Thursday, August 13: Puking and Sympathy Last day at the campsite before heading back to Sovata; a half-day, really. Today's exercise was a short one called "Crossing the River." (That's T.V. demonstrating it in the photo.) This involved learning a few knots (promptly forgotten after the event, at least by me), rigging up a rope, pulleys and a harness between two sturdy trees across a river -- actually, more like a stream in the middle of the forest -- and pulling yourself across while staring up at the sky. I accomplished the feat with the bottom rope taut against my rear, then let go halfway across, dropping - so I was later told - to within 20 centimeters (eight inches) of the water. This alarmed the others more than myself. But, mission accomplished. I wasn't so lucky otherwise, however, as this was the day my digestive system rebelled again, this time in the other direction.
I hadn't been feeling so great even before "crossing the river," and back at the camp after the exercise I felt my gorge rising. As inconspicuously as possible, I walked a few paces away from the tents to the bank of the muddy creek, where I sat down, leaned forward and quietly upchucked my breakfast onto the grass. Of course, this was bound to be noticed by someone, and I don't remember exactly, but eventually I probably told Attila or Csongi or Danni about my distress; and why not. The bad water from the creek was blamed. I wasn't the only one to have had problems; several of the Romanians had become ill, in both my group and, I hear later, in Leo and Orsi's. (Some days before Leo had kindly bestowed on me a tube of black Carbosorb carbon tablets from Slovakia, which I'm sure had helped some, but in the end the toxins would have their way.)
Soon afterwards, the camp packed up and headed back to Sovata in a van slightly better than the one that had died on us two days before -- with me holding a plastic bag at the ready, given to me by someone concerned for the sake of the van's interior (come to think of it, plastic bags have been a recurring motif of this trip). But this time it wasn't necessary; before we'd been long underway, I called for the driver to pull over, then heaved up (mostly water, which you probably wanted to know) by the roadside, Csongi holding my head. Csongi, the saint, then decided to divert the van a short ways to the clinic in Gheorgheni, the nearest town of any size.
After the two of us tried a couple of wrong doors, we ended up in an emergency clinic which seemed to be deserted save for a single doctor and nurse on call. The clinic's interior seemed straight out of a black-and- white documentary from the 1950s, only shabbier. I was told to lie down on a hospital bed, and on the thin white sheet covering it, noticed small spots of what appeared to be blood. I seemed to be the only patient in the place. Despite my rapidly increasing misgivings, I threw back the blanket and lay down, grateful to be off my feet, at least. I was questioned about my condition by the doctor, Gyula Weil, a Székely physician, who spoke good English. (Weil, hm? A Jewish doctor in Romania?) He seemed amused when I told him about some of the Outward Bound activities I'd taken part in.
Weil: "You have been in some sort of survival training course? You have been training to be Rambo?"
Me: "I've just been following the program."
The diagnosis was food poisoning. A glucose drip was prescribed. "Do you use sterilized needles?" I asked, unable not to, and for a moment Weil turned his head away with an exasperated look -- what do these foreigners think of our hospitals! -- but then assured me that the needles came straight out of sealed packages, not to worry.
Weil got me on the glucose drip, throwing in some Ringer's and Cerucal, and I rested for 20 minutes. Afterwards I felt better, if tired. There was no charge; the restoration of my health was on Romania's tab. I thanked the doctor in Hungarian; he responded in English.
I returned to the patiently waiting group in the van and sheepishly apologized for delaying them. Not at all, they assured me; it's OK. I told them the doctor's remarks about the OB course, and Attila grinned widely.
*****
After we finally got back to the Sovata camp in late afternoon, I couldn't wait to collapse into a real bed, even a bunk bed (which at this point seemed the epitome of luxury) and just lay there, half-awake. It was Orsi's 17th birthday; "It's a good age," said Leo, and I agreed.
Too exhausted to rise, I listened late into the night to the others singing and talking their way through Orsi's birthday celebration, Leo playing guitar. It was one of those evenings I was nostalgic for while it was happening, a long moment I knew I'd come back to again and again, long after I'd returned home. The whole group was reunited, we'd come through the fire and emerged better for it, and I was one of them, and tonight there wasn't anything to do but sing.
Leo sang a Czech folk song and a version of "Yesterday" in his language, and I remembered the first time I'd heard "Yesterday," in a Catskills bungalow colony over 30 years ago, when it was a new song, and I had thought it the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard. I listened to the campers sing along to "House of the Rising Sun," and I listened to someone's tape of Chuck Berry playing "Johnny B. Goode" one more time. Nothing ever sounded better to me than Chuck Berry in rural Romania.
I felt exhilaration, satisfaction, earned rest, accomplishment. I knew that the worst was over, and the best, and I felt truly blessed to be there, at that time, in that place.