The Lure of Dirt and Disease

I was exchanging emails with a friend on malaria prophylaxis and its ugly side effects, when she finished off the conversation saying that all this talk of loosing one's mind on Lariam, puking one's guts out in general, loosing all power of birth control pills on doxycycline and getting various girly infections due to being on antibiotics for a long time really got her jealous and itchy footed to go somewhere. Strangely I know what she means. When friends of ours shipped off to do the Peace Corps in Peru a few years ago when I had just returned from a longer stay in South America, thus still clued in to all the different amoebas awaiting one there, I was actually jealous too of the bottles and tubes of things they had lined up on their table. Arguably it is the point and the merit of living in the western world is that one does not have to worry about drinking the tab water and eat antibiotics every day in order to keep a minimum level of health. However, there is something exciting about travel that does necessitate all these precautions. Maybe that is the difference between travel and a vacation. The latter is striving for comfort, maybe some adventure, maybe some relaxation, but the former is all about the inconveniences of leaving the sanitized mother ship. A good vacation is one where shit works out, an interesting trip is something where shit does not work out and from shit not working out one is confronted with something that is also not covered by Lonely Planet or The Rough Guide and it is then when things get interesting. Maybe that is the nostalgia about malaria prophylaxis. Also, lets be clear here: in theory it's adventurous to pull some nasty worm out of your leg while taking a swig of your whisky bottle while outside a small African nation is staging its third revolt against everyone foreign especially whitie you, but in practice of course it's a lot nicer to eat your malaria pills and just miss (by a hair so it's a good story) true disaster and disease. Knock on wood. On a side note: Lariam makes for amazing dreams. I recall Wednesday night, malaria pill night on a previous trip being my favorite night ever, every week a new treat. Some people do freak out though like on a bad acid trip, so be aware. The problem beyond that is that in SE Asia most malaria strands are already resistant, so the other option are those antibiotics. And on more of a side note: the nurse who prescribed them to me quickly clicked close on the little window that popped up when she put the prescription in the computer. I made her go back because I thought I saw the world "pregnant" floating in there somewhere...and yep, as I already mentioned doxycycline makes the pill useless. Well now, isn't that nice to know. The competence of a medical professional is never to be underestimated. Instead of worrying about whether Thai curry is nicer than Indian curry, we'd be worrying about whether it will be Little Jonny or Little Jane. Phew. Saved by the bell.