travel

I’m on the bus from Kigali, Rwanda, to Kampala, Uganda.

The trip takes between 9 to 19 hours, depending on the bus company and road conditions, curling around terraced hills, banana trees and fields of feathery papyrus.

“Careless Whisper” is playing on the radio. It crackles every time George Michael hits a high note.

A man across the aisle has his shoes off, legs extended. His socks are long and have individual toes, striped with various shades of purple.

I’ve been in that hazy place somewhere between sleep and consciousness. I smile at my new friend, Santo, sitting in the seat beside me. He helped me navigate through border offices and made sure I wasn’t cheated at a currency exchange bureau. We’ve been taking turns watching each others luggage during bathroom stops.

As we’ve rolled through the countryside, Santo has pointed out things I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise: Fish drying on the hood of a car, drums made from stretched cow hide, metallic grasshopper traps used to collect the insects for food, the dirt road that leads to his father’s village.

“How long –” I begin.

He answers my question before I even get a chance to ask it.

“Eighty kilometers.”

Mudflaps thwack against the truck in front of us. They say, “Different colors. One people. One love.”

Travel is hard.

And nothing drives that point home more than a case of parasites.

NOTE: If you are at all squeamish, you should probably stop reading now. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

First problem: Red spots peppering my belly. As much as I like polka dots, these little buggers were starting to worry me. See, I’ve never had chicken pox, and they look kinda chicken poxy. Plus a guy who recently stayed at my hostel had shingles, and well … it all makes sense. I’m going to die.

Problem 2: Yucky, unsettled stomach. Enough said.

Were the two problems somehow related? There was only one way to find out — a trip to King Faisel Hospital in Kigali!

I checked into the ER.

“We’re busy. Come back later,” a guy said.

Um, really? This is a hospital. But the request caught me off guard, so I obeyed. An hour later I returned.

When I asked to see a doctor, there was a lot of whispering, some muttering in Kinyarwanda, then a couple phone calls.

“We’re trying to find a doctor who will see you,” one of the clerks told me.

Again, this caught me off guard. Are you not hospital? Do you not see patients?

Eventually, they led me to a room and I waited. When the door opened, a female American doctor was ready to see me. I explained my problems, and she examined my skin.

As soon as I said I recently went rafting the Nile, the stomach problems were easy to explain. The doctor said I have schistosomiasis, a very complicated word that basically means I have organ-eating parasites. Left untreated, it could be devastating to my health, but with the proper medication, it is quick and easy to flush out of my system. Excellent.

Next up — polka dots.

The doctor said these are bites from a fly that lays eggs in laundry. When a piece of clothing is air drying, the fly burrows into the most moist part of the clothing, usually the waist band. Then the eggs hatch and the insects start burrowing into human skin where they lay more eggs. Eventually they die, and they don’t cause any major health issues.

“I know it sounds gross in theory …” the doctor started to say.

I interrupted, “No. It’s just gross.”

“Yeah. Pretty gross,” she agreed. “But also pretty common in East Africa.”

To prevent this kind of nastiness in the future, she said I should iron all my clothes, especially the waistbands, which will kill the eggs before they hatch.

The good news: I was now armed with a prescription for anti-itch cream and some pills to kill my parasites.

The bad news: Even when you have a prescription, the pharmacy doesn’t necessarily have what you need.

Twelve pharmacies later, I am still on the hunt for my medication. Keep your fingers crossed, because I’m getting tired of hosting this parasite party.