Mosquitos, malaria and muzungus.

It was a question of mosquitoes last night. Well, one actually. I am sure it is the same one.   My little friend came buzzing out of the corner where I sit to read in the early evening. He (or she) had done the same thing the day before.

ABOVE: Our lounge room. Mosquito corner is on the far right , behind the lamp.

I reached for the spray, which I generally avoid using because of the chemical cocktail it confers, but thought I should try because Greg seemed to be developing mosquito phobia.

I had tried it the night before with the same effect and he had complained about the companion buzzing! I told him the mozzie was either very good at hiding or it was completely resistant to the spray. He wasn't convinced.

I might add, the house has come equipped with mosquito repellent attachements which plug into power points. There was one right by my side. Clearly utterly ineffective despite the ominous name of Doom!

Doors closed, room sprayed, me nearly suffocating from the ghastly stuff so I stepped outside ... where probably there were more mosquitoes.... until the deed had been done.

Back to my spot on the couch. Back to my book on German missionary settlement in Nayasaland in the late 18^th and early 19^th century.  A glass of wine at my side with a bowl of the deliciously aromatic roasted Malawi peanuts.

Bzzzzzzzz! Out came my little friend. I could almost see his or her beady eyes and the broad grin saying: ‘Sucks, boo to your spray. Sucks, boo to your Doom! Sigh, the Mozzie had won. We have a House Mozzie and I have put in a request that s/he remains sole resident.

But then they usually do win. When we lived in the mining compound, Gamek, in Luanda the fogging trucks would come around about five every evening, belching clouds of poisonous (to mosquitoes) gas into the streets and where windows were open, into the homes.

To me it was chemical central but the local kids thought it was huge fun to play in the great plumes of fog spewed out by the truck. You would think they would be felled by choking coughs but the only thing which had them doubled up was laughter!

When the fog cleared and I returned to the now ‘purified’ verandah the mosquitoes would begin dribbling out from under tables, chairs, leaves and gutters with the same nonchalant air of: ‘Sucks, boo to your poisonous gas.’

If living in the Third World does anything it makes one more pragmatic; less paranoid (and I certainly had a long way to go) and more conscious of the incredible resilience of the human condition. We seem to have forgotten about that resilience in the developed world; bombarded as we are with dire warnings about danger to health and the message that body is enemy not friend!

I do believe that diet is important in terms of health. Luckily I like to cook and the kitchen here at the house is great. Well,  it is when the power is on and the stove is a bit basic but there is heaps of counter space and cupboards for Africa! More importantly, the local produce, particularly the fruit, seems to be of very high quality.

ABOVE: The kitchen at the house is a great place to cook. Well, when the power is on it is.

Ironically, those in the less developed world, who really do face the dangers of war, crime and disease seem to live with less fear than the relatively safe citizens of the West. Maybe we have too much spare time to worry about things or maybe there are too many vested interests intent upon stoking our fears in order to stoke their profits.

As with so many things, it does not take long to develop some resistance. Humans develop some resistance to malaria when exposed to it and mosquitoes develop resistance to chemicals and drugs. So much so that many of the old anti-malarial drugs simply do not work because the mozzies are now resistant. As no doubt, in time they will be to the new ones.

This muzungu surrendered! Muzungu, pronounced Mmm-zoo-ngooo, means ‘person of European descent,’ or ‘white person’ in Swahili.  The etymology  of the word is ‘aimless wanderer’ which certainly fits me and may well have seemed profoundly apt for the earliest explorers and settlers of Africa. Except of course, while the locals may have thought the wandering was ‘aimless’ it most definitely was not.

So, mosquito, ONE and muzungu, NIL.  It was a reminder not to get paranoid. It’s like living in a war zone where the ‘stories’ are often worse than the reality because people like to ‘parade’ their courage or to talk up the fear to make themselves feel braver than they are.

The real ‘M’ word in Malawi is not Madonna, but malaria, just as it is in most of Africa. It’s a common topic of conversation – mainly revolving around who has had it, who has not and what to do about it.  Someone once said the easiest way to control malaria in Africa is to give everyone a mosquito net. But that would be too easy in a drug-driven world.

There’s a bit of paranoia about malaria, understandably because it is a nasty disease but getting hysterical about every last mosquito is going to make life miserable. Precautions are sensible but it is important to remember that not all mosquitoes carry the disease; not all bites from a mosquito which does will give you the disease and often there is not a lot you can do about it.

ABOVE: Our bedroom complete with mosquito net. It's pretty swish as mosquito nets go.

When we first went to Luanda to ‘have a look at the place’ before deciding to take the job we followed rigorous guidelines to prevent being bitten by mosquitoes. It certainly worked. Until we got to the airport, that is,  where the mozzies had the last laugh. After a week in Luanda without a bite I became ‘morning tea’ for a horde of mozzies who had taken up residence in the airport lounge. So much for good intentions and the best laid plans.

As with all things the key is common sense. In truth, as I discovered, malaria is uncommon in Lilongwe and in Blantyre for that matter. In addition, having lived in India for four years and Angola for four years, the latter, one of the worst malarial zones in the world, there’s a good chance we have developed some immunity.

We did wonder if our immunity in Angola had been enhanced by the 12 months that we lived at the Oberoi Hotel in Bombay. It was our ‘home’ when we first moved to India in 1988. There was a certain irony to the fact that me, being the ‘organic and chemical-free queen’ should find herself living in a hotel where, every month, without fail, there would be a malodorous smell coming from the wall vents for an entire day. Subsequent enquiries revealed that once a month, on a particular day, the air vents in the hotel (connected to the air conditioning system) would be pumped full of DDT! 

We used to joke we had absorbed so much DDT we could hire ourselves out at barbecues as mosquito repellents. There may be some truth in that!

We did not take drugs in either India or Angola because the advice was that the long-term effect on the body was more dangerous than the drugs. These days, so they say, the drugs are more sophisticated and long-term effects are minor. However, having done a quick trawl of the ‘net’ there are two sides to that argument. What to do?

The other reason not to take the drugs was the advice that often they ‘masked’ the first signs of malaria and quick action is crucial with this disease... particularly the cerebral form. The latest ‘advice’ is that this is not the case although some of the new anti-malarial drugs are so new that one wonders if they really know.

The South Africans take the pragmatic view that malaria, while nasty, is just a disease and one which can be cured relatively easily ... which it can, particularly if you act quickly in the first place. The argument is that if you do take anti-malarial drugs and get malaria, which of course you still can because the drugs do not protect you from the disease, they merely lessen the chances of getting it, you will need massively higher doses of the same drug, with all that entails,  to rid yourself of the disease.... and the process will take longer.

The general common sense advice is to not sit outside in early morning or the evening; wear clothes which cover as much skin as possible and use insect repellents. I did this both in India and Africa although omitted the insect repellent unless it was organic. And someone once told me that Vegemite deters mosquitoes. Needless to say we have Vegemite on hand and it's a part of the daily diet.

ABOVE: Our dining room. Vegemite is on the table every day although in this case it is bougainvillea which might also be a mosquito deterrent.

From what I saw in Angola, where malaria was common, but where neither Greg nor I succumbed, was that those expats who got malaria generally shared some common characteristics; either all or some. They were outside in early morning and evening, either drinking or exercising; they drank a lot; they smoked a lot; they did not have a nourishing diet or they were lonely and/or unhappy.

Greg did come down with malaria, some three years after we left Angola, when he was working in the Congo in challenging circumstances and was definitely unhappy and alone... I could not go with him on that one... and while he neither smoked nor drank much, nor sat outside or exercised at dawn or dusk for that matter ... his nutrition level may have been compromised.

We were living in Johannesburg at the time and at the first sign of a headache it was off to the clinic. The test showed negative. Two days later, feeling worse and shaking like a jelly we went back to the clinic. This time the doctor said even if the test was negative, which it can be, he would start him on malaria treatment. The final diagnosis was yes to malaria and yes to the one that kills more often than not. The good news about the ‘worst’ malaria is that it is not recurring. That is if you live.

As with all disease, the better our immune system functions then the more protected we are. Our emotional state can lift or suppress our immune function. As can the level of nutrition in our diet and the level of toxins.

Despite all the musings, at the end of the day, the impetus behind making a decision about ‘what to do’ was discovering that Lilongwe is an area where malaria is rare.  It seems the canny Scots established both Blantyre and Lilongwe, because they knew that they were ‘non-fever’ areas. They had discovered this through observation with the help of the ‘fever tree.’ Apparently there is a tree which grows in areas where malaria is rife, so, wherever they were first found, a ‘fever line’ was established and settlements were built below the ‘fever line.’ Karonga, where the mine is situated is above the ‘fever line.’

LEFT: The 'fever tree' indicated where the malaria area began in Nyasaland/Malawi.

The ‘fever tree,’ or Acacia xanthophloea Benth as it is impressively called, belongs to the Fabaceae Mimosoideae family and it grows in swampy areas. 

Areas of standing water will always provide prime breeding conditions for mosquitoes and areas where water collects and stagnates are even worse. 

The 'water loving tree' merely indicated the conditions for mosquito breeding and upped the ante for malaria. 

One story has it that the early settlers thought the tree caused the fever but I doubt that. Common sense suggests that people knew that wet or swampy areas were breeding grounds for malarial mosquitoes because efforts had been made for thousands of years to ‘dry out’ land  which was being settled, to rid the area of malaria. London, in Roman times and New York in the 17^th century, being two prime examples.  

The tree also grows in Australia but minus the thorns and minus the fever. Many African trees have developed thorns over millennia to afford them some protection from voracious animals.  

Some of the thorns are quite vicious and would tear us apart but, in that  way of things, animals have also adapted and the giraffe in particular has a tongue and mouth so leather-like that it can chomp away on as many ‘delicious’ deadly thorns as it so wishes.  

ABOVE: Giraffes have developed leathery tongues and mouths which enable them to eat even the most vicious thorns.

Australian fauna posed no such threat; hence no thorns on most trees or bushes. Nature is truly wonderful! There is a capacity in this world for everything to adapt and nothing which cannot be overcome.