheru had to go to school to take a mid-term exam on Entrepreneurship. We left him at his college and headed back to the office. We cleaned our desks and went back to the house. I had a big headache by then. I ate a little bit and took a shower. I had some Tylenol in my First Aid Kit so I took two of them. It was 8pm and I went to bed early. I didn’t have a stomach ache but I didn’t feel well.

The show started at 2:00 am. I woke up with extreme pain. My headache was gone but my stomach was hell. I felt miserable. By 4:00 am I was headed to the toilet! I have never experience some acute diarrhea like this one. After that, I went back to my room and started to feel vomit-like symptoms. I couldn’t believe it. As soon as my stomach felt better, this comes up! But I managed to control it. But something was mounting in my stomach again! By 6:30 am I was back to the toilet. Incredible! I also started to have acid-reflux. I was a mess!

I went to the kitchen where Kurt and the kids where having breakfast and told them about my miserable night. I was almost 8:00 am and no signs of Janine. Soon after, Janine came down. And amazingly enough, she was suffering from the same symptoms. Conclusion: Food Poisoning! Our faces looked miserable. We weren’t feeling well. We were up all night and there was no sign of improvement. Kurt decided to worked from home and take care of us. We had to cancel a meeting with Saba Har, the company that buys raw silk from farmers and process it into scarves and other products. By 9:00 am the liquids were going out through both ends: extreme diarrhea and vomiting. It was quite a scene.

Kurt told me that it is very common to get food poisoning in this country because they have a lot of food hygiene issues. We were trying to figure out what could have caused the poisoning. We simply don’t know. I went to my room around 11:00 am and tried to sleep. Fortunately, I could sleep and I rested for a few hours. Marcia cooked a soup with rice and vegetables for us. I had a little bit and some water. The only positive thing that I could take from this is that I have come up to speed with my blog! I hope these unpleasant events will not be of common occurrence.