From his underground laboratories in Sao Paulo, Brazil it's tysontrips travelblog:

13 July, 2005

The Bacteria Monologues
Sometimes traveling is not all glory. Sometimes it's just guts, or the contents of one's guts, that make the story. This two-part series recollects past experiences of traumatic but humorous nature. It recalls the time in Tyson's life when food first met poisoning:

Part I

Bacteria Buddy
I had never had food poisoning before I made my first trip to Asia. I could only have imagined what it must feel like (food poisoning, that is). And, while the idea of an uncontrolable, five-day, multi-oraface purge was quasi-intriguing, I literally felt just as well without one. But I lie to you not when I say that within one week of setting foot on the continent of Asia I had my first of four cases of intense gastointestonal bacterial infections in three months as my entire body became the third-world's petri dish. I remember these times clearly because they are truly ‘eventful' occasions.

I was so proud when I crossed over the Straight of Bosporus – the political border of Europe and Asia – on a bridge heading east out of Istanbul, Turkey. The sign said "Entering Asia." That sign seemed strange to me, if not useless. Often, before a small change in geography or rules of the road, a sign will read "Entering Construction Zone" or "Entering Missouri: The Show-Me State." But no, I was ‘entering' the largest land mass on the planet – and thanks to the sign I knew it. I pictured a map of the entire planet and all of its continents with no markings except for a bent arrow pointing to the center of the massive continent of Asia with the words "YOU ARE HERE" next to the arrow. Anyway, the instant I crossed that arbitrary boundary my body must have received a signal to shut down all immunological function and to roll out the red carpet inviting all bacteria to enter my body without the threat of retaliation.

Pounding The Fertile Crescent
Unfortunately, I didn't know my body had done this until a week or so later when I was deep in the eastern side of the Syrian Desert, nearing Iraq. I was famished after having explored some fantastic, ancient Roman ruins from dawn until dusk in area called Palmyra (http://www.atlastours.net/syria/palmyra.html), which was an important stop on the spice routes that connected the west and the east over two thousand years ago. Things went down hill fast when I arrived at the bus station after a two mile hike from town only to realize the bus didn't leave for another couple of hours. My problems were: I was dog tired and could walk no further – even if there had been somewhere within two miles to walk to in this barren desert; it was seven pm and I hadn't eaten since five in the morning and had walked through the flaming desert all day; I now had a couple of hours to kill (eating being one of the best ways to kill time); and to top it all off, there was a man standing in the entrance to the bus station preparing hot, delicious kebaps like it was his job. Indeed, it was his job and he was doing it well. The layers of slowly-roasted, juicy lamb dripped and oozed juices as they spun around and around on the upright rotisserie. As he sawed off thin pieces of meat onto pita bread for his customers, the sizzle of the hot, spicy meat was calling to me. "PSSST, Tyson, come and get me. You know you want me BA-A-A-A-A-A-D." No, fortunately the meat wasn't making sheep noises, although I doubt anything could have stopped me from eating at this point. So far I had done a pretty good job of staying away from street food on the trip but this situation was too much for me to handle. I needed some grub. So I sauntered over to the man and pointed at his ridiculously tempting fare and then pointed one finger in the air to signify "One, please." At the time, these hand signs were the extent of my Arabic proficiency. Come to think of it, this is still the case. He immediately went to work, carving up some thick, mouthwatering pieces, placing them on the bread, adding the usual tomato, onions, sauces, and pepper (and apparently Anthrax bacili), and handed it to me. I felt like it was Christmas and he was Santa of the Desert, serving hot, delicious rheindeer meat to all the good boys and girls. At least until he told me that the price was three dollars. That's ridiculous, St. Nick! It's twice the price it should be! Oh yeah, I must've gotten the foreigner special. But I was too hungry to complain so I gave him the money. Maybe I am just paranoid and biased, but looking back at the situation, I now remember that he had an eerie smirk on his face as he handed my change back to me. It was almost like, "Oh, you haven't even begun to pay the price yet!" But there was no way for him to know my future, was there?... Anyway, I scarfed that kebap down like a starving coyote, probabaly looking over me as I ate like the ravenous beast I had become. And all my problems melted away...

Of Poison Blenders And Purge Factories (Syriasly Illin')
Due to my happy food coma I don't remember much until about halfway through the six hour, bumpy, desert bus ride – the one I lovingly refer to as the ride on the Trans-Syrian Poison Blender Express. My stomach had become a hot can of soda being shaken in the sizzling trunk of a car for 6 hours straight. Every pothole in the road was another jar of the mallable aluminum; one step closer to explosion. It was truly sad because there was an extremely sincere, curious Syrian soldier of about eighteen sitting next to me on the bus and he wanted to practice his English and ask me about the US and give me his picture and tell me how difficult life is in Syria, especially during the mandatory service enlistment for all males. But all I could do was sweat beads of bacterial-induced perspiration. Fever, chills, and queasiness of the likes I had never experienced had me in their grasp. I was nearly going crosseyed, wondering what was festering inside me and when I was due to deliver the alien baby. I finally had to tell the poor guy next to me that I needed to sleep just so I could concentrate on sweating and maintaining bodily functions. Finally, the bus pulled into the bus station in Demascus, Syria, at midnight or so. Somehow I navigated the thin, windy alleys to find a decent place to call my hospital for the next few days. It was a hostile which had only one bed left in a dorm room. No matter, I was spending the night in a different room. I will try not to be too graphic here. I finally made it to the bathroom and I didn't know what my explosion must have sounded like to anybody else but I really didn't care. Everything came out at once. From both ends. I don't know how any of it ended up in the toilet because I was too busy watching to see if my major organs were pouring out with it to care what it was pouring into. Needless to say, that was a dreadful night. I was constantly ill until the sun rose at which time I figured it was time to get started with my day. I dragged myself around the streets of Demascus like a zombie. But somehow I think I had gotten rid of most of my "problems" in the massive explosion. By a few days later I was back to normal. That wouldn't be the case with the next few biological attacks. And as much as I trash on George W. Bush, I guess he was right about one thing: Syria was harboring some of the Middle East's biological weapons of mass destruction. And I was a victim of them.

Syria-1 Tyson-0

Don't Eat The One With Bugs In It
For some unkown reason I thought that this, the first brutal run-in with endemic Middle Eastern microbes would be the extent of my problems in Asia. Still, for weeks after that first illness I avoided local water, unpeeled fruits, meat of any sort (including scrumptous kebap and roasted chicken) and raw vegetables washed in water. So in the Middle East that limited me to pretty much just rice and yogurt. And this might have compounded the problem because my immune system probably never had a chance to recover. I certainly wasn't gaining weight on this excrutiatingly boring diet. Somehow I rationalized that my system might be immune to further attacks since I had already been exposed to some of the bacteria. So, like the slow-learner I am, I eventually started eating everything again. I wasn't going to be scared anymore. A few weeks down the road I was in a remote oasis in western Egypt which is renowned for its date palms. On my way out I decided to purchase a bag. I don't even like dates but this seemed like a flawless plan. That was, until I was snacking on them in front of my buddy, and after eating several of the little guys I took a healthy bite out of one. As I was chewing a whole parade of strange insects marched out of the leftover half of the date I had just bitten into. My stomach churned but I thought, "One bad date never shouldn't stop anybody." But just like in the world of romance, perhaps future dates are not the answer when you have already had a really bad one. See, this article contains valuable information about all facets of life. On an overnight bus ride back to Cairo, a few hours after I had scarfed down the last date, I felt a shiver coming on. A shiver in late spring in Egypt? It can't be. "Oh, it must be the air conditioning," I wishfully thought as I started piling on layers of clothes and blankets while my travel buddy lay sprawled out, sweating in a t-shirt and shorts. This is the stage in food poisoning progression called denial, and as my brother would say, "It's not a river in Egypt." But that was so strange because I was in Egypt and de Nile was just a few hours east. So as I lay there confused about where de Nile was I grew sicker and sicker. Bottom line: I spent the next few days in a hotel bathroom in Cairo.

Egypt-1 Tyson-0

Young American Man On Record Pace For Personal Food Poisonings
Something was not right. I thought I should've recovered more quickly from this most recent bout. Maybe my immune system was not able to recharge as quickly due to my new diet of soda crackers and water (now I was frightened to eat anything else) or maybe I was encountering tougher and tougher strains of bugs. Or maybe I was just sinking into a forlorn latrine of darkness where my fate would be shared with all of my new microbiotic friends. But during my third round of foodborne parasite attack, I was unable to even move from my bed for three days (except for five steps every half hour toward the toilet). Where would I have gone anyway? I was on a houseboat in the middle of Dal Lake in Kashmir. Where is that? I am not really sure in what country the disputed land lies; but then neither are the residents for that matter (supposedly India). Some say Pakistan, others India, and still others claim Kashmir should be independent of both of them. In fact, a continuing war was being fought around the time I arrived, with Pakistan and India both threatening nuclear activity as a resolution to the contentious issue of to whom Kashmir belongs. My surroundings, however, were indisputable and surreal – high in the Himalayas surrounded by snow-capped peaks in a fertile valley filled with lush vegetation and irrigated by a majestic lake. War tends to kill lots of things, including tourism, so I may have been the only person from the outside world visiting the area at the time, save for armies of armies. It was a buyers market and the man who finally canoed me out to his fantastic houseboat made entirely from hand-carved wood – which was flanked by hundreds of other empty, decaying houseboats – told me he hadn't seen a tourist for four months. I felt bad driving the bargain down so low after that, but I had gone through hell to get to this region, so ten bucks a night for my own personal four bedroom houseboat with all meals and tours included sounded just about right for me. Buyer's market. But really, I must have shown my passport at 50 different police and military checkoints and completed enough paperwork to fill a notebook before I finally reached this destination on a set of bus rides through the mountains. As a reward for my efforts, I spent the next 3 days in a f-ing coma.

If It's Gonna Be That Kinda Party...
After a nice tour around the lake with my host – which was more like a floating community with canoe taxis navigating floating markets, neighborhoods of houseboats and vendors selling goods from their wooden canoes – I retired to my hand-carved palace for some dinner (which I have since learned is one of the top three most poisonous meals of the day). Afterwards he said he was taking his canoe (the only way to get to and from the houseboat to anywhere else was via boat) to the ‘market' to buy some things. He asked me if I wanted anything. Except he didn't say just, "Anything." His exact words were, "You would like something, anything, I get you marijuana, whiskey, opium, heroin?" "WHOA, slow down there, tiny, you didn't even mention prostitutes!" and "What kind of market is this?" were some of my initial silent reactions to his offer. However, instead of vocalizing my concern I decided it would be okay to splurge for a change, but that I would stick to the lesser of the four evils and drink a little whiskey with the lonely man. He returned that evening and we sat on the deck of the houseboat, overlooking the dark, shimmering water of Dal Lake, thoughtfully sipping our whiskeys in silence. About halfway through the bottle he remembered he had a tape player and a tape somewhere on the boat. As he searched, I remembered that it had been two months or so since I had drank any alcohol and I was feeling very woozy, if content. He found the tape player and put on the tape. As he did, the lighting in the room waned and flickered, like the tape player was drawing all of the boat's power. But somehow the tape continued to play. Just then the flood of music filled the room. I was shocked to learn that he had not put on some native Kashmiris singing songs in Urdu and playing their local instruments, but instead the dance hits of The Venga Boys blasted through the muffled speakers. He had the whole album! Don't ask me where he got it. I was too busy grooving to their electro-pop beats to care. A strange ambiance came over the room, however, as the tape played. As the power faded in and out the tape player would slow down and speed up. It reminded me of a soundtrack to an old educational filmstrip reel. The lights flashing and sound bending created a nightmarish effect in the old, dark, wooden boat, like a horror movie whose murderer is a drunken, stumbling, knife weilding sailor. Or was it just the booze?

No, Please, Stop! Help, Mommy, No!! Don't Let The Venga Bus Come To Get Me!!!
After a few rounds of the tape and a few more rounds of whiskey I had had enough. And with these pleasant, murder-filled thoughts still in my mind, I drifted off to sleep in a dizzy and dreamlike, quasi-hypnotized state, the honking of the horn of the Venga Boys' Bus fading in and out, slowly changing frequency and volume. It was tragically magnificant. I woke up two hours later in a pool of my own sweat. There was no reason for denial this time. As the whiskey had faded out, whatever harmful parasites I had ingested for dinner had made their way in. It was all I could do just to stumble over to the toilet and vomit from both ends. The next morning I lay awake still – fevering and shivering under five wool blankets – convinced that this man had purposefully poisoned me so he could extort more of my tourist assets from me. This was the worst case yet! I was having paranoia and hallucinations (I still entertain the notion that it may have been an intentional poisoning because I had told him I only wanted to spend two days there and I ended up staying five). Three agnonizing days later I crawled out of my bed – or what now seemed to be my moist cocoon of hibernation – to reveal my newly formed body. But unlike the beautiful metamorphasis of a butterfly, I had become a smelly, pale, weak, sickly bag of bones that could hardly walk. I had de-metamorphasized into a stanky-ass caterpillar!

Disputed Territory-1 Tyson-0

To be continued........

 

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