We drive back to the hotel and say farewell to Jasper. It is still late morning, so we relax for a few hours in our room and slowly pack. I sit on the sunny balcony and Karsten gets the camera out. Well, here I am! I am now infected with hookworms. They’re swimming in my blood! Hurray!
I am in shock. I’m sitting on a balcony in Mexico, with a large band-aid on my arm, hookworm larvae having burrowed through my skin. In taking the nature out of the natural, it leaves one a little confused. Had I been walking barefoot in the third world, I might have gotten a hookworm infection, among other things. But I would have been surrounded by the foreignness, the wild. There a tropical worm would have been an acceptable part of the day. But it feels weird to be in this antiseptic setting, with a parasite given to me on a sterile band-aid, and now I’m sitting in a hotel.
How strange my life’s become.
Karsten finishes packing, and we prepare for the journey home.
The taxi takes us to the border where we get accosted by men telling us that the wait is hours, they could get us across in 10 minutes, just costs $10, c’mon, this line will take forever! I notice only the white tourists get attacked. We refuse, walk down the long line and stand in our places, waiting. I realize that the truly sick person is never going to be able to get this therapy. I suppose they could drive across the border, but there’s a huge line even then, and flying and driving when you are chronically ill is so hard. I wonder how many people would benefit from hookworm? Jasper’s only going to get the brave and truly adventurous, and those well enough to try. Thank God my diarrhea comes out mostly during the night. I am weak, I am thin, I slept terribly and I have Crohn’s disease. Yet my disease is invisible; no one would guess what suffering I go through daily. I wait in line like all the others, and we slowly make our way back to America.
A drunken old guy sings “Felix Navidad” as a little girl walks by with cotton candy. My Christmas holiday! Going to Tijuana for some hookworms.
At the border, the nice white man in uniform asks me if I’ve brought anything back from Mexico.
“Hookworms!” I want to blurt out. But I don’t. I shake my head no. I keep my sleeve over my band-aid. I walk across the border; hopeful, silent.
I and my worms head home.
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