Malarone Dreams

Monday, August 23

Early this morning some of the other field workers who had gone to Accra for the weekend and I headed back to Kpong. One of the girls who is returning had left early last week to head to the hospital in Accra because she had gotten malaria. She had taken the medicine over the weekend and is already back to work. On the way into the clinic this morning, one of the other girls mentioned that she thinks she has malaria also. Since I have been in Kpong, I have learned that Malaria is quite a bit more prevalent in Ghana than I had originally thought. The girls tell me that most people get malaria at least once per year and it is not uncommon to have it multiple times in one year. They said it is similar to when we get a cold, everyone gets them, but they only go to the hospital if it is really bad. The girls said that there are some symptoms common to everyone, but each person has certain symptoms that they recognize as a bout of malaria.

I am taking malaria medication everyday while I’m here as a preventative measure (along with the mosquito net, special mosquito repellant sleeping sheet, clothing treated with repellant, and actual skin repellant-take that mosquitoes!). It made me a bit sleepy for the first couple of days, but besides that the only noticeable side effect has been vivid, interesting dreams every night (assuming these are due to the drug and not just my new surroundings). These dreams not only seem very real while I’m in them, including sights, sounds and even tastes, but I can remember the details when I wake up. For the most part it has been fun to see what I come up with every night, but one night it was a really scary, evil dream that was every bit as vivid as the nice dreams. I ended up awake at 3am, grabbing my bible and reading the first thing I turned to until I could fall back asleep-not pleasant!