Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Monkeys and Mushrooms

Sunday was a lesson in survival and stupidity.

Something that often happens on the weekends is the veg kids come around and overcharge people on vegetables. I was a sucker on Sunday and bought 500 grams of mushrooms. (I had some for breakfast and some for dinner. This will be important information for later in the story.)

The weather is warm. The sun is shining. And the monkeys are frolicking. I enjoy keeping my doors open to facilitate air flow. Anwer has warned me time and time again that the crazy langur monkey will show up in the house and eat me. It's funny because two monkeys did come as far as the porch on Saturday morning. I screamed and waved a sheet crazily, and they left without a fight. You think I would know better by now.

On Sunday, I did not know better.

I was drying laundry in the yard and chatting on the phone with Tina. I noticed one of my blankets had fallen down the cud. I shimmied down the cud while still chatting on the phone. On my way back over the fence, I saw a monkey perched nicely on the ledge staring at me. I made a run for my house and slammed the door behind me. I was still on the phone chatting. I began to retreat back into my living room, when I saw a monkey. Inside. My. House. EATING BANANAS IN MY LIVING ROOM! I turned immediately back around and ran out the door, obviously leaving it open so the monkey could follow. Instead, what I then saw was two more monkeys running into my house to grab some snacks!

I ran around to the side window to assess the situation. I finally decided I needed to end my call with Tina because things were spiraling out of control. I screamed and pounded on the window encouraging them to leave my kitchen immediately. They shockingly left with minimal damage. I lost three bananas and two cinnamon rolls. The little thieves sat in the yard nicely eating their snacks while I tried to get back into my house.

I closed the door.

Later in the evening, I began to feel some stomach pains. In the land of typhoid, malaria, and amoebas, this was nothing to be concerned about. I waited it out for awhile. The power went out due to a storm, and I just sat in the darkness trying to not be in severe pain. Around 1:30 AM, I decide it's too much. I wake Anwer and make him call the health center to see if I might die.

The nurse on call suggests that I take some pain medicine to ease my suffering. After Anwer wandered around in the darkness trying to find it, I popped the mystery medicine (because it was dark and Anwer was sleepy, it might have been a vitamin C pill). About three minutes later, I found myself running to the bathroom to prevent the projectile vomit that was about to come out of me from spraying all over my powerless home. Let's just say that large amounts of fluids and debris were coming out of my body from multiple directions for many hours that night. It was violent. It was awful. And I have strong belief that the mushrooms were to blame. Around 4:30 AM, I had cleansed my body more thoroughly than any raw food diet ever could.

So what are the lessons we learned?
1. No more monkeys jumping in my house.
2. Do not, under any circumstances, ever, buy any mushrooms from anyone. ever.