Don't Eat the Raspberries

I suppose there comes a time in every travel blog where you post that wretched “I was in stranded in the wilds and I thought I was going to puke up my vital organs and die” post.  Although in my case, Bishkek is not the wilds at all but a quite developed city, and I may not die after all.  It all started with the raspberries.  I swear, if you see that sweet little babushka there on the street with her jar full of luscious red raspberries, don’t buy them and don’t eat them.  If you want to live. 

Last week we mostly all came back from Issyk-Kul with one digestive problem or another, but after a day or two we were back on track.  Mine wasn’t that bad after a bit of sleep.  I felt ready for our second weekend in Issyk-Kul, this time including a picnic at Barskoon waterfall and the touristy horse ride that everyone has to do when they come to Kyrgyzstan.  And more swimming in that gorgeous lake.  Sunday on the way home we stopped at a village where most people in the village make yurts for a living.  One family there showed us through the yurt-making process, which they do in their back yard.  That was fantastic and I will do a special post about that later when I have the pictures. We ate a huge meal with the family there and left satisfied. 

By the time we got back I was congratulating my intestines on a game well played.  I was tired and a little dehydrated but so far at peace on the inside, if you know what I mean.  Then there was that babushka with the raspberries.  Where I get off the bus there is that Narodny store I’ve mentioned before, and outside there are always people selling fresh produce.  I’ve bought plums and pears before, washed them up, and been totally fine.  But raspberries are a different story, and I knew it.  It’s just that I get so excited about new foods and I do love raspberries and I sometimes still entertain this adolescent idea that I am invincible and impervious to all illness.  So I bought the raspberries.

They were good, too.  I took them home and washed them in the little orange colander, mashed them up with some kefir and sugar, and ate them.  Along with the stuffed peppers Mira Eje had prepared.  I was starting to feel pretty great and I started actually getting my homework done, which was also an improvement over last week.  Eventually my stomach started hurting pretty bad, but I figured it was just my ulcer aggravated.  I don’t eat raspberries very often and I didn’t realize how acidic they are. 

So I went to sleep, only to wake up at 3:00am with the inevitable prophetic knowledge of who would be kneeling next at the porcelain throne.  I will spare you the details of my five successive pilgrimages and my abundant offerings there.  I had no medicine because once again there was the invincibility fallacy that I had bought into that well, I never had problems in Ukraine, so why should I here?  There are some things you have to learn the hard way.  And oh, I am.  I never woke Mira Eje, and in the morning she came to see why I hadn’t gone to school.  I was mildly pleased that we could communicate about my condition in Russian even in my nauseated fog.  She checked on everything she could do for me, and then said she was going to the pharmacy to get something.  I didn’t recognize the name of it but at that point I didn’t care. 

Sometime later, in the interval between my fourth and fifth pilgrimages, this angel from God returned from the pharmacy with activated charcoal tablets.  I felt like someone had cloned my mother and brought her to Kyrgyzstan.  God bless her soul.  *Another plug for home stays.* I ate the charcoal tablets and threw them up a little while later, but everything started looking up after that.  Since then I have had diluted juice and three quarters of a large cracker.  Progress. 

It has been a horrendous twelve hours but I can’t help marveling at this amazing body that has been created to deal with its own breaches of security in such an efficient fashion.  Those bacteria don’t stand a chance.  I was a little resistant to the process, but I realize that it’s actually a sign that I have a healthy immune system that will tolerate no compromise and take no quarter.  So now this body will also go rest itself again and maybe even finish that cracker.  If I dare.