I would say that when it came to being safe, Christi and I were very careful to make sure stayed healthy. We didn’t eat the meat, we didn’t drink the water, we slept under mosquito nets, soaked our clothes in permethrin (a bug repellant), and applied mosquito repellant twice a day. But all that didn’t seemed to matter when I had stomach pains 5 days before coming home. I thought it was from Bridgette’s heavy stew and bankum (which was delicious by the way but you never know how that stuff is going to sit!) but what I thought was just nausea turned out to be the first symptoms of what would later be diagnosed as malaria. And then ensued a night of madness. I don’t know that I slept at all that night, all I can recall are crazy dreams of tons of bodies swimming in my bed and having diharrea about every hour and feeling extremely hot and sweaty. The next morning, I woke up in a state of delirium, which was scary because you never know how much hotter you have to get before you start having brain seizures, but luckily my fever broke a few hours later so I didn’t have to worry about that. Christi and the librarians took me to a clinic in Bolga called AfriKids where I was immediately seen by a doctor. It wasn’t even a minute into telling him my symptoms that he had me tested for malaria, which consisted of a finger prick to get a blood sample (I was really nervous about getting AIDS and due to my state of delirium was quite blunt about letting the doctors and nurses know that, but thankfully they reassured me that they used a brand new needle every time). My results came back as being positive for malaria, or 1+ as they graded it, which wasn’t really a high number considering that people can have up to 25+. Mr. Rex joked that if an African gets 1+ they don’t even feel sick, which seemed unbelieveable to me as I laid in bed unable to move from the stomach pains and feeling like I had the worst flu of my life. After the clinic, I came home to the guesthouse and rested for the day, tried to eat but couldn’t keep down anything, and then somehow managed to sleep through the night.
The next day, I went to a hospital because I was still feeling pretty lousy and was put on an IV with water and medication for 24 hours. And that was kind of a scary experience too, because despite the fact that they used clean needles, there was dried blood on the wall, so I gave my delirious “I don’t want to get AIDS” plea and they reassured me that everything would be ok, and truth be told it was fine because it takes quite a bit of blood to get infected with AIDS through an IV and everything was packaged in sterile bags. I tried to eat again at the hospital, but instead of bringing me something light like I’m used to eating when I’m sick., Darius brought me bankum and a spicy soup which is probably one of the heaviest and most irritating things you can eat when you are sick. They treat illness very differently in Africa. I guess their stomachs and bodies are stronger in Africa, because I definitely couldn’t take the bankum and through it up about five minutes after eating it.
After the hospital, I was feeling a lot better though, so I came home and rested for the day and Christi and I went into town later that night and went to a restaurant that served chicken noodle soup which was wonderful and easy for me to keep down. (For future volunteers, the restaurant was called the Swap I believe, it’s a little pricey but if you’re missing American food it’s definitely the place to go-they have everything! And the best pizza). The next morning, Christi and I left for the U.S., so we said our goodbyes, took a taxi to Tamale, flew to Accra, and then began our series of flights back to Los Angeles. And by the time I arrived home five days later, I had pretty much been cured of my malaria.
Malaria is a part of every day reality in Ghana and in Africa in general, and this was evident from the way the doctors were so quick to diagnose me to the casual sort of attitude that people had when they found out I had malaria. Of course they were sorry to here of my condition and recognized the fact that I was sick, but I wasn’t treated in a way that I was some terminally ill patient, it was just like when you see a kid who has the flu. So I don’t think I really appreciated the impact of having malaria until I came home and saw how worried my mother, a doctor, was. Anyone who has a parent for a doctor knows that doctors treat pretty much anything their kids have with Advil. There seriously isn’t a sickness or injury I’ve had that has worried my parents, so having the flu or spraining my ankle in soccer was never a big deal. But when I came home to my parents still pasty and weak from the malaria, for the first time I could sense that they were genuinely scared for my health and just so relieved that I was home. I tried to tell my mom that it wasn’t a big deal, that I was fine and that a lot of people get malaria and are fine, but I began to appreciate why my mother was so afraid when she told me flat out: “Anne, if you hadn’t gotten to that hospital and gotten medicine, you seriously could have died.” My mother is never one to over exaggerate, not even with her patients at work let alone with her own kids, so she really meant what she said. Thankfully, I did get the medical attention I needed and thankfully if treatment is available then malaria isn’t a huge problem.
I still don’t think I was going to die, granted it was the sickest I have ever been, but I had the care and support of so many friends and villagers, some whom I didn’t even know, looking out for me and checking up on me to make sure I was ok. So the sickness wasn’t all bad news; it really made me appreciate how caring the Ghanaian people are. And my nurse Christi who sacrificed the last few days of her trip to watch after me all the time. Thanks Christi (: Even Baba, the 80 year old landlord of the house we stayed at who worked tirelessly at all times of the day came to visit me at the hospital, and when I was back at the library guest house kids would come and just lay next to me for hours not even saying anything. That was a special experience. And having malaria also gave me a perspective on what its like for the 650 million odd people that experience malaria (most of them in Africa, and many not as fortunate to receive treatment and so end up dieing). But I definitely would have traded in the five days in Africa lying in my bed, going to the bathroom every hour, feeling nauseas, delusional, feverish, and weak with five healthy days soaking up our last experiences in Ghana and saying goodbye to the people we had become so close to.
For future volunteers, I would definitely take this disease seriously and take as many precautions as you can. I only had about four bites and still I got malaria but it really only takes one bite to get infected. And they bit me right around the time when the repellant was wearing off and when I usually reapply. So you really can’t be too careful in trying to prevent bites. I recently heard of one girl who went to Uganda and applied a lotion repellant all over her body after every shower and then applied a spray repellant to the exposed areas and she said she didn’t get a single bite, so that might be a good way to go.
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