Third Eye Blind

“Not amused.” This was the first thing that came to mind when I awoke to feel the skin on my forehead stretching uncomfortably in the middle of the night. Great. The mosquito bite I got during the evening spoor tracking preparation run (we go out and sweep the road to be tracked the following morning with a thornbush to remove all prints) turned out to be a tsetse fly bite. Apparently, I react fairly significantly to such bites and tsetse flies just seem to love me. The feeling is not mutual I assure you. So, now I had a golfball sized welt in the middle of my forehead. Very attractive. (And before you ask, no, I am not posting pictures of my third eye.) I immediately tried putting a paste of benadryl on the bite to see if that would slow the swelling (also very attractive – a giant hot pink circle on my forehead). I think it worked a little, but I got a bit of a weird look from Tuma (one of the cooks) when I stumbled into the kitchen at 6 am on my way to the office. In my stupor I had left a bit of the benadryl on my forehead by mistake. Fortunately, this particular bite never become incredibly itchy like some of the others (perhaps thanks to the overnight benadryl treatments), but I now abhor tsetse flies! I will miss many things about Africa when I head home next month, but they are not on the list!

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