Spring Break, Day 7

Saturday, March 17

In the middle of the night, I awoke with quite a disturbance. I had no idea how long I had been sleeping. The fan was off - the electricity must have gone off. I was hot and sweaty and extremely dehydrated. I laid there in the bed not really knowing what to do, just feeling completely bizarre. After a few minutes, it became clear that I couldn't just keep laying there. I got up out of the bed and stood up. In that instant my mind and my stomach felt like they had just been twisted up like a little kid on a swing and then just released to go back and forth, back and forth. Rachel woke up and asked if I was alright (it's always Rachel and me in the middle of the night... Tania just sleeps through it all). I told her I needed some fresh air. I walked outside to a little concrete area in front of our room. I then proceeded to the front door of the hotel which was locked shut. I felt very weak, so I immediately sat down on the concrete. Right after sitting down, I knew I was going to hurl everywhere. As much I didn't want to move, I didn't want to throw up all over the concrete for someonoe to clean up the next day.

I stumbled to the bathroom, unable to see a thing (remember, electricity off), so I just felt for the toilet, clutched it, and then let everything go. I threw up a lot. It was pretty intense. The whole while I was throwing up and gagging and drooling, I could taste that meat from the sandwich I ate earlier. It was hot and nasty. Some of it clearly hadn't digested so well. Tania and Rachel immediately got up and asked if I was going to be alright, horrified by my spewing but also kind of laughing at the situation. I told them I'd be ok. They went outside. They were having a hard time sleeping anyway. We all were considering the heat with no air conditioner or fan.

After my long hurl session (Tania would later tell me it was the most she's ever seen or heard anyone throw up), it became clear that I had another problem on my hands. Well, on my hands, in my intestines actually. It was the most intense diarrhea attack I've ever experienced. I told Tania and Rachel and once again they were horrified but laughing, not only at me, but just at our whole trip in general, all these crazy things happening, and here's what Drew gets for it. I finally finished releasing all the various wastes from my body, and I stood up. I felt okay. Clearly whatever was inside me that had made me sick was gone now.

Unfortunately, the toilet wouldn't flush, and the fan still didn't work, so now the room was hot AND it smelled like crap. So I went outside with Rachel and Tania, and we all sat around on the concrete, just laughing in disbelief at how little life made sense. Finally we all layed down on the concrete, no pillows or blankets, me only in my boxers. It wasn't cool outside or anything, but compared to being in the room, outside was a blessing, and we all fell asleep there on the concrete.

I woke up again when the sun was up. I was still outside on the concrete in my boxers. I didn't see Tania or Rachel outside, so I turned my head and I saw them laying on the bed in the room, the door wide open. I got up as if I had just done the most normal thing in the world and went back to the bed. The fan was working now, so it would not be such torture. I woke up again at 8 in the morning, once again feeling pretty dehydrated. I quickly got dressed and left the hotel. I still had the taste of regurgitated meat in my mouth. I found a little store and bought a bottle of water which I drank very happily. I then went back to the hotel and took a much-needed shower. I had only showered twice on the whole trip, and I just felt disgusting.

When Rachel and Tania got up, they showered and we chatted once again about how little sense life made. We also decided at this point not to stay in Ouidah Saturday night, which we had been thinking about doing. We went to get breakfast. We couldn't find any coffee and omelettes, but we did find a later selling rice, spaghetti, and beans with different sauces. So I ate some which made me feel a lot better. It also made me realize how tired I still was, though, so I told Tania and Rachel that I didn't think I could do anything in Ouidah. I said it was fine if they wanted to do some stuff, but I was just too tired to enjoy anything. So I went to the cultural center in town which was really more like a nice park that can't be seen from the street. I went to a little bench where we all sat down our bags. Tania and Rachel bid me farewell for a few hours, I laid down on the ground, and then I went to sleep. There were only a few people there, but they didn't seem to mind. A teenage boy came over to me and asked me if I was okay. I explained as best I could to him that I did not feel well but that I was alright and my friends were coming back.

They did come back quite soon after I got up. That was a relief to me because I didn't want to sit around this place all day. They did a few things - went to a market, met some Spanish lady, saw a few temples - things like that. We took zemidjans back to the main road where we could get a taxi to the Benin-Togo border. That's when we met the lady whose daughter lives in Atlanta. She was really nice. She shared a taxi with us to the border, and she also helped us get a good price for the taxi (which we needed desperately because we had almost no money). Luckily, at the border, people were exchanging cedis and CFAs. We had cedis, so we got some CFAs so we could get a cab ride to Ghana. It turned out that one of the guys we shared a cab with to the border (it was a 6-person operation) was a taxi driver, so he took all five of us who had ridden with him to the border. Amazingly, it only takes about 45 minutes to drive from the Benin border to the Ghana border. The country's that skinny!

I was so happy to cross the border and get back into Ghana where life at least kind of makes sense. I could tell the second I crossed the border that the people had changed. It brought a smile to my face. We found the tro-tro to Accra, and I eagerly got in the back, excited to be going back to Accra. Well, the ride back was horrible. I mean, horrible. There were twelve, I repeat twelve (12) police barriers between Aflao and Accra. The whole trip is only about 220Km, so that's more than one police barrier every 18km. It got to be pretty aggravating. A few of them only took a few minutes to take care of, but some of them took 10 or 15 minutes. One time we got stopped immigration officers, and we all had to get off the tro-tro and show the officers our passports and IDs. What should have been a three-hour drive ended up being a five-hour drive. Not the ideal ending to a long trip, but most certainly a fitting ending to the craziness that was my Spring Break. As soon as I got back to my place, I made a big bowl of oatmeal and sat around the rest of the night doing nothing but enjoying the knowledge that the next day, I didn't have to go anywhere.

The End.