Malaria

Melissa and I were both poorly the night before Christmas Eve: hot and cold, with headaches, body aches, and shivering on getting into bed. Both a bit better by morning, but Bugs, Bites and Bowels tells us to treat all fevers as potential malaria (and we knew we'd each been bitten a couple of times on our trip to the coast), so we headed off to Kisumu to find a blood test.

Medical Diagnostic Services is one of several offices in teh centre of Kisumu where they'll check your blood for malaria parasites while you wait for KSh 100 (one Euro). We'd brought our own sterile needles in case of need, but the old technician guy used single-use metal spikes, fresh from the sealed packet, to make a small but painful hole in each of our left middle fingers. Then we waited for 40 minutes in the waiting area, empty but for us, the bored and unfriendly receptionist, and lots of adverts for anti-malarials, voluntary AIDS tests, slimming pills and the like.

Results are brought through, and the receptionist spends five minutes typing them onto results slips, without saying a word to us - come on, have we got malaria or what? No malaria, somewhat disappointingly by now! Melissa has slight and I have moderate neutrophilia though - so we're infected (I guess with something flu-like) even if not infested. Three days later, though, Naomy takes a test, and she is infested: which doesn't stop her driving all over Western Kenya for the following couple of days, fulfilling social obligations and shopping for Anne's return to school in January ...

- Mark