FIELD NOTES JANUARY 15,2016~ Working, living, loving and dying in the third world!

FIELD NOTES JANUARY 2016~
Working, living, loving and dying in the third world!

Don't get sick

        There are two things that I have never gotten accustomed too. Number one is getting sick when you are away from home. I am not talking about over at your friend's house, or at the water park in Kansas City, but away from home. A foreign country is away from home, and getting sick in an alien world sucks the big one. If you do not speak the language 'fluently' and or if you are not supposed to be in that country (no visa) then it is a real bummer.  If you're sick enough to walk or crawl somewhere else, you are in luck. However if you are so ill that you can not wait for death to bitch slap you upside the head with a cold Carp fish, you're screwed.
     
      Most of the illnesses you will come across in foreign countries are going to be "gut related" and not bullet induced.  If you are wounded, then "they" already know you here, and they will hunt you down and plug you numerous times until you quit kicking and screaming.  When your butt is hanging out the third-floor window of a so-called "safe house," and you're painting the alley down below with taco sauce after eating the street vendor's "special," well, then and only then will you fully grasp the meaning of life.  It is a slow and painful death that comes to those who think they are indestructible and bullet proof.
     
     Even if you can not speak the language of the shit-hole you are in, but you need medicine other than berries and roots cooked and fermented in a stone jar, you can get help.  If you make convulsive, actions like you are vomiting, and at the same time spread your legs and using your hands to indicate spraying diarrhea, while making gaseous-bowel-sounds with your mouth, you can get you some medical relief.  It seems as if you can be in any country or store from your friendly WalMart Pharmacist to the local witch doctor and they will understand your problem.
     
     My advice that I seldom seem to take is never eat anything cooked over a recycled oil drum covered with scrap refrigerator coils. If it is still bleeding, has flies, worms or anything else walking on it, smells funny, taste even strangers, or the 'locals' claim it is a delicacy ---- Stay away from it like the plague.