Battling malaria in Burkina Faso

                                                        The female anopheles mosquito

 "To kindness and to knowledge we make promises only. Pain we obey".

So said the French philosopher Marcel Proust, and so it is when malaria comes knocking on your body's entrance gates. You bow to its every command. From the onset of fever, breaking out in cold sweats not knowing whether you are in Iceland or the Sahara, to the nausea and wrenching of vomit from the deepest caverns within. You take out your thermometer and place in your armpit - 37....38.....39....... 39.4 degrees celsius. Well, you may not be in the Sahara, but you are definitely in the Sahel region. An icy shower brings 5 minutes of relief. You pop a few paracetemol to bring the temperature down, but you've got a little more sweating to do before they'll kick into action.

The aches of your joints and muscles bring back memories of a day after a brutal session of physical exercise after being idle for years. Sometimes it feels like a professional rugby player has just used you as a prop for scrum practice. Other times like Oscar De La Hoya has used you as punchbag. Either way, this tiny protozoan has completely and utterly knocked you out.

Unable to move a limb without trojan effort, the fact that you have just lifted a spoon of yoghurt to your mouth successfully seems like no mean feat. Your throat is stale, dry and sore from your futile and silly attempts to make yourself puke.

Despite knowing that your appetite is as dead as the dodo and having not consumed a morsel of food in 24 hours that has not already being jettisoned down the toilet bowl, you just can't get your head around the fact that it feels like something needs to come out.

Is it the malaria parasite that is making you feel this crap, or is it the medication? Well, it's both and there ain't anything you can do about it but sit on your butt and wait it out.


                     Plasmodium Falciparum - the most common and deadly malarial parasite


You visit the toilet so often you consider whether you should bother ever leaving to go back to your bedroom. Sorry for elaborating here, but your ass, inevitably, begins to get very sore indeed and you begin to make all sorts of promises to Gods you don't even believe in, all in the hope that they may provide a remedy for your ailment. But alas, it's to no avail. Patience is called for in the endurance of any difficulty and the good news is that anti-malarial treatment is widely available and successful if the instructions are adhered to.

When the first feelings of normality begin to trickle back in to your wasted corporal self, sighs of relief the size of cumulonimbus clouds float aloft as you had begun to consider the possibility of having someone renovate the toilet so it can become you permament home. You had, afterall, spent most of your previous 4 days in there.

The boredom of being able to do nothing is set aside as you finally find energy to read and write again, to walk for that matter. Previously, you had been crawling quite a bit. You also see a noticeable difference in your loved one's appearance. They no longer frantically worried. You wonder whether they are going to dump you for being an incessant whine of late, but of course they don't. They're just happy to see you well again.

You have been in Ougadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso for the past 4/5 days. But because you have been so sick and weak neither city nor nation-state matters little
to you. All you have seen is your self swigging down litre after litre of water filled with rehydration salts and lying amazed at how seconds seem like hours, and hours days.

But now that you are better, you take your vengeance out on all anopheles mosquitoes that whizz by. They are many but not very fast so you register an impressive amount of kills in the first few hours. After some time though you begin to realise that you are most definitely going to be bitten again and all you can do is hope you escape lucky.

No amount of creams, nets, socks nor long trousers can deter some of these ambitious bloodsuckers that cause 1 million deaths a year, about 80% of the toll in Africa.

La Visa Touristique Entente - Cheap Travel in West Africa

La visa touristique entente - I've erased my passport number for security reasons

An ex-Peace corps volunteer just emailed an enquiry about the 5 country visa for Ghana, Togo, Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso and Cote d'Ivoire or La Visa Touristique Entente. So for those of you who havez come across this blog seeking upo to date info about travelling in West Africa, I've decided to post what I know so far from my travels.

Your best bet is to get it at any of the Togolese embassies when you get here (maybe to Ghana first). Don't bother wasting your time with enquiries in the US or European countries because it was really easy to do in the Togolese embassy in Accra and in D.C and presumably European capitals they will charge you huge sums for individual country visas. The Togo embassy office in Accra opens at 9am. You have to fill out two identical forms with all the basic info, provide 2 photos and pay 30,000 CFA (1USD is officially about 479 CFA but it seems to fluctuate a lot between 400 and 500 according to local sources. 1 Euro is 656 CFA, it doesn't change. You will be asked to collect the visa the same day at 2pm (you may have to wait an hour or so though).

The 5 country visa is valid for 60 days from the date of issue and you have 1 entry to each of the signed up countries, supposedly. My girlfriend and I have just started our travels and are currently in Togo. We crossed from Ghana at Aflao and there were no problems. It was a painless process.

We expect Benin and Burkina to be the same but Niger will probably be a problem from what I have read on the web. We expect to pay 10,000 CFA on the border. Nevertheless, it's worth getting the La Visa Touristique Entente as you will avoid having to extend a normal border visa (seems you only get 2 days at Burkina border if you arrive without a visa though it's free of charge to extend. Benin charge extra 12,000 CFA to extend from days according to the Rough Guide to West Africa) and the obvious potentially painful bureaucracy involved.

If your arrival point is Ghana you have to get a re-entry visa (10,000 CFA for 1 month or more) for Ghana at whatever country your last stop is at (e.g. Cote d'Ivoire).

You need CFA for all countries except Ghana where 1USD is about 1.43 GHc at the moment. There are no official forex's that I have seen yet in Togo, though plenty of them in Ghana. In the latter country change cash in a Forex, travellers cheques in banks. I have heard there are problems with Amex in most countries. Visa cards are your best bet. Although Mastercard works in Barclays bank in Ghana I've read and heard from others that it doesn't work so much in other countries.

Be conscious of the fact that Niger is not in the best of shape at the moment, the president recently having taken emergency powers to put down dissent over a referendum he wants to push through to allow him serve another term, etc. Furthermore, the north of Cote d'Ivoire is officially still a danger zone according to most western gvts.

I'll try keep you posted on whether we get through sucessfully to the remaining countries. Feel free to pass this info. on wherever you think it may be of help to others. I was also a bit dismayed at the lack of info on the web but it's worked out for us so far. I forgot to mention that when we asked at the Burkina embassy in Accra as to whether they issue the visa, they said no, but that they do respect it at the border. So that bodes well.

Best of luck on your travels.

Travelling in West Africa

Our friends at Immigration never fail to amaze. After all the crap I had to endure getting my visas sorted over the past few months, now it's Dorota's turn to endure their incompetence.

On Tuesday, a worker from her host organisation spent 3 hours waiting for them to check whether her visa was ready. It was due to be stamped and ready for collection on June 20th. She waited, waited and waited but all to no avail. In the end she inquired from another officer, who informed her that the person she was waiting for had gone home and the documents she was waiting for were in a locked room of which nobody present had the key. Yesterday was Republic Day, the 49th anniversary since Ghana gained full independence from the UK, so nobody in State Institutions were working. Today, we hope but do not expect the issue to be resolved.

This all means that we are loitering around Accra waiting for her passport so we can get La Visa Touristique Entente (LVTE) for Togo, Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso and Cote d'Ivoire. It costs 30,000 CFA (90 Cedi or 45 Euro) and in theory at least grants one the right to cross each border of the above mentioned countries, cutting out at least 22,000 CFA and a lot of waiting at various embassies in the process. From what I have heard though, Niger border guards do no respect it, so looks like our net saving will be 12,000 CFA each. All in alkl, it seems well worth waiting for at ther Togolese embassy in Accra which will process the application in the same day if you drop it in at 9am (collect at 2pm). For fellow travellers reading, just bring a long the 30,000 CFA, 1 photo, your passport and fill out 2 forms in the embassy. Et voila!

We inquired at the Burkina Faso embassy whether it's possible to get LVTE there but they informed us that even though they recognise this 5 country visa, they do not issue them.

So we hope to head to the Ghana-Togo border town of Aflao (4 hours from Accra, about 6.50 Cedi by trotro) on Saturday morning and stay a couple of nights in the Togolese capital Lome. Our plan is to take things as they come and focus on visiting interesting social development projects in the regions we come across.

Unfortunately, one of our friends has the connection lead for our camera so I guess I'll be unable to upload photos as we travel. Anyhow, I'll try account for them in descriptive language so you can use your imagination. That is, if we ever get out of Accra.