Day 54 in Tanzania: My First Battle with Plasmodium falciparum (AKA Malaria)

It was a bright and sunny morning and I woke up feeling hot, very very hot –and not at all in a sexy way.  My skin was scorching and I couldn’t tell if it was because of the high temperature outside, or if it was my body emitting heat.  The past few nights I felt myself coming down with something and popped a bunch of vitamins, herbs and other concoctions of Chinese medicines my grandma, who swears by it, supplied me with, hoping it would go away but whatever it was had finally caught up to me.  

My body ached and head was throbbing.  I could hear my quickened pulse echoing in my skull.  It felt like my skeleton would snap from the weight of my skin.  It hurt to move, took a lot of effort to breath and I couldn’t get myself out of bed. I felt like I had been run-down by a truck. 

Baraka and I had a field assignment out of town.  When he came to pick me up I was still in bed.  The maid let him into the house and he made his way upstairs to see what was holding me up.  I was barely conscious of his presence. 

I remember a lot of chatter between him and the maid, and the annoying ringtone of his cell phone going off that made my head hurt and I remember thinking what the hell, shut up and let me get some rest! …apparently I wasn’t just thinking this and actually said this out loud, Baraka told me later. 

Before I knew it I was being lifted from my bed, undressed from my nightwear, into clothes they had randomly pulled from my closet.  I was too weak to put up a fuss and completely submitted myself to them.  They hauled me into the project van and took me to Aga Khan Hospital downtown. 

I drifted in and out of consciousness throughout our wait, and don’t even remember the encounter with the doctor.  They even pricked my finger and I didn’t flinch.  The only part I remember is Baraka waking me up to leave. 

“Hannah, listen to me” he said,  “You have Malaria.”

I jolted to consciousness at the sound of Malaria.

“What??!!!!”

He showed me the paper with my lab results showing positive for Malarial parasites. 

I lost it and began wailing hysterically, that people around me began asking “Ukimwi? Ukimwi? Is it Ukimwi?”

(Ukimwi means AIDS in Swahili)

Oh geez… Nice one, Hannah! I thought.

I had contracted Malaria, but there were a low number of parasites in my blood that it was minor and treatable with Coartem. 

Baraka managed to calm me down and told me, “It’s no big deal, I get it at least once every couple years”. 

To people here, it’s like a common cold and treatable as long as testing is timely and meds are taken promptly.  Their bodies can handle it so long as they get treatment, but to weakling foreigners from the west who’ve never been exposed to anything as exotic as Malaria, our bodies don’t take it as well and it really runs you down. 

“You think you feel sick now, wait until you take your medicine” he warned me as he handed me my meds.

Coartem, is the broad spectrum drug you take to wipe you clean of vector parasites including Malaria but really does a number on your body.  It completely runs you down, and probably eats up a good chunk of your liver.

No words can even begin to describe the ungodly feeling of discomfort and pain I was afflicted with that week.  It cost me very agonizing painful nights of hell.  Think of the worse fever/flu you’ve ever suffered and multiply that by a million.  I was naïve to think that my immune system was invincible.  This was only the first bout and little did I know I would experience much worse later in the year.  Over the year I would pick up a few more malarial incidences including a very scary respiratory infection I picked up in the field.  My poor liver would process a total of nearly 35 weeks worth of medications over 18 months.  I imagine my life span has probably been cut in half. 

Hoyce, the girl I was living with, had been travelling out of town for the past few weeks and still not back yet, so I had been staying at the house alone.  Baraka didn’t want to leave me by myself and spent the night.  There is no other furniture in our house other than the beds in our bedrooms.  There was no couch for him to sleep on and he didn’t want to sleep in Hoyce’s bed, so the poor guy slept in a chair beside my bed and watched me thrash in my sleep as my body processed the Coartem. 

I was out of commission for nearly 2 weeks and hated myself for the work that was lost.  For the rest of the week I stayed in bed and drifted in and out of consciousness, while occasionally wailing from the agonizing pain and nausea.  It became routine that Baraka would come early in the morning to force feed me the porridge he instructed the maid to prepare for me.  I would fight him off and curse at him as he forced it down my throat.  When he was satisfied that I had eaten enough, he would then go off to work and take on both our work loads. 

On Canada Day, I had gotten notice that there was a party at the embassy and I wanted to go.  My fever finally broke and I wanted to drag myself out of bed to attend but Baraka wouldn’t let me past the door.  I activated the waterworks but he wouldn’t take that nonsense.  I was crushed I had to miss it.  I silently wished Canada a happy birthday and at that moment wished I was there instead of here.

By the end of the second week I was slowly recovering and took my first steps on my own.  My co-workers even dropped by for a visit and wished me well.  They all piled in the project van and drove to my place together.  I received many Pole sana’s which is an expression of sympathy in Swahili.

Baraka was my rock and I don’t know how I would have gotten through this without him.  I can be pretty stubborn when I’m sick and I imagine I must’ve been pretty cranky too, so why he stuck around, I don’t know, but will forever be grateful.  He would stay with me the rest of the day and wouldn’t leave until I had fallen asleep.  Although there were some nights I don’t think he left at all and slept in the chair by my bed and still went to work in the morning. 

Baraka means blessing in Swahili.  To express my appreciation I told him I’ll name my first-born child after him.  I think he will hold me to it.