Our old pal
Get a case of ameobic dysentery.
While filming the documentary “Tamale Road” in El Salvador this summer, my son Jose David got amoebas from eating french fries off the street. Fries that are loaded with dirt kicked up from tires and grime from handfuls of dollar bills and the sweat of a woman’s work.
It hit Jose David so hard, he passed out on me. He’s six feet tall; I’m a wee five eight. I had to carry him over my shoulder and toss him into the back seat, where he vomited all over his mother. And I mean all over.
He spent two days in the hospital. His body sucked in six bags of IV’s. This was nothing new to the doctor, a specialist in gastronomical illnesses. ”Good you got them out of the countryside fast. But they’ll be fine. They’ve got enough in them to get through this.”
Which is Central American doctor-talk for They’re not from here. They’ve eaten well all their lives.
When my wife Michelle and I lived in Nicaragua and Guatemala in the nineties, ameobas and food poisoning and cysts and worms crawling up your throat were dinner table talk. We took Flagyl every six months or so, after losing liquid from just about every orifice. Flagyl rips through you like a pilgrimage of lit torches. But man it works.
Just spit 'em up.
In our first days there, I noticed a girl, about six, walking in front of her family’s one-room house. She had blonde hair. Her stomach, large as a watermelon. A doctor in our group explained it. “Blonde hair, malnourished. Her stomach’s loaded with protozoan shit.” He gave a guess as to how long she’d still be around.
“Jesus H. Christ,” said Jose David after the third IV, “I’ll never eat fries again.” And from that vat of nausea and fever, he figured something out: “Not to compare, but now I’ve got a taste of what the poor go through.”
Yep.
Poverty’s one of those subjects we get squishy about. Guilt mostly. I see two reactions in LA regarding the homeless: some folks help them out. Others disdain them, and aren’t hesitant to show it. I’ve watched a good friend, a wonderful guy, berate a vet under a bridge who’d held his hand out too long. I’m not sure where that anger cromes from. Maybe it’s fear that, in these days, a lot of us could end up on the curb.
I hated watching Jose David vomiting up green bile and something that looked like smashed Oreos. But I was happy about his analysis.
It’s a lot of work, staying healthy in Morazan, El Salvador. Water: boil it for twenty minutes so the hard shells around the ameobas break and the wiggly guys burn. Food: If you can’t peel it or boil it or burn it, don’t eat it. When friends offer you tamarindo juice, either try to find out where the water came from or toss it out the window when they turn their backs. I got good at that.
And when all else fails, just head home. I mean, we’ve got that option, right?
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