Days 31-37 (approximately 0.5 weeks until go to Roti for the first time)

Well I guess this is the post you’ve all been waiting for, the one where my trip takes a slightly less enviable turn. I would like to think that thus far this blog has taken quite a high brow approach, this will momentarily be paused for this post.

Saturday sam and I went surfing and had a great time and this time I even managed to avoid the perils of sunburn however whether or not it was something in the 50 gallons of sea water I consumed (inadvertently of course) or something else, I obviously consumed something that did not agree with me. To misquote a stand up comedian called Demitri Martin, that disagreement was over how much I’d be crapping.

I spent all of Sunday and Monday confined to my flat not daring to move more than about ten feet from the toilet. This genuinely was not a fun experience and I felt pretty awful to boot. At one point (just as sam was trying to ring me to see if I was doing okay, poor timing) I felt sick as well so I was ‘praying to the porcelain god’ if people are familiar with that phrase (if not it means kneeling facing the toilet being, or preparing to be sick). At this point I am going to assume I then fainted. I make this assumption based on three things

1) I woke up a few moments later lying on the bathroom floor (and if you imagine what bathroom floors here are like, you can guess this wouldn’t be through choice)

2) I had no idea how I got there

3) I had rather an impressive bruise on my left eyebrow which would appear to indicate I hit something at speed, the Sherlock Holmes in me guesses it was either the floor, the toilet itself or the tiled wall.

A bizarre ten minute fever then followed and passed. Needless to say I was on the whole pretty ill. After a few days (including missing language school on Monday) I am feeling much better and Suzanne (nurse, fellow volunteer) even texted me today to say my recovery would indicate it was “nothing more than a mundane e-coli infection’ , this has lead me to two conclusions:

1) Never try to get sympathy off a nurse
2) I must save that text and send it back to her when she feels ill,

Having lowered the tone I may as well include a story I had previously decided I would omit as being a little tasteless. A couple of weeks ago I was returning back to my flat having just eaten out in the evening. There is a stray dog that loiters near my house and as I passed it’s alley about 6ft from my gate then it started barking and bearing it’s teeth at me.

This then awoke the neighbours dog who in an apparent show of canine solidarity, decided to bark at me (not the other dog) as well. This in turn brought the neighbour to the gate. Now most people in my neighbourhood are very friendly and will chat to me or say good morning, I have smiled and greeting this neighbour every morning with no response but an icy stare to date. It was this icy stare I was met with this evening.

All this excitement then caught the attention of the mumbling slightly odd man who sort of wanders the streets near me (I know it’s a long cast list) who then started to amble over, mumbling as he went. This was all fairly routine, although granted I normally only had to deal with one of these four but I just decided to take it in my stride. I went to the gate to find it locked.

After about 8 pm the family locks the gate which is fair enough however opening it is a tricky exercise. The gate and lock appears to have been designed by the creators of Crystal maze and involved reaching through the iron spikes and using the worlds smallest key to open the worlds smallest padlock which is about thigh high and due to the elaborate design of the gate this is a tricky bear hug type manoeuvre which involved pushing your face against the (obviously) less than friendly spikes.

Now whilst doing this I will admit I felt mildly threatened by the collective cast around me (mumbling man, icy neighbour, neighbours dog, stray dog) but has fumbling admirably. However then I felt what I guess is what a child birth contraction would feel like without the pain, from my stomach.

I don’t know much about the digestive system but this would appear to be a two minutes or less warning as if my bowels were saying to me “this can end one of two ways, you can make it to a toilet or you can not, either way I’m not bothered, it’s going to happen”. This then gave the whole situation a sense of urgency because should I not make it through the gate in time, the mildly threatening ensemble around me would become less threatening and somewhat worse, become an audience for the melodrama that would unfold.

Eventually I somewhat panniced made it through the gate (had considered trying to climb the 6ft gate with large spikes) only to find the father of my family was there waiting for me (obviously would have been another potential audience member) . Now I have been making a really effort to talk more to the family and practice my Indonesian and on this evening he seemed very enthusuatic to sit and chat with me. I basicly had to use a few stock indnesian phrases and make sure to keep moving so he got the idea I was in a rush. In the end I made it to my flat in time, just.

Anyway,I shall change the subject, I don’t think I’ve ever written a page and a half about my bowel movements before however I guess not many people have. I’m just waiting to get picked up to go to the hotel for the employers conference. I suspect this sounds more glam than it is, it’s not going to be the Hilton and there will only be about 15 of us in total.

I will be meeting my local employers (who don’t speak English!) today and spend the next few days with then although I have no idea doing what. Then on Sunday we will fly to Kupang, stay there for a few days (as that is central point for VSO in east Indonesia) then on about Tuesday or Wednesday, travel to Roti for the first time to have a visit. Spend a few days there (again I don’t know what I’ll actually be doing) then back to kupang then fly back to Bali for a two more weeks of language training before moving there.

Anyway, I hope everyone is well, might try to put up some photos of Roti when I get back, I’ll take them on a lower res so hopefully they will upload. Again texts, e-mails , skype etc always welcome. When I’m back from Roti I should have my postal address so you can all get your Christmas packages sent so they will be here in time.