Scare Tactics
This morning I felt a little nervous about needing my passport and voluntarely getting a bunch of needles pushed through my skin and getting injected with who knows what, but it had to be done and I knew I was making a big deal out of nothing.
After traveling to Breda and finding the place the first thing the nurse asked me was “did you bring your passport?”, after explaining that I handed it in to get my visa for Tanzania, everything was fine, and she handed me a bunch of papers to read about the stuff I could get in the countries I’m visiting…
It scared me, 30 pages of things that can result in my death, the advice I got from those papers was: avoid local people, avoid water/liquids (only bottled drinks and the ocean are ok), avoid animals (especially dogs), dont eat local food, dont eat salads, make sure you wash everything yourself and that its all cooked, dont have sex, wear long sleeves, avoid dirty needles being used on you, dont go outside between 11am and 2pm, dont go out at night and take your malaria pills… all together a pretty much impossible task.
After the doctor went through the list with me, I got 3 shots, vaccines against Yellow Fever, Hepatites A and DTP. there was no time for me to get the Hepetites B shots because it would require me to come back for another shot in a month, so I was adviced to buy a set of medical needles and to avoid blood transfusions at all costs.
The Nurse talked a lot while giving me my shots, but it all went ok, my arms are a little heavy, like I just did pushups, but I’ll be fine… I’m leaving in 2 weeks… scary stuff.