Sometimes I like to think I'm funnier than telling stories about farting and poop, but I'm not. So gather 'round, friends, and listen to a story about a boy, his poop, and some other fun stuff.
Two years ago, I spent my summer in Cairo, Egypt. I was working in a summer school program to teach Sudanese Refugee children who had fled from persecution and civil war in Sudan. You may be thinking at this point, "Gee, Errol, that's not very funny." No, it's not. You're probably also thinking "Gee, Errol, you're amazing, a much better person than I could ever be." And, yes, I am.
It was obviously a summer of new experiences. The first thing that we had to become accustomed to was the heat. Weather forecasting concerning Cairo is a conspiracy. Seriously. You may look at the weather report for Cairo and think to yourself "Holy Shakespeare, no way I want to go anywhere where it's that Frost-ing hot." And you'd be right. But all the advertised temperatures you can find are lowered significantly to attract tourists. No joke. You think they could advertise cooler temperatures though, as long as you're going to lie, let's pretend like it's only a manageable and pleasant 75 degrees out. "Cairo, amazingly temperate for the Sahara," the advertisements would read, and then when you got there, "JUST KIDDING STUPID FrostERS! PREPARE TO MELT!" a beautifully done sign would welcome you at the airport, followed by another one: "And if you go back and tell, we'll blow you up. You are in the Middle East." And then one more: "Seriously, don't tell."
Another wonderful aspect of the trip was the call-to-prayer thing. Apparently Muslim countries, with all their rules and regulations, have no law against disturbing the peace. For those of you who aren't familiar, Muslims in certain areas are required by law to pray five times a day. The times are roughly 4:00am, 1:00pm, 4:30pm, 8:00pm and 9:30pm. In Egypt, they like to give everyone a reminder. At all of these times, every day, every mosque in the entire damn country has their own call to prayer. Most often, this involves a tape recording of some chant being broadcast by some crappy, but amazingly loud speaker. This would be fine if only, say, one mosque per square mile did this. But, in Egypt, there is at least one mosque per city block, many times more than that. The resulting cacophony sounded like if every yodeler in all of Germany and Austria were to be anally raped simultaneously and broadcast. Every day. Five times. The best part was the 4:00am call. We had a mosque across the street from our apartment with the speaker pointed at our bedroom. Screw Folger's, the best part of waking up was some poor guy getting it in the pooper.
Now for the best part. A new country means new food, new water, and new bacteria. Somehow I managed to be okay for the majority of the trip. I even got used to using the bidet, or assbath, as I like to call it, since toilet paper was scarce. That is, I was okay until the last weekend of our trip. I had gone on this trip with a Christian group, as I am fittingly a Christian. The last Sunday, we all got to choose whatever church we wanted to go to, since we had visited so many. Some friends and I wanted to go to this really fun, upbeat Sudanese Church. So we boarded the Metro and headed from northern Cairo, where we were living, to an area in southern Cairo, where the Church was. Halfway through the ride, I started to feel it. I was doubled over in pain, with horrible stomach cramps. My friend, being the strange Christian that he is, offered to pray for me. He proceeded to lay his hand upon my stomach and asked God to "send out of my body whatever was afflicting me," (pretty much a direct quote). Now, as a man of faith, I believe God answers prayer. He answered this one, but not how I wanted Him to or expected Him to. Right before we exited the train, I let out the biggest, nastiest fart I've ever let out in my life. Imagine rotten eggs meets dead fish. There were clearly several unhappy Egyptians, but hey, it was silent, couldn't pin it on me! Then I remembered, my fart was going to be trapped inside that compartment in the 110 degree heat. My bad! But that's what they get for making me listen to the call to prayer.
I thought that that was going to be the answer to my friend's prayer, but it was only an appetizer. Shortly thereafter, about two blocks away from the church, I had the unmistakable sensation of the Nile flowing through my large intestine. We got to the church and I ran to a bathroom and had a case of moderately explosive, but fairly manageable, diarrhea. Not so bad. Then we got about 20 minutes into the service. I had the feeling again. I scurried to the bathroom as politely as possible and sat down. Now, not to get into the gory details, but I'm going to give gory details. This wasn't just a plain old case of the runs. My ass was forcibly evicting every bit of material that was available in my GI tract. You know what throwing up feels like? It was like my ass was throwing up. I felt like some strange hybrid of goatse and tubgirl at the same time, sort of. Then, you know what it's like to dry heave? MY ANUS WAS DRY HEAVING. It felt like it was trying to expel my very rectum from my body. I decided not to go back to my seat, and just to hang in the back for the rest of the service, and that went by without incident.
Then we went to have a team meeting. We would regularly have meetings at the apartment that some of the girls on our team were staying at. In this place, the layout was such that the kitchen was right next to the bathroom, and the only thing separating the two rooms was essentially a sheet. I spent the afternoon in that bathroom farting and Shakespeare-ing up a storm, while the girls were cooking away in the kitchen. All I could hear were some hushed voices, some gagging, and a few giggles. This was not a happy day.
But I made it through. Granted, I had diarrhea for about 2 months, and would have a glass of Pepto Bismol to wash down my Immodium AD pretty much every day. And my stomach still isn't the same, even two years later. But I wouldn't trade in my experience of Egypt for anything in the world. And the moral of the story? Remember, I'm better than you!
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