Doctor

When you move to a place like Sudan, you expect - you know - that you will get sick. Whether it be by food, water, bugs, heat, or anything else, the conditions of the developing world will, at some point, break the defenses of your Western immune system. For example, an Australian friend of mine living in Indonesia recently told me that she too had fallen ill. In her words, she was dying from "white woman meets dirty water in the tropics" disease. She's since recovered.

In short, sick happens.

As I said in my last post, I fell ill with a stomach bug after eating some bad chicken at a Turkish place. Amaniel reckons that, because the Turkish place is expensive (relatively), it is more likely to make you sick. Oddly his theory made sense after he explained that, since the cheaper places get more business, they turn the food around quicker; a more expensive establishment probably leaves its unsold food sitting out too long.

After two days of laying around the house in general sickness, I forced myself to go to work. My stomach problems had subsided, but I was constantly fatigued, which is the enemy of any primary school teacher. Halfway through the day, a request to go home was granted, but with the stipulation that I see a doctor.

Sitting in a doctor's office was not the place I wanted to be while in a developing country. I'd gotten past my initial fears of living here; fears that included no real food, no basic services, or clean water, all of which turned out to be baseless and untrue. Yet, the thought of a doctor's office still left lingering images of third world squalor in my mind.

Since my Arabic has yet to reach the level that allows me to decipher which offices say "doctor" and which say "nasty prostitutes that should be avoided at all costs," I decided the hospital was my best bet for finding a doctor. As I entered the hospital, I was greeted with a waiting room that could have been anywhere in America. After paying 15SDG ($5USD), I was led to the doctor's office.

Inside, I met a doctor who was about my age and spoke pretty decent English. I explained what was going on and he asked me the normal questions about allergies, etc. We then went through the usual lie-down-while-I-poke-you–in-the-abdomen-to-see-if-you're-in-serious-pain routine. After about minutes, he told me it probably was the crappy Turkish food and wrote me a prescription for don't barf anymore medicine. I then went to the pharmacy next door, paid 3SGD ($1USD) for a week's worth of pills, and headed home.

Often times, mundane things require a large dose of patience here. For example, after waiting a month for my toilet to get fixed, it's easy to believe that every task could become Herculean. Looking back, however, my trip to the doctor was impressively easy. Sometimes, this place has a way of surprising you.