If you have ever prepared to travel abroad, there's no doubt that a doctor's appointment was on your pre-departure check-list. If you were traveling to a country in the third world, or as our uber-politically correct friends in international development like to say, the global south, this appointment will result in about a hundred prescriptions and procedures. This should cover vaccines for diseases you thought had been eradicated during the Reagan administration, a weekly or daily malaria pill and enough ciprofloxacin to kill just about anything that might find its way into your gastrointestinal tract. You meet these medical standards because they are required for a visa or maybe because your mother is determined that you will not be plagued with the stomach pain her friend Sylvia's nephew had in India. In any case, you're looking out for your health, as you should. Your trip is probably short enough without spending most of it in bed.
The biggest health-related advice our group leaders gave us upon arrival to San Salvador was simple: Whatever you do, don't drink the water. As if the loud crowd of gringo Americans with overstuffed suitcases wasn't enough to identify us as outsiders in our rural host community, we also brought with us huge blue jugs of expensive purified water for cooking and drinking. Although some of the village locals seemed to understand that Americans were liable to get ridiculously sick if we drank from their wells, the majority laughed at our stupidity. "You're wasting your money," a Salvadoran friend mocked. "It's all in your head. We drink this water and we're fine. We're all people!" I had neither the heart nor the Spanish vocabulary to explain the biological reasons why I might actually get sick from drinking from the wells.
The problem with refusing to drink local water, though, is that keeps you from fully immersing yourself in the very culture you came to explore. Part of my motivation for going to Central America was to see firsthand the customs and lifestyle of people different from me. As we became more integrated into the community, mothers would invite us over for food, and I was put in the position of trying to delicately decline for fear of becoming ill, while still very much wanting to experience authentic Salvadoran food and conversation. In addition, older folks don't quite get the inability-to-drink-the-water thing, and refusing an invitation to food might as well be a slap in the face. It's quite an awkward position. In trying to keep my health up, I was keeping the rest of my experience down.
It was not until the final two-and-a-half weeks of my trip that I grew the proverbial balls to accept an offer of horchata from a friend onsite at the AIDS awareness center we were building. The Salvadorans laughed and joked that it was like watching a kid have his first beer. I didn't get sick. The next day I still wasn't sick and went back and joined the Salvadoreños for another drink. With my newfound stomach of iron, I took up a formerly insulted woman's offer of pasteles, small potato empanadas, and enjoyed a cup of Tang at a friend's house. I felt incredibly free, taking advantage of a connection with the people I had denied myself for too long. I felt less like an outsider and more like a guest. I had a lot of catching up to do.
So, if you're not afraid to take a little risk, go ahead and drink the water. Bridge the gap between your American typecast and the global investigator you want to be. And if things go wrong? I'm sure your doctor prescribed you enough antibiotics to kill a small animal. Get your money's worth.
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Jacob Kreimer is a junior majoring in international relations. He can be reached at Jacob.Kreimer@tufts.edu.
