Tricks are for kids

Take it from me, malaria is not fun. Oh sure, it may sound great, “You get a fever and chills and aches and pains everywhere!!” but trust me, its not all its cracked up to be. Those aches and pains are really a pain. And the chills? Be careful what you wish for: even when its 95+ degrees outside and you have been praying for the day you get to wear a sweater again, chills are not the reason you want to don that sweater.

Unfortunately, malaria parasites have no manners at all. They feel it is perfectly acceptable to attack at any time, including a lovely Halloween party at the Peace Corps house. Halloween isn’t celebrated in Zambia, but lucky for us my fellow Americans in the Peace Corps seem to share my affinity for childish holidays and dressing up and making the ever so difficult decision between trick or treat. They hosted a Halloween party at their provincial house in Solwezi and invited Jeremy and me along for the festivities. I spent the entire week making wings out of the tall reeds that grow behind our house, and I made a Tinker Bell dress out of a green mosquito net (did I mention there’s not much to pass the time when you live out here?). I got to wear my costume for all of an hour at the party before the fever and chills and the aching like crazy started and the realization hit that the parasites had decided trick not treat this year. I went to bed early and had one of the worst nights of my life. Next morning I got tested and low and behold the dreaded malaria parasite.

Of course, if you MUST get malaria, Zambia is a pretty good place to get it. They don’t have an abundance of the nasty “drug-resistant-hide-in-your-liver-and-kill-you-three-days-later” version of the parasite common in some other parts of Africa, and they’re so used to seeing malaria that they know exactly how to diagnose it and exactly how to treat it. A little finger prick here, a blood slide there, and boom, they know what you’ve got beyond a shadow of a doubt. Then its just a matter of a series of pills and some pain killers to get you through the first couple of days, and before you know it you feel like new. I was amazed that in less than a week I went from feeling like I wanted to die to feeling like the world was made of roses. Very effective drugs. And luckily, we caught it early before it moved on to complicated malaria.

Just as I was starting to feel better, Jeremy started to feel worse. We were afraid it might be malaria for him as well, but we took him to the clinic in Meheba and the malaria test came back negative. Honestly, that was more disconcerting than if he had malaria. At least a positive malaria test would mean an easy treatment and speedy recovery. This illness was unknown, and thus untreatable by anyone in Meheba. After a few days of him being unable to eat I loaded him up into the car and took off for Solwezi to find a doctor who could diagnose him. One of the clinics in Solwezi, the very one that had treated my malaria, has this great Nigerian doctor who is extremely friendly and very knowledgeable. After spending some time with Jeremy he diagnosed a stomach problem due to diet...apparently too much spicy food, coffee and other acidic foods have deprived Jeremy of a stomach lining. I think we have those stomach linings for a reason, and when you don’t have one anymore, its a problem. SO, now he’s not allowed to ingest any of those tasty things and is on a series of other pills and injections. I’m pretty happy with my malaria diagnosis at this point. At least I can still have coffee...that is, if we could find it. We have a beautiful French press but I would dare anyone to try and find anything other than instant coffee in Solwezi or Meheba. Shoprite used to carry it but has stopped for some godawful reason. Its a travesty. Almost as bad as having no stomach lining. Sort of.

So the moral of the story is: well I don’t really know. I’m sure with that much pain there must be a lesson in there somewhere, but I’m just a little fuzzy without my morning coffee.