Malaria Takes the Bite Out of Ethnocentricity

When you think of a family vacation, does being catapulted out of a river raft down class five rapids on the Nile, drinking unpasteurized goat’s milk, getting stuck in the mud in the middle of the rainforest, and contracting the deadliest form of malaria come to mind? Most people would undoubtedly say no, but in December of 2006, this is what happened with my family in Uganda. As an adventure-loving family, we got everything we could have asked for and more.

Uganda is a country so beautiful that it is deemed “the pearl of Africa” in several prominent guidebooks and online sites. The irony: not one native Ugandan, including our guide, knew what a pearl was. From the Serengeti plains filled with elephants, giraffes, and zebras, to the Nile River filled with crocodiles and hippos, to the capital, filled with the hustle and bustle of city life, this was an unforgettable experience.

Making the trip even more unforgettable, I became extremely sick to my stomach at two o’clock in the morning on the last day of our excursion. The bathroom floor quickly became my bed, as I could barely move due to a high fever, weakness, and continued nausea. Thinking this was just a bad case of traveler’s sickness, I took the prescribed medicine that my doctor had given me in case something like this happened. Fifteen minutes later, that medicine was back in the toilet, and I continued to lie on the floor in agony, waiting for daylight to break.

The buzz from the staff at the hotel was that I had malaria. What a preposterous idea we thought. What did they know? I had been taking malaria pills. Of course I didn’t have malaria. There was only one way to find out: take me to a nearby health clinic.

So, off to the health clinic they took me. This was no first-world health clinic; this was a primitive place, fully equipped with antiquated equipment, dirty concrete floors, hot open windows with no screens, no air conditioning, and mosquitoes itching for a victim. What was I getting myself into? I was repelled. Maybe I should have just stayed back at the hotel. Scratch that idea. I felt too sick.

Upon waiting 20 minutes, I went in to see the doctor. She immediately told me I had malaria. How did she know? How could she just wing it and tell me I had malaria without a blood test? Then it came … the blood test.

My blood was examined under an old microscope. The doctor, without hesitation, with little to no affect, and with a serious lack of comforting bedside manner, bluntly asserted that I had contracted the deadliest and most common form of malaria, from the plasmodium falciparum protozoan parasite, only spread by the female anopheles mosquito in certain regions of the world. After significant panic set in, I was told that I would be fine with the right medicine and that it is actually fairly common for people to still contract malaria when taking malaria pills.

Luckily, the shot and the strong antibiotics they administered had me feeling great in record time. By the last leg of our long flight home from Amsterdam to Los Angeles, I had almost forgotten that I had contracted one of the deadliest diseases in the world.

Malaria can incubate for months. I was actually fortunate to have contracted it in the host country. If the disease had surfaced in the United States, the doctors may have just dismissed it as a bad case of the stomach flu. How fortunate I was to be able to get the treatment I needed. My naivety about the sickness and my poor judgment of the doctor’s skills initially blurred my view about how to handle the situation. However, I can now happily say that I made the right decision by putting my trust in the Ugandan doctor. She saved my life.

The missing link here was indeed trust. Malaria is one of the biggest killers in Africa. This doctor sees cases of it every day. I learned to trust native citizens because they know much more about my surroundings than I do. This experience taught me to be aware of my ethnocentric mindset and not let differences “bug me” or inappropriately color my perceptions.

My ability to keep an open mind and put my confidence in native citizens has greatly contributed to my appreciation for adventuresome travel experiences. In fact, I would be happy to do this trip all over again, mosquitoes, malaria and all.

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Alexa Hart graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara in June 2008 with a B.A. in communication and a minor in professional writing. She loves to travel and is currently living in Southern California.

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