Stings, bites and resulting diseases

You would expect a group as large as ours to have had many bites, stings and resulting diseases on our trip to date.

Annoyingly, I’ve had many of them! At one campsite, bees were swarming around us, and when I emerged from my tent, one stung me right under my bum! I don’t think I’ve ever been stung by a bee before and luckily I found out I’m not allergic. But I feel sorry for poor Katie who I asked to pull out the stinger from my bum.

Now, mosquito bites I can somewhat handle. In moderation. Most of us have had a fair few here and there but they tend to go away after a couple of days. Then there are those that just seem to get bigger and bigger. Poor Jo got bitten on her thigh and the bite swelled up to about 7cm in diameter! I do have a photo but it has been censored for the purposes of this blog! There are also certain instances where the mosquitos have gone into overdrive. Jo and I slept on the truck one night without a mosquito net tent, thinking we’d be safe, covered in repellent and our sleeping sheets. But one mosquito managed to somehow persist and absolutely decimated our faces – won’t be doing that again! We had so many bites across our foreheads and down our cheeks it was quite awful to look at! It made me feel like a spotty teenager. Luckily it went down significantly the next day and was barely visible the following.

The damn mosquitos often get through all the Deet we spray on ourselves and even through our clothing – no matter how thick or thin. Lee seems to have way more than her fair share of mosquito bites – they love her blood. She even wears long sleeve tops and jeans in this sweltering heat and still gets bitten. She was also the source of (our first, potentially not last) malaria scare – she became very ill in Togo and had some malaria tests done in one clinic. They came back negative but when I took her to the doctor a few days later, they took her temperature and it was 39 which the nurse said was ‘way too high’. The doctor didn’t have enough time to do more tests as we were leaving the next day but he was convinced she had malaria and treated her for it. To date, we are not sure what she has/had but she seems to be much better now – the antibiotics would’ve certainly helped.

Then there are sand fly bites. They itch like absolute hell and look terrible. One night I feel asleep in a shared room we had instead of opting for the mozzie net tent. And my legs were absolutely ravaged by the bloody things. I too have a photo of this but it’s really not pleasant to look at. It took about a week for those bite marks to subside.

And then there are monkey bites. At one of our campsites in Lomé, there were 2 resident monkeys on chains and a baboon in a cage. The one that seemed the least disturbed about its captivity appeared to be quite friendly but we now believe, only towards men. 'Schweezy' was happily sitting on Shaun’s arm (Shaun seems to get along very well with monkeys!) when I thought I’d go up near them. The monkey motioned that it wanted to jump across to my arm so I extended it and he jumped on all right, but then sunk his teeth into my wrist and drew blood! Ouch! I managed to clean the wound thoroughly but then started to wonder if I had rabies, so I asked the owner who said that all of their animals have had their injections. I then thought I’d better go the clinic just to check I wasn’t going to start frothing at the mouth, and was assured I’d be fine as the animals had had their injections, although I should be concerned about tetanus. Luckily I’d had my tetanus shot so I was given a clean bill of health. It definitely wasn’t the brightest idea getting close to monkeys and I shall not be getting close to any more anytime soon…little buggers.

(This is a photo from Day 2 - should've thought to take a photo on Day 1 as it looked much more scary and you could see the outline of both his top and bottom teeth.)

And then there are tick bites. Our newest group member who joined in Ghana, Dan, came up to me the other day and told me he just found a tick under his stomach. I took him to the clinic as we wanted to ensure they removed the head, but I don’t think the nurse was that well-trained in tick removal as she tugged and tugged and parts of the tick remained stuck in his stomach. He managed to use tweezers to pull one bit out afterwards and then other bit apparently came out by itself. So far he seems ok which is fortunate as I was telling him that a few people on our volunteer assignment ended up with the debilitating tick bite fever and spent at least 3 days solid in bed recovering from it, my partner included. Then there’s the fun part where the skin around the bite suffers from necrosis – essentially the skin dies and leaves a bit of a hole. Lovely stuff. You don’t want to get tick bite fever.

Aside from insect bites and stings, there are also things that sting in the bush. Guber and Nev went off at one bush camp to cut down a dead tree for firewood and ended up running back to camp in serious pain from some stinging bush. They took antihistamines and cleaned themselves thoroughly and then covered their legs with sting cream. I’m not sure whether they were ‘buffalo beans’ but I know from some of our group in Madagascar, they itch like hell (again, my partner suffered from this too – poor thing!)

And then when you think you’re safe in your mosquito net tent, think again. In Cotonou, Benin, you also need to be wary about where you erect your tent. Palm trees lined the beach and were dotted around our campsite. The owner made us move two of our tents as we could’ve been knocked out by falling coconuts! Not something you really worry about on a daily basis, coming from a big city. But here, the risk is serious. Deaths resulting from falling coconuts have even been said to be more likely than being killed by a shark (although coconuts only kill 150 people each year so the numbers are very small).

At least if things go the wrong way for you, you can go out in style with any manner of personalised coffin in Ghana – some I saw were a: pink fish; bowling pin; pineapple; old skool camera; crab; petrol truck; and a beer bottle. It does make you think, if you could have a personalised coffin, what would you have?