As I prepared to embark on a summer adventure in India, one piece of advice was given to me over and over again. “Don’t drink the water.” Oh please, I thought, I know that I am not going to drink bad water. I am a smart traveler: I had spent a month traveling alone in Europe —yes, I seriously compared these two experiences at the time — so I assumed that nothing would happen. The problem is that I suffer from a typical symptom of people my age; I truly believe I am invincible.
I arrived to South India, to a city called Trivandrum, fresh out of a cushy ten-day visit with a friend in Paris. Shocked, I realized I was the only Westerner in a small urban airport. The volunteer coordinator of the school and orphanage where I would be working picked me up, and I proceeded to fall fast asleep in the car. I woke up in a small rural town. My first few jet-lagged days fell on the weekend, so I spent my time meeting the other people on the orphanage and playing with the children.
On Monday, I suited up in my floor-length skirt and button-up top, which was just barely acceptable for this extremely conservative area. I rode sidesaddle on a rickety motorbike on unpaved roads to one of the schools where I would be working. The first one was a beautiful, impressively large English school, where one of their selling points was how the water was filtered so the children would not get sick. I was given some to drink, helped myself to some more, and continued onto the next school.
That afternoon, before we left for a trip to town, I began to feel a little off . At first I thought that I was just knocked sideways by the time zone change, but at night I had a headache so intense I could not rest my head on the bed let alone sleep. The next morning I was extremely sensitive to light and found myself unable to move. I spent what would have been my first day of work in bed, and then my second day, and then my third day. It finally hit me that I had done what I was too arrogant to believe was possible — I had drank bad water.
I was brought to a “hospital,” which in reality was a doctor’s office down a dirty alley. He was very nice, and diagnosed me with food poisoning, for which he prescribed antibiotics. I let that one slide. I was given saline, glucose, and intravenous antibiotics, as well as very strong painkillers. My stomach was bloated to the point that my clothes stopped fitting.
I spent a week in the dark, sleeping for twenty hours a day, dreaming of the food and water I was too nauseous to consume. I fantasized about what it would feel like to quench my extreme thirst. For the first time in my life water had become an elusive life-giving substance. It was both what had caused my illness and what I craved the most. What is so easy for me to access and waste in the United States, is so rare in a clean form in India. I was suffering for my thoughtlessness, for my Westerness.
As for my delusion of invincibility…Unfortunately, living through this experience and coming out just as strong has only made me feel more like Superwoman. But my perspective on the value of clean water, which had always been an abundant resource, had changed forever.