I have been lucky enough in Tanzania – so far (knock on wood!) to avoid any serious illness or injury. A few scrapes, and a couple of the most minor colds I have ever had totaled the extent of me feeling physically bad, until last Friday. Dealing with my most serious physical ailment here proved every bit as challenging as I suspected it would be, but it also shed some light on the generosity and caring on my Tanzanian friends.
Anyway, some background: I have a recurring knee injury that I aggravate from time to time when I spend too much time crouched, or when I am cramped in a vehicle. When it’s aggravated, I feel a shooting pain above my knee, that I think is some kind of tendonitis, but it never lasts that long, and if I am able to extend my leg it quickly goes away. Last Friday I spent some time crouched working on my bike, and then biking to school I noticed a bit of pain. Tanzanian bikes are far to small for me, and I think biking aggravates my knee when it is already not feeling great. I noticed a bit of pain while I was at school, but it was normal in the sense that it went away when I moved my leg into a better position. I had a few beers at school (I know how weird that sounds – more on that another day – we had a celebration), and I biked home feeling fine. I went to bed early, and woke up at about 10pm in really awful pain. No matter what I did with my leg, my knee felt really bad. I could hardly put weight on it, and moving it was even worse.
My thoughts quickly went to panic mode. Is it serious? Am I going to have to get medical help? Will I have to go to Kigali? Or Nairobi? Or back home? Can I afford that? What does this mean for the rest of my term of service, and my spring break plans? Will I be able to bike to school? How will I get to school? How will I do anything if I can’t walk? Of course, in this panic mode I completely forgot that I could take ibuprofen, which probably would have helped a lot. Instead, I called my mom around 2 am. No answer, so I went back to bed and proceeded not to sleep at all until about 5 am, when the pain started to diminish a bit in one position. I had managed not to completely freak out, but I was definitely not in the best of mental states. Later that morning I talked with my mom who is a great resource on physical ailments, and she suggested some treatment, including icing. Of course, my first reaction was to say, “there is no ice in Ngara, I don’t know how I am going to get ice.”
But, I asked a friend who had already planned on coming over to see what he could get. So, he brought popsicles (and hung out for a couple hours), and then my neighbor generously plugged in her mini-fridge, and I was able to reapply popsicles all day long. The average Tanzanian knows almost nothing about the body, so I got a lot of concerned looks when I said I didn’t think I needed to go to the hospital (as many Tanzanians go to the hospital and get medicine they don’t need all the time). As the day went on I regained my ability to stand without pain, and by the time I went to sleep felt much better, and was greatly reassured that my injury was just a particularly severe reoccurrence of the pain I sometimes feel in my knee. My roommate, and the girls from Muyenzi (who were in town for the weekend) took care of me, and told me not to stand up when I stood up.
The next day another friend visited with a gift basket from his family that included over $2 worth of produce, which is pretty significant for a Tanzanian family. He also sat with me for a few hours. Everyone who learned of my injury expressed such sincere worry, and wanted to be present to keep me entertained. It reminded me of the time my neighbor, the District Education Officer (kind of like a Superintendent, except he is in charge of 20+ schools), seriously burned his foot. He had a stream of visitors bringing gifts (and providing company) for over two weeks when he was unable to leave the house. Tanzanians take injury very seriously (probably as a result of a lack of medical knowledge, and the fact that an injury here is a lot more serious – or at least harder to treat – here than in the states), and the already extremely social nature of Tanzanians is greatly intensified when someone is injured (or, as Tanzanians say, “sick”).
I guess the moral of the story is that if I do end up sick (with the flu, a bad cold, or some unfortunate tropical illness – knock on wood, again), I am confident that people will be here to take care of me. That’s a good feeling, though I am still am not looking forward to having to deal with Tanzanian hospitals, or the discomfort of actually being sick