Malaria strikes again!

Just a week before we left the village recently, I got sick with malaria. I wanted to go and cut open coconuts on the day that I came down with it, so I was naughty and tried to hide the fact that I wasn’t well, but it seems that most of my village family could tell and knew before I said anything!

I started treatment on the first day, but it was a really strong bout of malaria this time, and I continued to feel ill on and off for about a week, although not as bad as the first day.

This is me lying on my makeshift bed in our eating house on the third day. I woke up feeling quite bad – weak and dry-retching, but I was feeling a bit better by the time this photo was taken.

Back on the first day of the malaria, I was really ill. Previously when I’ve had malaria, it’s gradually gotten worse, but this time it started really strong. I was weak, although I was also thrashing about a lot, and at night I vomited twice. I had a high temperature during the day and my village family put cool wet towels on me to cool me down. They were very concerned about me, and it was nice to see their care, although I’m sorry to have caused them that stress too!

Even a week later, I was still having moments of weakness and dry-retching when I didn’t feel too good. The last day of feeling ill was the Thursday, and I travelled to Australia on the Friday and didn’t have any of the ill feeling that day, so that was good. I’ve been fine since then, so I’m all better now.