Reid sent this optimistic press release on a
promising new one- dose treatment for malaria, which brought back vivid memories of my brush with an almost- lethal case of Zimbabwe falciparum in the nineties.
The writer remembers: "I have personally had malaria... and can say that it is a deeply painful and depleting experience that leaves you in ruins, unable to care for your family, and in a very poor health if you survive." The first is indisputable, and the last possible-- I eventually recovered (it took all summer) but who knows what cascades of trouble it might have unleashed down the line? Certainly I never was in as perfect health after as I was before-- but I did also get old!
The article reminded me of this spooky uninhabited elephant hunter's camp near Hwange, although I didn't get my malaria there...
And this birder's paradise in the hot lowlands on the muddy shores of Kariba, where elephants would charge the Rover between sightings of life list species. There, I did get it... though I didn't know until I got back to New Mexico, where I almost died before anyone accepted that I knew what I was talking about, and that I did not "just" have some generic thing called "malaria" but a particular species,
Plasmodium falciparum.
Lots more to say about the experience, and the enormous and endlessly fascinating subject of parasite evolution, if anyone is interested...
