Blogs from Zanzibar City, Zanzibar, Tanzania, Africa - page 22

I had a disturbed night, with an early morning due to bowel pain, and visits to the toilet. Solid faeces was produced though, but with some little bits of still recognisable food. I got back to sleep afterwards. Again I did not feel very well when I woke up, feeling weak, tired and achy. I went for another Malaria blood test, this time at the Malaria Prevention Centre, they could do the thin film malaria blood slide there, which is supposed to be more sensitive. Again the result was negative. I have arranged for a visit to the Doctor tomorrow. It may be linked to dehydration, so I am drinking two or three litres ORS per day now. The dehydration would be caused not by not drinking enough water, but the levels of salts - sodium ... read more

Slept much better, changing the time when I take the Malarone has helped. Saturday is my day off, and after working fairly hard this week, I enjoyed the rest. In the morning I went into Stone Town, with Jenny, one of the Bishop's daughters. I brought another packet of Malarone, 12 pills for 72000 shillings - GBP36. Hopefully I will get supplies sent from Britain before too long. I also brought another 10 packets of ORS, I seem to use at least 1 packet per day. I will try to add more salt to my food to see if I can reduce the amount that I need. I also managed to buy some blue tack (actually green), hard to get, as no-one really understood what it was until I came accross the shop where I brought ... read more

The Malarone is still making it harder to sleep, I don't seem to wake up during the middle of the night now though, just find it harder to actually get to sleep. I got the stool test result back, negative for any pathogen, just unformed. I spent the morning finished off fixing the development department computer, it is now much improved. In the process I found more than 1200 suspicious objects (read viruses, trojan horses etc) on the hard disk, as well as this I removed many junk programs. I think some computer use training sessions are in order. Over lunch I went to find a copy of the Guardian, as I wanted to know about the new Tanzanian Cabinet. Sadly I was not able to find a copy of the Guardian, or any of the ... read more

Once again, I did not sleep all the way through the night. When I woke up in the morning, I have diarrhoea, of the type where it floats and there is froth. I will visit the Doctor again on Friday. As a result of my diarrhoea, I went into Town late in the morning. The water shortage (bottled water) had evidently not affected there, and I was able to buy plenty of water. As I had run out of shillings again, I needed to get some more money, I was going to change some of the remaining travellers cheques. For this you (usually) need your passport, although I managed without once when I forgot this, and the cashier was incompetant (this was the same time I got given 110 000 shillings too much). I couldn't find ... read more

Again I did not sleep that well, waking up in the middle of the night, needing to go to the toilet and then drink. I am wondering if the Malarone might be causing this as insomnia is a possible side effect. I will try to go to bed in future well hydrated, but not so well hydrated I will wake up. I still got 8 hours sleep but felt tired in the morning. The change of prolactic seems to be working as my stools have improved. Due to my waking up in the night, I did not get going early enough to make the 9am service. Which I think was the only service that day, so I did not go to church. On the whole the day was very quiet, although I made another trip to ... read more