Fun With Parasites

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been having on and off stomach pains. Not just a bit of indigestion, but a full day of not being able to be away from a toilet and then I’d be fine for 3 or 4 days. I hadn’t talked to the doctor because it never lasted more than one day and I didn’t want to think I might have something more wrong than just having eaten something bad.

Up to this point the worst that had happened was that while running and at the farthest point from my house my stomach turned and I was no longer able to do continue running. I had to walk, carefully back home. Luckily there were no ‘incidents’.

A few days ago I was coming back from a meeting in a nearby town and on the ride back to the city my stomach turned and I had the worst stomach cramps, for the 30 minute ride, that I’ve had so far. Not just the cramps but also the sweating, goose bumps, and the urgent need to ‘do my business’. I got off the mini-bus before the station, hoping that I might be able to catch an in-city bus that would get me back to the office at least a little quicker. I also had the idea that I’d prefer to shit myself on the sidewalk, rather than on the bus surrounded by people.

Jumping off the mini-bus I started walking toward the bus stop to hopefully sit down there and rest a moment while waiting for the bus that would drop me off right in front of the office. The entire time praying that the ‘flood gates’ would remain closed for a little longer. Ha! Mortal men shouldn’t waste time praying for things such as this.

Maybe 100 feet down the road from where I left the mini-bus I couldn’t take another step. I stopped dead in my tracks, sweating much more than the weather demanded. I looked around, hoping to find an overlooked bathroom or at least a well-wooded area with no chance of people walking by. There was no bathroom. But, there WAS a wooded area. Actually calling it a wooded area is a great embellishment. It was a tiny, decrepit park, left over from Soviet times that had plants growing up through the old pavement. Those plants would have to be my ‘well-wooded area’. I really had no other choice. Also, I should mention that this area that I had stopped the mini-bus was actually a big and busy traffic circle. The ‘small park’ was slightly blocked by a cement on-ramp, so not ALL of the traffic had views of my spot.

At this point my only option was to dash into the ‘bushes’ and hope no one saw me or followed me in, wondering what this crazy American was doing jumping into the bushes. There was a man just passing me at this point, so I took my time waiting for him to walk past me just enough to not notice the sound of a 6 foot 2, 200 lbs man diving into the bushes. I took a step toward the bushes. I looked up and down the sidewalk again, just to be sure. More people were coming toward me! Three of them had just appeared on the sidewalk and were coming my way! I couldn’t wait. I took another step toward the bushes and luckily they moved off the sidewalk and into a taxi from the traffic circle. Into the bushes I sprinted. As much as a man clenching his ass cheeks together, hoping against all hope to not shit himself, can sprint.

I threw my bag to the ground, wrenched the zippered pocket open, grabbed my first-aid kit that held the wet wipes and jumped further into the bushes. As I lowered my pants I could see that this ‘cover’ wasn’t quite what I had hoped it was. It covered me fairly well from the sidewalk, as long as no one was looking directly in. But to my right, I was almost completely unprotected to the small open park. It was too late to worry about trivial things like that. I had urgent business to attend to!

Well, I managed to not shit myself. But, as I was ‘cleaning up’ I heard a voice from my right in the park. I looked over and a man was walking toward me, talking on a cell phone. I went into super speed trying to finish up and get out of there. I had no idea if he had already seen me, but he was steadily coming toward me. All the possibilities of what might happen if he saw me ran through my head. If I hadn’t already been sweating enough today, I started sweating even more. He was coming closer. He was going to see me for sure. Faster, faster, must wipe faster! Wait, he’s stopping. The man sat down on a bench beside a large tree, blocking his view of me. I was safe and now at most he would see me walking out of the bushes and probably not even give me a thought.

After putting my first-aid kit back in the pocket, I picked up my bag and kept walking toward the bus stop away from the park. Just as I had thought, the man seemed to barely even notice me and I was pretty sure that he wasn’t going to go into the bushes that I had emerged from, finding my secret.

My plan at this point was to continue my way to the bus stop, catch the first bus going to my street, get to the safety of the office and stay there until the ‘situation’ was under control. Unfortunately, the bus stop was still on the other side of the traffic circle from me and even after my trip to the bushes, my stomach was starting to twist again. There were a lot of taxis going through the circle and I decided that it would be a better idea for me to take a taxi for a few GEL, rather than risk the walk to the bus and then wait as we stopped at every bus stop on the way to my safe house. But because I’ve lived here for a bit over a year I’ve become a bit strict with how much I am willing to pay a taxi in the city. Even though I was at risk of making a giant mess in my pants in a matter of minutes, I still set a price in my head and waved down a taxi. I then proceeded to argue with the driver about what a ‘normal’ price was from here to my street. Normally I can get the drivers to give in to my price once I show that I can speak the local language and that I’m not just a tourist, but today I must have showed the urgency in my face. None of the drivers I spoke to were willing to go to my price. There was no way that I was going to pay more than the amount in my head, even though I had more than enough money in my pocket to pay for a taxi. I couldn’t let myself be pushed around by taxi drivers even if I was in an emergency situation! Back to the bus plan. I really wish I had just taken a taxi for more money.

I kept walking to the street coming off the traffic circle that I needed to cross to get to the bus stop. Buses were coming and going. I wanted to run to the stop, but I couldn’t take the risk of disturbing my stomach again. At the street I had a couple options to get across. I could either dodge cars and walk/run across the busy street, which would probably be faster (if I could manage to not get hit by a car, and if I DID get hit, it would at least give me a reason why I shit myself). Or I could take the underground passage, walk down the stairs from the park side, through the passage and up the stairs on the other side, coming out just before the bus stop. Clearly the passage was the safer option, but I was in an emergency situation here and I couldn’t risk the bouncing motion the stairs might throw at my stomach. I headed toward the street where a few other people were waiting for a lull in traffic so that they could get across. One of the girls at the edge of the road turned and looked at me. I was suddenly much more aware of how much I was sweating through both my undershirt and polo, but I had more important things to worry about.

While passing the top of the stairs leading down to the underground passage my stomach started throwing another fit. I was stopped in my tracks again. Round two was about to start and I had nowhere to go. I looked around, frantically searching the area for a spot that would help. There was nothing. I needed to sit down and give my body a minute or two to calm down so that I might make it to the bus stop. I sat on the cement ledge above the stairs. The man who was on the cell phone in the little park was walking toward me and maybe it was just me but I’m pretty sure he gave me a weird look. But, who wouldn’t give a weird look to a ‘tourist’ who was sweating profusely and had a look of great stress on his face?

As I rested on the ledge I took in my surroundings a little better, hoping that I might have missed a spot suitable to my ‘needs’. The park and my previous bushes were too far away; I really didn’t think I’d be able to even make it to a taxi. I felt like the ‘bad guy’ in comedy movies that eats something which has been filled with laxatives by the ‘hero’ and of course it has to be in a super inconvenient and public spot.

Looking around I saw at the bottom of the stairs, opposite the entrance to the tunnel, was a small area that had a few bushes and a tree growing out of it. It wasn’t covered at all and anyone coming out of the tunnel would see anyone who happened to be crouching in that area, but what other option did I have? There hadn’t been anyone coming out of the tunnel the entire time I had been sitting there. This had to be my spot. I waited a few more minutes just to make sure that there was really no one using the tunnel. There weren’t a lot of people in the area and the ones that were seemed to all be crossing the street and not going under. Time to move!

I made my way down to the bushes and tree growing out of the Soviet-era concrete, hoping that when I got closer I would find that they did in fact provide adequate protection. Not even close. The ‘bushes’ were really just tall grass and the tree’s lowest branches were at my head. But there was something else! There were two rooms on either side of the tree. The left room’s door shut and padlocked, but the right room’s door and vanished a long time ago and the room was now full of garbage and God only knows what else. I had no time to think about it. The room, even just by stepping inside the door, would cover me completely, but I didn’t have enough time to check the room out until I was squatting with my pants around my ankles. I had only come maybe a step into the room, partly because I didn’t have the time to take another step, but also because there was so much garbage pilled up that had I gone further I would have been stepping/squatting on things that I may not have wanted to. (Just walking around the city it’s not uncommon to find a needle on the side of the road and this was clearly a well-used spot by various individuals.)

After my stomach calmed down a little and I was still squatting, I took a chance to look around the room a little more. I really have no idea what the room used to be, maybe some sort of power station, but whatever it was it was now a garbage dump and emergency toilet. I was not even close to being the first person to ‘use’ the room. I wasn’t surprised by this, or even the ridiculous number of condoms scattered around the room, but what really stuck in my mind was that there were a ridiculous number of shoes thrown all over the room. Why shoes here? Did you just happen to be walking by with an old pair of shoes and decide that this was as good a place as any to toss your shoes?

You might be thinking that I was pretty lucky and/or smart to carry the wet wipes I mentioned earlier with me and you’d be right. You just never know where you’ll need them when you’re traveling or even just in everyday life. Unfortunately, I ran out of them in the bushes earlier. This is one of the things I thought about while spying out my spot for Round 2. What else did I have in my bag that I could use for emergency toilet paper? One of the ‘tricks’ I’ve picked up living in this country is that old books can work for this if you really REALLY need. I had two sources of ‘paper’ in my bag; my journal and The Fellowship of the Ring. There was no way that I was going to rip pages out of The Fellowship unless it was a last option, but my journal is one of my most important possessions. Which was I going to sacrifice? I decided to go with the empty pages in the back of my journal. It was sad but it had to be done. I later remembered that I also had a small package of tissues in my bag…damn.

Stepping out of the room and putting my journal back into my bag I found to my great pleasure that in my haste to get into the room I failed to notice another person’s ‘deposit’ in the garbage room. I now had someone else’s shit on the bottom of my shoe. I tried to scrape it off on a nearby rock and I think I got most of it off. At this point a man came out of the tunnel and I wonder what he thought seeing a ‘tourist’ scraping his shoe against a rock at the entrance of the garbage room. Probably not too uncommon of a thing to see in this city.

Ok so two times must mean that I’m finished right? That’s what I was hoping, so I made my way through the underground passage and up to the bus stop. My stomach was still turning but not like it had been at least. I needed to get to the safety of the office as quick as possible. Who knew when I might need to find some bushes or an old garbage filled room again? A bus was coming and I was pretty sure that it was going the way I needed. I jumped on thinking that if it did happen to go the wrong way that I could just get off at the next stop and run to the other side of the street, catching one going back my way.

The bus went most of the way I wanted and then it turned away. And it kept going. We were quite some distance from the road I wanted to be on by the time we got to the next bus stop. It was a one-way street and I had no idea if there was another bus stop on the parallel street. I had to make a choice. Should I stay on the bus and wait until I got to a better stop where I knew there was a bus stop that I could wait at? Or should I just get off the bus here and hope for a bus stop that was going my way? I didn’t have to wait to find out where the bus was going. I got off the bus, taking my chances of finding a bus stop and a bus going the right way.

There was no bus stop, only more traffic going back the way I had come from. I decided to walk back to the main road where the bus had turned. Had I been in a better or more normal condition I probably would have walked most of the way back to the office, but I wasn’t. My mind though was trying t win over my body and convince me that we could make it to the road. My stomach was having none of it. I made it maybe two blocks down before I had to stop and reassess my options. Buses were no longer an option. There were taxis going by but I still didn’t want to pay a ridiculous price (I guess I was willing to shit myself rather than be scammed by a taxi driver). There were also some in-city mini-buses coming toward me and heading back to the main road. I could see quite a few of these yellow buses coming my way. These are more expensive than the normal bus, but a lot cheaper than a taxi. There had to be one going my way! Or so I prayed.

Waiting in front of a mechanic’s garage, I read the signs in each of the mini-bus’ front windows. Trying to find one that had the right street name on it before it was too far past me. Of course the first one that past was going the right way, but I waved it down to late it was gone into traffic. Two more went by but neither had my street listed on their signs. After those, I didn’t see any more coming down the street. Time to wait some more. I wonder what the mechanics thought seeing a ‘tourist’ with a backpack, sweating through two shirts, standing on the side of the road. Again, anything is possibly here, so they probably paid less attention to me than I did to them. They were busy drinking beer and playing backgammon anyway.

Most mini-buses were coming. I took a step closer toward the street hoping to get a better vantage of each sign as they came toward me. I waved the first one down before I even read the sign. Opening the door, I asked the driver if he was going to my street. The only response was a sort of negative grunt and he stepped on the gas before I could even close the door. I guess that meant no he wasn’t going to my street. Ok no problem; I’ll just keep stopping each one until I get the right one. I waved down the next one and asked the driver the same question. Even as I asked the driver, I already expected him to say no and drive off, but he didn’t go. I heard him say something, but I didn’t register what it was, but he wasn’t moving away from me, just staring at me. He said to me, ‘Yes, we are going there. Are you getting on or what?’ I finally had found my way home! I jumped in and found the first seat. I was so happy to be on my way to safety and a real toilet. This is about the time that I started asking myself why I didn’t just take a taxi in the first place for the extra price.

Right as I was getting out of the mini-bus in front of the office, my stomach started turning again. Good thing I had made it back. God only knows what it would have done to my sanity if I had had to go in a public place again today.

My first intestinal parasite and I weren’t getting along.