Plasmodium Malariae

I had malaria four times while working with the Peace Corps, three times as volunteer in Yemen, and once as an Associate Director in Tanzania (I also had typhoid and hepatitis, but that is another story). I should state, before the Peace Corps objects, that I had placed myself in an atypical working environment, and that I was eventually told I would be evacuated if I contracted the disease again (they only knew about two cases!). Each instance was very similar, I would start to feel sick, sorta like the advent of the flu, then I would quickly become bed-ridden, feverish, and somewhat delirious. Each case lasted about a week, at which point I would emerge emaciated and exhausted. Malaria is a special kind of hell, one you may return from.
In Yemen, I lived in a refugee camp for Eritreans. At first, I stayed in a ten foot by ten foot shack, and I eventually downgraded to a eight foot by eight foot tent. I had no running water or electricity to speak of, and the well water was salty (well, at least until the rat fell in it, another story). The place was dry and dusty, not very clean, and indescribably hot and humid. Not the conditions to be sick in. I don't remember a lot of mosquitoes in my village (it only rained once in two years), but I did see a great deal of cases of malaria. Of course we (Peace Corps Volunteers) were given anti-malaria medication, but I eventually started giving it to ailing refugees.
I would always have a good idea how long I had been "out" by the number of water bottles scattered around my tent. The villagers and refugees, mostly my students, would bring them to me as I would be largely bed-ridden. There would be a few bottles of water, and several "used" bottles that I had used to urinate in. There would also always be a pile of crackers, none of which I could eat. You emerge from malaria much like a dream. I knew the week had been terrible, I knew I didn't really sleep, tossed and turned, burned up, and was in agony. But somehow that all softened by the end of the week, and it seemed like a faded nightmare. Nonetheless, I knew the torment I had endured, and I didn't look forward to return.
Upon waking from the third malarial dream in Yemen, a curious thing happened when I took stock of my calendar (the various water bottles on the floor) - two of the used bottles were almost black. I had no idea what that meant, but I saved one and took it to the the city the next day. The Russian doctor I knew took one look at it, looked at me, laughed and said "You, you should not be alive. Blackwater fever."
I still didn't know what it was so he told me in broken English that Meryl Streep's husband had died from it. Years later I laughed when I made the connection, it was the character in Out of Africa that had died, Meryl's onscreen husband. Sometimes ignorance is handy.
Now these stories are interesting, perhaps cautionary if I was smart enough to recognize the accompanying moral of each. What is not interesting is the number of people I have seen that were taken by this disease, mostly children. Some from the camp, some from schools I worked in, and one from the very house I lived in while working in Tanzania. The latter was Nuru, a seven-year old girl who was the daughter of the woman who cleaned my house and took care of it while I travelled three weeks out of the month. Nuru only knew one sentence in English, one she would bellow when she and her peers were playing around me. She would get their attention, and state loudly "Only English spoken here!" That was it, but it sounded good and I always gave her an approving nod. I remember once I had given her a toy jeep and then borrowed it back to demonstrate a physics lesson on Zanzibar. When I returned, I was told that Nuru had been very disappointed with the fact that I had taken the toy, the only nice one she had ever owned.
Nuru died a few months later while on a visit to her ancestral home in southern Tanzania. I did manage to get the jeep back to her, thank God.