Milk was a bad choice. Fermented goat milk was a very, very bad choice. Let’s just say I got sick. I don’t mean yack once and go to bed sick. I mean rib cracking vomiting that turned into dry heaving and lasted quite some time. At some point during the nightmare I saw blood in my puke. Scared out of my mind and wanting nothing else but for it to be all over, I went to the doctor. First they took x-rays which was relatively harmless. However, they then told me that they needed to examine my stomach further and would do so by shoving a camera down my throat. No big deal right? I’ve had an upper gi before. This was different though.

The doctor, as many doctors in Senegal are I’m coming to find out, was from Libya. We went into his office and he made me drink a lot of nasty stuff which he said lined my stomach. However, he did not give me an anesthetic. Let me paint a little picture for you. I’m sitting in my underwear in front of one of the women who works at the WARC. The doctor roughly places me on my side, shoves an instrument into my mouth that separates my jaws at an unnatural distance, puts a camera down my throat and proceeds to tell me in broken English, “Swallow, swallow harder boy. Vomit good.” I simply closed my eyes, tried to ignore the fact that I was yacking all over my own face and got through it. The good news is that I’m not seriously ill. I picked up several medications and have since been feeling much better.