Malaria

If there is one threat in this specific season, it is malaria. Because of a lack of financial means, the precautions to protect oneself against this deadly disease here are minimal. And in fact, according to the locals it is almost an unachievable task to try so; there seems to be no way to escape malaria! This local believe unfortunately seems to be true. Despite all our efforts with anti-mosquito sprays, mosquito nets and wearing long sleeves and trousers, Frank received a nice malaria present from one of his mosquito ‘friends’. Since it was a (holy) Friday that Frank started to feel unwell, there was actually nowhere we could go to. One friend of a friend is a doctor and she was willing to help us on her free day and guide us to the local clinic here in Kosti. While we were waiting for the results from the semi open-air lab, a small mouse and an army of frogs were there to entertain us in the waiting room with broken chairs. We wondered what these animals were doing in this human hospital, but we took it for granted. After we got the results, we bought the medicines from the local pharmacy and gave the doctor a lift back to her house. The following days, Frank’s colleagues were obviously sad to hear about his malaria, but they assured him that it is ‘very normal’ to get malaria here: “Sometimes I get it five or seven times during the rainy season, if I am lucky!” So far, the local medicines seem to have a very positive effect and together with all the local advices (-“eat a lot of chocolate!”) it seems to go a lot better now. One malaria down, and hopefully not many more to come..