1. Malaria is the tropical equivalent of the flu (the illnesses are very different, but I mean the local people’s perception of each). Annoying, happens often, and it is relatively harmless if identified and treated with medicine.
2. Likewise, The Flu would probably kill as many people as malaria does if it was present in the tropical areas of the world: the problem isn’t so much the disease as it is the lack of prevention, identification, and treatment.
3. Day trips are slightly less fun when you feel like crap. Malaria makes you feel dizzy and weak, aside from an occasional fever and painful gums, I didn’t show any other symptoms. It was a weird adjustment being sick without the customary cough or runny nose.
4. Malarone is an adept beast. It is a preventative medicine that can be used in the treatment of malaria as well, just by changing the dosage.
5. The local herbal remedy for malaria is called Tizan (tease-ann). It is a tea made with the leaves of a certain plant. After much pressure from my family, I decided it take it on the 4th day of my sickness. Does it work? Maybe... it might have been the Malarone finally kicking in or the Tizan, but I got better soon after.
6. Tizan is the most bitter tasting thing in the world. Honestly. I got some pineapple and grapefruit juice in mine to counter it, but I tried some of Yannick’s (he was also sick later on), and he wasn’t as lucky.
7. I saw another government ad on TV: this time about how each family can pick up complimentary mosquito nets and how important they are for preventing malaria.
8. Middle class Beninois people are kind of resentful of the developed countries media portrayal of complete poverty in Benin (especially malaria and disease), as it glosses over their existence. It will be interesting to see how this impacts the culture as the middle class continues to grow.
9. Malaria (carried in your bloodstream), stays in your body for 6-7 days after the mosquito bite that carried it before showing any symptoms, so it’s not even possible to point to a mosquito bite and say, “This is where I got malaria”. I was looking forward to that.
10. The digestive problems turned out to be more of a pain than the malaria (they were unrelated). I didn’t really stop feeling those until a couple days ago whereas the malaria was gone by Monday.
And that’s all for this edition! I hope you were able to take a little bit away from this post, specifically how much the media has the power to warp our perception of things. I was mortified of getting malaria when I first got here because my only knowledge of it had been seeing headlines like “2 million die from malaria” in the news. Now, I know it is relatively harmless as long as you’ve got some medicine (the pharmacy has lots of medicine that has scientifically proven to work, and it’s actually cheaper than the stomach ache stuff I bought here just because of the high demand). Take care until next time!
raj I am glad you feel better. Malaria is quite the monster.