Apparently the Malaria pills (Doxycycline) make you a bit constipated, feels like it. Bloody Hell! I’ve just read the chapter on Bilharzia in my travel guide…If that was all you read about Africa you’d never come here. Basically, when someone with this disease craps into fresh water, the eggs hatch and find their way to the nearest pond snail where they develop and then emerge as a tiny torpedo-shaped thing called cercariae, which, when it lands on you (it floats in the air) it digests its way though your skin! So, you can come into contact with this thing if you are in infested water or, if you are really unlucky, even being within a couple of hundred metres infested water since they are carried on the wind. These things live for about 30 hours after hatching, and get less vigorous (less able to digest their way into you, ugh) as they get older and are pumped into the air in their greatest numbers between 11am and 3pm… Get those morning or late evening wades in! My flatmate, Dan, had a bout of this – I’ll have to check the loo in my house for pond snails when I am back.
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