Duck Gracefully or, Just Risk it and Take a Taxi to Cotonou.

This...

Plus this...

(notice the slight discoloration on the corner.

You can tell how far it went into my head.)

Equals this!!

This week has been busy for me :)

I got back from Cotonou on Monday after seeing my sister off.

DIARRHEA!!

Literally, I've been a chocolate milk factory since

Monday. Gross I know, but part of my life here. Up until this point, I had managed to not get any stomach whatevers and now I have one and it's here in full effect!

By the way, to take the African gamble means to think you have to toot but surprise...

Today though, proved to be the icing on this week's cake. First let me describe the workstation. It's a normal house-ish structure. There's a side part with two outside bathrooms, real bathrooms with toilets for when you have to do something particularly smelly and/or noisy. This is an ingenious setup because the people in the workstation don't have to be burdened with your intestinal problems. A cement wall outlines the workstation property, running against the farther of the two bathrooms. Out of this wall, maybe 5 feet from the door of the bathroom, juts a metal pole to which a laundry rope is tied. The pole is one of those 'L' shaped poles and is positioned on the wall so that the L is upside down...kind of like 'r'.

I was coming out of the bathroom against the wall, was bombarded by some flying creature and ducked to keep it from flying into me. When I came up from ducking, I came up full force into the bottom part of the 'r'. I saw white and was stunned but just assumed I hurt myself.

I walked into the workstation, and wiped what I thought was sweat from my forhead.

No.

Blood, and lots of it.

After talking to the Peace Corps doctor, it was decided I would need to go the hospital here in Natitingou. I did. First, I went to the wrong hospital and walked around dazed and confused. Finally, I figured out I was at the wrong hospital and found my way to the right one.

The doctor there examined me and said "you need stitches."

We went over to another room, the nurse came in, shaved some of my hair off (very sad), cleaned the wound and next thing I know, there's the needle and thread. NO ANESTHESIA!

I laughed hysterically and told them to wait while I built up the guts to get stitches in my head with no anesthesia.

Deep breath.

Okay, go ahead.

BAM!

I'm pretty sure that the only reason I didn't cry was because I was sweating from the pain of it all. I'm also pretty sure that I almost pushed one of my eyes right out of it's socket in my attempt to apply pressure to deal with the pain.

I began to curse, aloud, in English and they all began to laugh. They knew.

They did a good job. A good, painful job.

They put about 20 different cleaning agents and topped it off with what I'm sure was alcohol and a bandage.

Enjoy the pictures.