But there is one sound that will make me spring out of the bed like no other. It is the sound of someone vomiting. I do not know why this is the only noise that gets me out of the bed, perhaps it's because I personally despise vomiting (not sure that anyone likes it), but I will fight like crazy to keep from vomiting. Usually when I have the stomach virus, I am on the bathroom floor pleading with God to just let me die.
So, we're sitting at dinner at Hotel Bethlehem in Ethiopia having a conversation about how this team has only one team member with mercy and compassion and that is Carrie. The rest of us, we're really not that nice. I guess we mostly believe that what doesn't kill you will just make you stronger. We were discussing who would be compassionate if we were sick, etc. and the answer was always Carrie....no one else including Sumer ever made the list.
It's about 1:30 in the morning and Angela and I are both asleep when I hear that sound....someone a few doors down is vomiting. (Side note: in Ethiopia two unmarried people are not allowed to share a bed, so Angela and I were technically breaking the law by sleeping in a bed together). We had to get separate rooms because of this law, but Angela and I ended up in the same room (this is a blog post for another day). In the midst of all that, we gave our room to Bryan and Jonathan because they had a room with two twin beds and this way they each had their own room. All of that to say that I only knew what room Carrie was in and what room Sumer was in....the boys, I wasn't so sure.
So, I wake up Angela and say "someone's throwing up". I don't know what I expected her to do, but I said, "What if it's Bryan?" It was his first time in Africa and I did feel some responsibility to make sure that he had a good time and made it home alive. So, I start walking down the gravel pathway trying to figure out which room the vomiting is coming from. It's not Carrie, it's not Sumer. I'm not sure which room Bryan or Jonathan or Maste and Haptamu are in. I finally end up outside someone's room and I'm whispering, "Bryan....Jonathan..." No answer. The vomiting stops for a little while. We head back to bed and I continue to hear the vomiting. I walked the gravel pathway again, but wasn't didn't want to start waking up random people if it wasn't coming from their room, so I just headed back to bed defeated. I couldn't go back to sleep and I just prayed and prayed for that person because I just know how horrible food poisoning can be.
I then started thinking that I had the same thing to eat as Bryan, so my tummy starts to hurt. I pray some more. Finally around 3 am I go back to sleep. It was fun conversation the following morning at breakfast when I realized that no one on our team was sick and instead I was outside someone else's room yelling "Jonathan...Bryan..." Whoever that person was, they got lots of prayer that Sunday evening in Ethiopia. And the team, we laughed a lot about it.
