Mosquitos

Doesn't quite seem blogworthy, does it? Mosquitos are annoying everywhere. In the States, you can enounter them in the woods or by lakes, anywhere that is moist, humid and warm. Mosquito bites are unpleasant. They itch.. you can even get some nasty illnesses in the states from them, like west Nile.

Mosquitos in Africa are an edpidemic. A horrifying, disease-ridden, itchy epidemic. Reading all of the literature that I brought with me I should have expected this, but somehow dismissed it since in Iraq, no one took their Malaria medication because it made them sick, and I don't think I saw a mosquito the whole time I was there. Again, Africa is a completely different animal.

Since my first day here, I have woke up with fresh mosquito bites every morning. My ankles, the backs of my knees, my arms.. all literally covered with mosquito bites. And the mosquitos that are biting me, they all look like this:

Just kidding. Okay, not really. This is a mosquito under a microscope. Think about this every time one bites you.

Djibouti is right in an area where the mosquitos are affected with malaria. So everytime one bites me, I think about this. Anyone who knows me can tell you that I am sort of a hypochondriac, so the idea of risking my life every time a mosquito bites me does not exactly appeal to me. I think I might do a whole blog post about the Malaria epidemic in Africa at a later time.