Stirring Point

Good travel is filled with unexpected moments. I welcome them, hope for them, and make choices that expedite their arrival. Not every moment needs to be a guessing game, but it sure as hell can’t be entirely predictable. “The unexpected” often creates discomfort and distress. Other times, it brings joy and self-discovery. When we walk into a dark room, we bump into objects we don’t anticipate. Travel is my way of shutting off the lights, wandering through foreign obscurity, and colliding with the crooked corners of the world that remind me I’m alive.

I came to Ethiopia to train Brazilian Jiu-jitsu at Kao BJJ, the only gym of its kind in the country. During a Friday evening wrestling class, we trained tournament-style takedowns with two people “live sparring” in front of the group. We moved with intensity, taking shots on each other and working to pin our opponents to the ground. After each fight, the team critiqued the match while the two competitors leaned against the wall, covered in sweat and catching their breath.

I watched a few rounds, gauging the ferocity of the team. I was at least 10 years older than nearly everyone in the room and I knew I’d be under heavy scrutiny as an outsider. This was their lair—their lion’s den—and they’d use me as a foil to test their evolving skill set. A tightness seized my chest from the fear of being judged and I swallowed a deep inhale. Get over yourself, I thought. You’re here to train, not be admired. So I walked to the center of the mat and pointed towards the largest man in the room. You want to hide from judgment? Now you have to fight all 6’3 and 220 pounds of Nicklas as penance. He walked out smiling and towered above me. I popped out my mouthguard and looked up at him. 

“So, you were not that big from a distance,” I said. The team burst into laughter and I felt my tension fade away. This is why I’d come—to plunge myself into deep water and have a damn good time holding my breath.

“David and Goliath!” Someone yelled. 

We slapped hands and started moving. I changed levels, bringing my body lower to the ground. We circled one another, hand fighting and looking for grips on wrists, shoulders, and necks. He stood tall for a moment, providing an opening to drop low and shoot a double-leg takedown on his base. My shoulder smashed into his waistline as my hands clung to the back of his knees. I turned to his side, picking up one of his legs and slamming him to the ground. In doing so, his knee smashed squarely into my chin, splitting a section of skin wide open. A shockwave rippled through the muscles in my jaw and jarred me to the temples. I bit down on my mouthpiece, fighting to contain his legs and finish my takedown. We scrambled like animals, searching for each other’s physical vulnerabilities, before finally slamming into a wall-length mirror. The team quickly jumped in and reset us before anything got destroyed. 

As we stood and walked back to the center of the mat, I raised my hand to my chin and felt the warm, sticky fluid oozing through my scruff. A mixture of deep purple and red blood covered my fingers and slowly dripped from the bottom of my face. A few of the guys crowded around me while I tilted my head back and asked for a verdict.

“Is it split?”

“It’s open, for sure,” someone said. “Go wash it off, and we’ll be able to see.”

I went to the locker room and washed my hands. The cool water pooled in my palms as I cupped them together and submerged my chin in the liquid. The water swirled with thin ribbons of blood, then dissolved into one fluid, like a cup of Kool-Aid. I dropped the mixture into the basin and rinsed my hands once more. An inch-wide gash ran below my chin, with a small chunk of skin missing near the high side. 

I walked back into the gym, where a few members hustled over to see the cleaned version.

“Stitches,” someone declared.

“I don’t know,” said another. “It doesn’t look very deep.”

“Wait, Sam is a doctor,” someone piped in. “Let’s get him.”

“You have a doctor here?” I laughed. “Yeah, let’s ask him.”

Someone called out to Sam, and as he came over, I noticed a long, fresh scratch down the front of his left cheek.

“Damn, Sam. You got it too, huh?” I said. 

“Yeah, someone’s fingernail, I think. Tilt your head back,” he said. “I don’t think it needs stitches; well, maybe; no, it’s not too deep. But it’s possible; it may be better to help the wound close quickly and to avoid infection. I think you’re okay. Put an antibacterial cream on it to cover the opening tonight, and see in the morning.” Then Sam trotted back onto the mat, ready for another round.

I pressed a tissue against it and brought away more blood. A team member handed me a jar of vaseline to cover the wound until I could clean and treat it properly. I dipped a finger in the jar and slathered a healthy glob across the opening of the cut, covering each corner along with the deeper middle section. When the bleeding slowed, I showered, changed, and added more vaseline to protect the wound. Addis (my host during my stay) and I walked to the front of the club and called a taxi to bring us back to his place. When we arrived 30 minutes later, I lurched from the taxi’s rear seat into the glow of a streetlight and noticed several droplets of blood that had plopped and splattered onto my jacket. 

I cleaned the wound, covered it fully, and went to bed. When I awoke the following morning, I removed the bandages and inspected the opening.

“Addis, I think I need stitches,” I said.

“Let me see.” I tipped my head back and showed him the slice below my chin. “I… I think so. Maybe it’s a good idea. Let me send a picture to a friend who’s a doctor,” he said.

A few minutes later, his phone rang, and his friend confirmed I should have it checked out. “We’ll go to the Nordic Medical Center,” he said. “My friend said it’s the best in Addis Ababa.”

I sat in the back of the taxi and looked down at my bloodstained pants. Droplets from the night before must have trickled down my jacket and smeared into the dark green cotton of each leg. I was so busy cleaning the cut that I failed to notice how filthy these pants had become. Shame pulsed through me like an electrical current for leaving the house looking so messy.

It was a small injury, but with nearly two weeks left in Ethiopia plus a few weeks in Pakistan to follow, risking an infection was not an option. I’d be on mats filled with the potential for MRSA and had already recovered from one Staph infection contracted in Tunisia.

Ethiopia is a cash economy, and Addis was unsure of what the cost of stitches might be. He called his cousin Mikias to meet us on the road halfway to the hospital in order for me to exchange $100 USD on the black market. Using the market offers twice the value in birr (local currency) than one gets from any large bank. Around 10 minutes into the ride, Addis leaned over from the passenger’s seat, telling the driver to slow down. He looked out the window and yelled, “Mikias!” I looked up and saw him waiting by the curbside. We’d met a few days prior, and it was great to see his warm smile. He walked up to the taxi as we slowly rolled by and thrust a wad of 10,000 birr through the window into Addis’ hand. I smiled, gave Mikias a thumbs up, and stuck my head out to thank him as we sped back into traffic.

“We’ll give him the $100 USD later,” said Addis, as he handed me the stack of bills over his left shoulder. “Count it, just in case.”

The wad was arranged in 200-birr and 100-birr notes and felt as thick as a Belgian waffle. I tucked piles of 1,000 birr under my leg as I counted, but the splotches of blood on my pants looked like a Rorschach test and distracted me three times. How had I managed to miss these stains and leave the house looking this way?

The taxi weaved through the winding gauntlet of jaywalking pedestrians, wooden carts pushed by avocado and banana vendors, and battered minibuses billowing black and gray smoke. We moved through roundabouts without yielding, passing tin shacks and beggars, public gardens, and restaurants—a mashup of life in a modern city where ancient ethnicities work to co-exist. I smiled from the window as Afrobeats poured from the tape deck. A trip to the hospital was not ideal, but I’d take this over dysentery, a bad staph infection, or the thousand other maladies that may strike an itinerant grappler at any moment.

We walked into the hospital and I filled out the paperwork. Within five minutes, I was ushered to an intake area where my vitals were measured and my health history was taken. A nurse brought me into a room, where a German doctor entered and started picking at the wound.

“A few stitches ought to do it,” she said. “It’s better if we do them right after the injury, but we should be able to get two in there to close the cut and reduce the scarring.”

She inserted a needle, pushed the plunger with her thumb, and injected a local anesthetic. A moment later, I felt the pulling of the stitches as they slid through my skin. The needle pierced a section of flesh that was not quite numb and sent my cheek and eye twitching.

“It’s ok?” she asked.

“Yep, I’m good. Go for it,” I said.

She finished the stitches, bandaged the cut, and gave me directions to keep it clean. I strolled out, paid the cashier, and found Addis waiting in the lobby. We walked out in silence and noticed a few sheep wandering through the street in front of the hospital. I scanned the area, looking for their handler and followed them as they moved.

“It’s a beautiful day out. Want to walk for a bit?” he asked. 

“Definitely. Let’s check out the area. How do I look, man?” I asked, with a giant white bandage swaddling my chin.

“You look great!” he laughed.

“Souvenir from Ethiopia,” I said, pointing to the bandage. “As if I don’t already stick out enough.”

As we walked along the cobblestone street, I thought about the list of injuries I’d collected through the years. Shoulder dislocations and separations, a broken jaw, several concussions, a dislocated elbow, a broken ankle, damaged ligaments, broken fingers, chipped teeth, tendonitis, an unidentified virus from Vietnam that nearly killed me—you name it. And I thought about the metal hooks, screws, and anchors I’d have in my body for the rest of my life as a result of playing football, fighting, rock climbing, and jiu-jitsu. I don’t love the damage I’ve endured, but it’s my damage, and it’s now part of who I am. Scars are just another way to tell the stories of life’s unexpected collisions.

The peaceful streets soon funneled into a buzzing roadway. People hustled along sidewalks, below underpasses, and between vehicles. We stopped for a beer and tossed time to the side, losing ourselves in the conversational waters of politics, books, religion, and culture. We poked and prodded ideas for clarity, trading places between professor and student on topics that piqued our interest. Groups of people around us chatted and laughed with each other in their private worlds while we toiled for answers in ours. What a wonderful time it is to be alive and in this location, experiencing the rush of Ethiopian air. I was lucky to be here, and a few unexpected stitches would never derail my joy.