I suppose if they were honest every ex-pat living here in Ethiopia will have occasional moments when the only thing they want to do is go straight to the airport and fly home. Well I had my first experience of this two or three weeks ago, in the middle of the night. Insect bites are a fact of life in the tropics, and Chris and I have coped with them intermittently over the time we have been here. I can sometimes be seen sitting at home in the evening with my trousers tucked into my socks as I am convinced unseen bugs are attacking my lower legs from the floor. On this particular night though the situation reached fever pitch. I was awoken by the most furious itching you can imagine – all over both legs and around my waist. Imagine all the itchy spots you have ever had in all your life, inflict them on yourself all at once, then double it. You’ll be imagining about half of what I was experiencing. I had assumed the few itchy red spots I had been scratching away at on my lower legs were from fleas, but now things were out of control. There were about forty red, raised, intensely itchy spots on my legs, and that’s not counting the others on my abdomen, chest, and a few on my arms. I didn’t know what to do with myself. My only thought was to get out of the environment causing this – so catch a plane home.

The problem was I had no idea what the reason was. Fleas? We’ve never seen any. I spent a couple of nights in Nicaragua in a flea-infested bed and didn’t get bitten (it was fun seeing how many I could pinch before they hopped away). Bed bugs? I’ve researched them, we’ve hunted for them and can’t find any evidence of them and anyway we share a bed so why would they attack me and not Chris? (I’m sure several of you can immediately think of dryly amusing answers to that question…) Mozzies? There are a few around but hey no mozzie is going to be anywhere near adventurous enough to get me where these spots were appearing!

The medics among you have probably spotted (ha ha) the diagnosis by now. Another problem of living here is that I am my own GP, and we all know how good GPs are at diagnosing themselves. So on that awful night I took an antihistamine (which didn’t help), cooled myself down a bit (i.e. no PJs), and tried to go back to sleep after praying about what on earth to do – I was desperate. Eventually I thought – what about scabies?

Here’s the little chappie that causes scabies. He’s about 1/3rd of a millimetre long and is very hard to find. (I hunted unsuccessfully with a magnifying glass). I had seen a patient a couple of weeks before who I thought had scabies so perhaps… Now the only thing to do was to treat Chris and me with insecticide (poor Chris). I found some at the fourth pharmacy we went to – it’s entertainingly called “A Scabs”. The couple on the pack obviously have no spots so it must work. it gets quite cold here after dark so stripping off and covering yourself head to foot in a cold white insecticide isn’t the most fun you can have on a Friday evening, but hey when you’re that itchy you’ll do anything, I promise.

After shivering our way through two applications I think it’s worked. My sympathy for my patients who contract scabies will now be at an all-time high. There’s nothing quite like catching something yourself to help you understand what others go through. I wouldn’t want that experience with all the diseases I see (I recently saw someone with a simultaneous jellyfish sting and a worm infestation on the same leg…) but I shall treat this particular episode as usefully educational.

The September equinox is this week, on 23rd. Everyone on the planet will get 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night. Spare a thought for us on that day – that’s what we get (give or take half an hour either way) all year. We are expecting it to stop raining soon. The air feels different, the vultures have gone and the yellow-billed kites have come back so shortly it will be unremitting sunshine until next June. We’re looking forward to that – Addis can be a drab place when everything and everyone is grey, bedraggled and wet. Meskel flowers will soon be peppering the fields and next weekend we will attend the Meskel celebrations. “What’s that?” I hear you ask. I’ll explain next time. Here’s wishing you an itch-free week.