MALARIA DREAMS
I was invincible in Africa -- until the mosquitoes got me.

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By Tanya Shaffer

August 14, 1999 | Mosquitoes don't like me. Conversely, I don't particularly mind them. The same goes for flies, gnats and other small circling creatures. This simple fact exasperated my boyfriend Simon.

"Relax into the bugs," I'd counsel him, as we hiked along in some damp, tropical place, a cloud of insects swarming around his head like a dark halo.

"Easy for you to say," he'd snarl from deep within his swirling aura, his hands flailing angrily at the air.

When I decided to spend a year in West Africa, Simon stayed behind. I didn't promise to come back and he didn't promise to wait, but I knew he would. Though I'd loved him wildly for three years, I wasn't worried about losing him. In my mind, the equation was simple: Mosquitoes didn't want me. Men did.

Working as a volunteer for a non-governmental organization in Ghana, I watched with infinite compassion as one by one my fellow volunteers were laid low by malaria. Behind my compassion was only the smallest hint of triumph. To get malaria, you had to be bitten. And my blood was bitter horseradish to mosquitoes.

At first, I followed the precautions anyway, just to be on the safe side. I dutifully popped my chloroquine and Paludrine and covered up in the evenings, wearing long-sleeved T-shirts and lightweight pants, applying repellent, carefully checking my mosquito net for holes. But as time went by I became increasingly careless. The repellent was the first thing to go, mainly because I hated the hot, sticky feeling of it, like an airtight layer of latex paint on my skin. Not to mention the smell. The long sleeves went next.

Three weeks into the trip, I would sit on the stone steps of the one-room schoolhouse that was our living quarters in the village of Afranguah, near the coast, enjoying the delicious whisper of the night air on my bare arms, while my European co-workers sweltered in their long sleeves and jeans, reeking of toxic substances. And still they came down with it, sweating and shivering on their air mattresses in the stifling cement room while the rest of our brigade was out digging and carrying bricks for the health center we were building. I never gloated, at least not on the surface, but I considered myself supremely blessed.

Eight months later, I had completed my volunteer stint in Ghana, traveled overland through Burkina Faso and Mali, flown across the continent to Kenya and bused my way to Tanzania, still malaria-free.

My best friend Debbie flew out from Minneapolis to meet me in Tanzania for a month. She brought with her a letter from Simon, telling me that he was seeing someone. He still loved me, he said, but he was sick of waiting with no promises, and she was gentle and attentive and, well, there. What was he to me, anyway? he asked -- a safety net to come home to when the travels were done? He was tired of feeling like the laughing boy in the corner, standing around stupidly while the free-spirited object of his affections danced her way across the globe.

A jolt went through me as I read his letter, but I squelched it. He adored me -- hadn't he told me a thousand times that I was the love of his life? The world's greatest miracle? Wasn't he repeating this message even now, in so many words? Let her comfort him, I told myself. When I get home in a month or two, I'll show her the door.

"Enjoy yourself," I wrote to Simon, "but don't commit. Your girl will return anon."

The following week, waiting in the village of Arusha to arrange a safari, Debbie came down with malaria. We hung out for a week in that strange little town filled with desperate safari hawkers, while she went through the feverish dance I'd come to know so well. By the time she was safely on the plane, and I had set out alone for parts unknown, I was convinced that my body was invincible, a fortress of immunity.

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