For strong stomachs only. Seriously.

I've been doing some fantastically fun things and travelling around these last few weeks and I promise to do another update very soon about that (and by that I mean when I actually bloody remember to bring my camera to an internet cafe!). But a story that definitely doesn't require pictures - but which google will happily provide - is what happened to me this weekend. On Monday morning I woke up in my hostel bed after having gone to a Ugandan hip-hop gig in a makeshift stadium the night before. Fun times were had by all and the five angry looking mosquito bites on my stomach and one on my arm seemed a small price to pay.

As the week progressed the bites began to look more and more swollen and hurt like hell. By Friday I decided that they must be infected and resigned to sort it out myself. As I was holidaying beside Lake Bunyonyi in the middle of nowhere I did it the traditional travellers way: with nail scissors and medicinal alcohol. Now it gets graphic. From the first "bite" I tackled I pulled out a tiny wriggling maggot. It looked like this:

Tumbu fly larva, courtesy of google

I must have stared at it for three full minutes. The clearest thought running through my head was...I've got five more of these in me. In some kind of determined daze I put freaking out to one side and proceeded to dig the others on my stomach out one by one, biting down on my tube of deodorant as I went. I was aware of the fact that it was painful but all that I could think of was getting these things out of me. After half an hour I had five holes in my stomach which I cleaned with the alcohol. However, the one on my right arm was extremely deep and frenzied gouging with my left hand was unsuccessful. Resigning myself to sleeping with a worm in my arm I spent a fitful night waking up to horrible shooting pains where it was moving around under the skin.


The next day I took the 12k journey by motorbike to the nearest hospital where I proceeded to baffle the medical technician on duty who called in his superior. While waiting to be seen I felt a stabbing pain in my arm and looked down to see Dave the worm poking his head out of the hole. He had to go.

The hospital: courtesy of google

The doctor on duty still didn't know what it was but decided to give me a local anaesthetic and dig it out of my arm with a surgical blade. Normally I am not scared of needles or medical procedures but I have to admit, lying there on a bed in a Ugandan hospital with a worm in my arm, I was further out of my comfort zone than I have ever been. I think I broke the technician's hand as I lay on my side and had the local administered. It didn't work the first time, or the second. After the third try I just shouted at the man to dig the thing out of me and be done with it. Finally, with lots of blood, he pulled out the worm and, looking at me like I was super-woman for digging the others out myself, dressed my wound and gave me some precautionary de-worming tablets. For all of this attention I forked out the grand total of £2.80.

Since then I have found out that it was a Tumbu fly, probably picked up from sitting on the ground at the music gig. Though it was a pretty traumatising experience I know now that I can deal with it if it happens again...though please touch wood for me that it doesn't.