KDurant7 blog adventures

Belo Horizonte, Brazil 1980

On crowded city buses, breathing a few inches away from others smashed up all around you, it is easy to breath in dangerous germs. After feeling weak for a few days and having a fever of 104 to 106 being very delusional, with Regina afraid I would die, I went to the hospital. The doctor’s tests diagnosed that I had gotten hepatitis! It was from someone breathing on me, or from contaminated food. I had never felt that tired and weak ever before and I saw my skin turn a bright yellow color. Where could I go? I couldn’t stay around people! We had some friends that told us about a farm of a friend about 10 hours away. It would mean taking 2 buses into the jungle to get to a tiny town where a taxi could get us to the farm another hour away. The only way out would be to walk back 4 hours to that tiny town. It was my only option, so we went. On that farm, there were several families that lived there off the land, and harvested fruit by hand and they had some cattle. I was able to live isolated from everyone in a small army tent about a football’s field away from the main house. Regina would bring me food 2 times daily, dropping it off as you would feed a dog in front of the tent, but I didn’t mind, I was happy to be alive. The beans and rice everyday were all I needed to get my liver to return to normal. For those 6 weeks in quarantine, I read my Bible for hours a day and I grew spiritually, finally reading it over and over, cover to cover. I witnessed an amazing nature there often observing fresh water porpoises in the river, huge streams of ants carrying 2 inch big leaves of cargo, and  I did avoid the occasional scorpion or anaconda roaming around!  The worse part were the green flies that planted larvae in your skin, and you would have to cut out with a flat razor tip and flush it clean. I have often reflected how I was blessed to be cared for by kind Brazilians who did not know me or Regina, having one son and another on the way. These types of timeouts God that permits in our lives always generate some good even though at the time they are not pleasant and may be interpreted as an attack on us from our adversary, the devil, however the righteous fall 7 times and get back up. I will always be thankful to Regina and to the farmers who nursed me through that trial that took me close to my death.