stung.
We have this Senegalese dish…gossi…and I have grown to hate it. It is a rice, sugar and milk porridge. It’s not that it tastes bad, in fact it’s kinda good. The problem is that I am a product of weight obsessed America and I hate that as I eat the mush, it’s transforming my thighs to look exactly like the gossi I’m eating. (I know, of all things to worry about, right?!) When gossi became a regular dinner I was annoyed, and I decided to stand my ground and not eat it. I mean, boys at my house don’t eat dinner when it’s haako (a leaf sauce that I love) and it’s not a problem, so it shouldn’t be if I don’t eat gossi. So when my family woke me up at 9:45 one night to come eat dinner (gossi) I responded curtly, “MI HAARI!” (“I’m full!”) And next came the discussion…
“Well what did you eat? You’re not full. Come eat just a little. Why won’t you eat? You’re full??”
Again: “Mi haari tan!” (“I’m just full!”)
I lay there listening to them discuss me.
“She hasn’t eaten. She just doesn’t agree to eat anymore. Nothing since lunch…If she loses weight, people will say we are not feeding her.”
And from down below a grumbling arose. In fact, I was hungry and I hadn’t eaten, but…I was prepared. I had bought a mango that I snuck into my room and planned to devour all by myself. So I got up and got waster to shower off the day’s layer of sweat and sand and went in my room. I got my mango and knife, new headlamp, towel, and went out to the shower. My usual practice is to take off my clothes to eat mangoes as the juice runs everywhere. So I get naked, sit down, turn on headlamp and see…
A HUGE SCORPION!
(wait…a cockroach?!)
NO! SCORPION!
And his tail’s up and he’s scurrying around the edges of my 7X10 ft. bathroom. And I turn into an idiot. “Okay, Marie. What to do? You’re naked. You’re eating in your douche (a practice we volunteers keep veeeeeery secret). Okay, you gotta kill it!!” I take off the shoe, but the scorpion is smart. He knows that the edges make it impossible to get him, and then, I lose it behind boxes. Next solution? Put on dress and get out. Dress goes over head, and “OW!”—a prick to the toe. Minor really, like a pin prick, but I knew what it was, and didn’t know where the scorpion was currently. I yelped and everyone in the house is up. “What is it?! A lizard?!” (Lizards still get a yelp when I find them in my room, much to the amusement of my family.) They’re entering the room. I, pulling my dress down, limping, and pain throbbing up my leg. “A scorpion is in my bathroom!” I tell them. In come the boys, grab a shoe, and slaughter my intruder. And then the laughs come. Even I am laughing at the situation. It was ironic. Only a week before I had made the comment, “I kinda want to know what it feels like to be bitten by a scorpion. Does it really hurt THAT BAD??” And here I was…I know knew…it hurts. It reaaaaally hurts.
My foot started swelling to massive size, so we tied it off and my sister is telling me to “Come on! It’ll start to hurt! You can go, right?!” And I was like, “What? I don’t understand.” (Language is still a barrier.) But I go, thinking that whatever it is will take my mind off the shooting pain in my foot. She takes me to a lady that will get rid of the pain. We’ve all heard of a horse whisperer. I refer to this as the scorpion soother. She says some prayers over my foot, spits on it a few times, tells me to ice it and we go home.
By this time I am in pain-full force. (That soother didn’t do a very good job, hm.) It’s throbbing, stinging, aching all at the same time. So I retire to my room, no shower because I am scared of the bathroom. I am forced to sleep in my oven of a room rather than outside because even though scorpions are known to be solitary creatures, I convince myself there is probably a nest (do they even make nests??) of them in my bathroom. So I put ice on it, take an aspirin and prepare to have a horrible night.
As I lay there in the wee hours of the morning; sweating, wanting to cry, wanting to shower, hungry (never got that mango!), thinking “What if they have to amputate my leg?! Can scorpions sting your face??”, reading Harry Potter, I keep hearing my family laughing.
“Hahahaha…does it hurt Salimata? You’re jom yahre! (owner of the scorpions.) Haahahah, Salimata Toubako got stung by a scorpion!” And I convince myself it’s karma. If I hadn’t been such a nasty hag to my family. If I hadn’t snapped at them. If I had just eaten the darn gossi. If I wasn’t so selfish to secretly eat delicious mangoes in my douche. I would never have been stung by a scorpion!!
The next morning it felt better, although I didn’t get any sleep. I was still the laughing stock of my household and anyone that entered it and got the full story. It’s true, my ego was a little bruised, but I took it like a champ. Didn’t cry. Held on to that pride. But I learned a very valuable lesson that night…Karma’s not a bitch, as some might say, but it’s a scorpion, and you never know when it’ll come back to sting ya.
“Well what did you eat? You’re not full. Come eat just a little. Why won’t you eat? You’re full??”
Again: “Mi haari tan!” (“I’m just full!”)
I lay there listening to them discuss me.
“She hasn’t eaten. She just doesn’t agree to eat anymore. Nothing since lunch…If she loses weight, people will say we are not feeding her.”
And from down below a grumbling arose. In fact, I was hungry and I hadn’t eaten, but…I was prepared. I had bought a mango that I snuck into my room and planned to devour all by myself. So I got up and got waster to shower off the day’s layer of sweat and sand and went in my room. I got my mango and knife, new headlamp, towel, and went out to the shower. My usual practice is to take off my clothes to eat mangoes as the juice runs everywhere. So I get naked, sit down, turn on headlamp and see…
A HUGE SCORPION!
(wait…a cockroach?!)
NO! SCORPION!
And his tail’s up and he’s scurrying around the edges of my 7X10 ft. bathroom. And I turn into an idiot. “Okay, Marie. What to do? You’re naked. You’re eating in your douche (a practice we volunteers keep veeeeeery secret). Okay, you gotta kill it!!” I take off the shoe, but the scorpion is smart. He knows that the edges make it impossible to get him, and then, I lose it behind boxes. Next solution? Put on dress and get out. Dress goes over head, and “OW!”—a prick to the toe. Minor really, like a pin prick, but I knew what it was, and didn’t know where the scorpion was currently. I yelped and everyone in the house is up. “What is it?! A lizard?!” (Lizards still get a yelp when I find them in my room, much to the amusement of my family.) They’re entering the room. I, pulling my dress down, limping, and pain throbbing up my leg. “A scorpion is in my bathroom!” I tell them. In come the boys, grab a shoe, and slaughter my intruder. And then the laughs come. Even I am laughing at the situation. It was ironic. Only a week before I had made the comment, “I kinda want to know what it feels like to be bitten by a scorpion. Does it really hurt THAT BAD??” And here I was…I know knew…it hurts. It reaaaaally hurts.
My foot started swelling to massive size, so we tied it off and my sister is telling me to “Come on! It’ll start to hurt! You can go, right?!” And I was like, “What? I don’t understand.” (Language is still a barrier.) But I go, thinking that whatever it is will take my mind off the shooting pain in my foot. She takes me to a lady that will get rid of the pain. We’ve all heard of a horse whisperer. I refer to this as the scorpion soother. She says some prayers over my foot, spits on it a few times, tells me to ice it and we go home.
By this time I am in pain-full force. (That soother didn’t do a very good job, hm.) It’s throbbing, stinging, aching all at the same time. So I retire to my room, no shower because I am scared of the bathroom. I am forced to sleep in my oven of a room rather than outside because even though scorpions are known to be solitary creatures, I convince myself there is probably a nest (do they even make nests??) of them in my bathroom. So I put ice on it, take an aspirin and prepare to have a horrible night.
As I lay there in the wee hours of the morning; sweating, wanting to cry, wanting to shower, hungry (never got that mango!), thinking “What if they have to amputate my leg?! Can scorpions sting your face??”, reading Harry Potter, I keep hearing my family laughing.
“Hahahaha…does it hurt Salimata? You’re jom yahre! (owner of the scorpions.) Haahahah, Salimata Toubako got stung by a scorpion!” And I convince myself it’s karma. If I hadn’t been such a nasty hag to my family. If I hadn’t snapped at them. If I had just eaten the darn gossi. If I wasn’t so selfish to secretly eat delicious mangoes in my douche. I would never have been stung by a scorpion!!
The next morning it felt better, although I didn’t get any sleep. I was still the laughing stock of my household and anyone that entered it and got the full story. It’s true, my ego was a little bruised, but I took it like a champ. Didn’t cry. Held on to that pride. But I learned a very valuable lesson that night…Karma’s not a bitch, as some might say, but it’s a scorpion, and you never know when it’ll come back to sting ya.
posted by Marie @ 4:40 AM
1 Comments:
I know that this was a painful experience for you Marie, but I can't help but visualize you eating mangoes naked after our SARK conversation! You should send this story to her she has a website and she seems like the kind of person who would relish in this! This is definately a story for the grandkids and i am soo happy you are writinga bout all of these experiences. You will come back to these writings many times in your life and relive these expereinces through your own accounting of them. Jill
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