Malaria in Mozambique

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The joys of Africa

Yes it's been a while between drinks, but I'm finally in Botswana and have a semi reliable internet connection. Something I haven't really had much of since I left South Africa.

The overnight bus from Johannesburg to Maputo was fairly good, all things considered. We arrived at the Mozambique border around 3am and had to walk between check points while a million people were trying to exchange money at a bad rate, or sell us sim card's for about 33cents each, or steal foreign passports. I passed on these and got across the border without any hassles.
After a day in the capital, a bunch of us caught a bus to Tofo, on the coast. This was not such a comfortable bus ride but after 8 hours of dust and bumps and loud people we arrived at the beach. It's a pretty cool beach and I spent the week enjoying cheap beer and late nights, but swimming with whale sharks up to about 8 metres was definately something I won't forget, or watching 2 humpback whales jumping around for 20 minutes.

On the last night though, I was feeling a bit crappy, but I just put it down to being tired. I developed a snotty nose but spent the next few nights camping along the coast heading north and it seemed to get a bit better. I hitched a ride with some guys going north west, and arrived in Chimoio, a town near Zimbabwe, and on the way they talked their way out of a speeding fine. The next morning I woke up at 5:30am and made a dash to the toilet. I'll spare you too much detail but I was losing a lot of water out of both ends. I went to the doctor at 8am and after a couple blood tests he said that it was malaria. Just what I was hoping he wouldn't say. He prescribed me some pills which I'd started at 10am and had to continue every 8 hours for 3 days.
I spent the day between the toilet and the couch and having hot and cold flushes. Not fun.

That night however, I only threw up once, and it was before I took the meds so that was good. It did take 2 days from the start before I ate a proper meal again, and it took about 5 days after I stopped throwing up for me to get my strength back.

Maybe I should've been taking medication to help prevent it, but oh well. Now whenever I get really sick, it'll be "like that time in Mozambique when I got malaria..."

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