Several years ago, while waiting to change planes in New Delhi, I met a lovely couple of nature photographers from Zimbabwe who were on their way to film the tigers in Bhutan. They had heard my accent and pegged me as American, and since that was a comparative rarity in the New Delhi airport, it started what turned out to be a friendly and interesting chat.
They had never been to New York, and I had never been to Africa, so we exchanged cross cultural notes. I told them about the subway lines that would stretch to Detroit end to end, and how 50,000 worked in the Trade Center every day. They told me about Rhodesian history, and what it was like being a white refugee in South Africa. They liked American tobacco hated American beer, and didn’t think much of American politics, but always liked the Americans they met. I told them I felt exactly the same way.
At one point I asked, “Tell me something, what kind of health precautions do you have to take in south Asia if you’re coming from Africa?”
“Well Bhutan requires some shots” said the woman, ”but it’s no big deal – we travel in a lot of wild places so we get them a lot.”
“No I mean – we Americans are kind of hot house flowers. Do you have to worry about dysentery like we do?”
“Oh yes – but that’s no big deal.” He said.
“Yes, in Africa lots of people think of it as a really effective way to lose weight.” she chimed in.
I was a pretty experienced third world traveler by then, and had been back and forth to Mexico a dozen times. I had never gotten sick. This was all in the age before hand sanitizer. And if you wanted to stay functioning in the third world, you had to learn very quickly what you can and can’t do. Ironically, in spite of all my experience I did pick up something mild and annoying a few days later in Nepal, and had to deal with it for the next two weeks as I traveled through Indonesia. But it was no big deal... I just ended up losing a little weight.
(I still maintain that even though my life has been filled end to end with stupid risk taking, and I've had guns put to my temple at various times in my life by both soldiers AND junkies, the most frightened I've ever been was using the public men's room in the Kathmandu airport.)
I was reminded of that couple this week, because Tuesday morning at about 4:00 AM, I found myself unconscious on my kitchen floor with a lovely case of salmonella poisoning. At least that’s what my symptoms seemed to indicate...you never really know for certain unless you die from it. Well, that’s overstating a little. But in most cases you’re over the worst of it quickly enough so that there isn’t much chance to tell what specific bacteria caused the problem. Given modern medicine, you almost certainly won’t die from Salmonella, but speaking from my personal experience, you’ll probably wish you would.
This was much more serious than what I caught in Nepal. It involved some symptoms I'm sure you'd rather I not detail, but also a really severe pain, and a headache that made it all but impossible to lift my head off the floor. I'm over the worst of it now, but it was several days of tough going. We're pretty confident what the bacteria was, but we aren’t 100% sure where it came from. There is a certain tomato in my past that’s the chief suspect. And more than anything else we’re relieved that I got sick and not my daughter – who shared the offending meal with me. Like most dads I’m saying, “however bad I feel, better me than her.”
So I’m not having my most productive week on any level. I’m largely recovered, but I still don’t feel my best so lots and lots of things have had to wait. I have work that must be done, and it has to be done before I commit the time to tell you all what a cherry picking imbecile that Paul Krugman has become. (The guy apparently cares nothing for his intellectual legacy.) In fact relating this story is only possible because I’m waiting for my morning data load to finish.
So my apologies for not being so visible. I’ll get back soon.
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