Eurafrika Pt. 11 - Ugh

The next day I woke up early, earlier than usual. I was sniffling a little, but otherwise felt fine.

Then all of a sudden I started getting these painful cramps. I rushed to the toilet; we would become well acquainted for the next 24 hours.

I lied down in bed wondering where I had gone wrong. I brushed my teeth using bottled water, I was careful with which (unappetizing) food items I ate. I tried to keep things balanced eating dairy products, meat with the occasional salad...

...Salad, rinsed with their own water...

FUCK!

It turns out that diarrhea may be inevitable for any inexperienced traveler. The body is simply not used to the bacteria in foreign food and expels them the only way it knows how.

I took Pepto, Kaopectate, garlic pills, anti-diarrhea pills in addition to the anti-malaria and accutane pills I was already taking. I felt like a walking pharmacy. Fortunately, I got things under control pretty quickly. There was a bidet in the bathroom, and that helped too.

After I had recovered sufficiently, me and my dad headed of to a snake village. We had nothing better to do. It was interesting and disturbing: I saw a black mamba, the world's deadliest snake. It stared at us with its dark, sinister eyes. In other enclosures, there were cobras, rattlesnakes and pythons. In one of them, lay a sleepy serpent, perfectly camouflaged and a scared yellow chick standing beside it's dead brethren, aware of its fate. I felt for this poor bird, but the snakes like their meals warm.

Small birds aren't the only things these snakes eat. On the wall of the pythons enclosure were stories of them eating sleeping security guards. It wasn't all grim about snakes: I learned that if you encounter a cobra, you'll have better luck with a spitting one than a non-spitting one as their venom is only cytotoxic instead of neurotoxic.

Snakes weren't the only animals: there were owls (Africans kill them because for them are a symbol of death), falcons, tortoises and crocodiles. I got to hold one of the crocodiles; apparently they keep growing until they die.

After exploring the snake village, we went through a Maasai museum. It was a tourist trap: the exit led to a bunch of huts selling rings, necklaces and all kinds of colorful junk. We got out of their, but not after buying a necklace for my mom and a bracelet for myself. It helps their economy, I guess.

I immediately collapsed in bed when we got back. I rested, watching a story on Al-Jazeera about a woman who forgives the man who murdered her daughter. I thought it could be the basis of an interesting novel, where the hero is a murderer given a second chance and saves others as an act of redemption. I then passed out.