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Travel Health Diaries

Gorilla Trekking

by Emma Hobbs
Registered Nurse - Sydney Travel Doctor
 

We were travelling on an overland tour from Kenya to Uganda.  We were so excited we were on our way to see the amazing Gorillas. We had just arrived in Kampala to stay overnight. The vote was unanimous to go out for dinner. Our guide suggested a recommended Lonely Planet Ethiopian restaurant. Although the vote was not unanimous with the restaurant, the majority ruled. 

'On the way there with twelve people packed into a hired minibus we constantly joked about eating Ethiopian in Uganda! This mockery continued all the way through dinner & return to camp.  A few couples ordered Injera (sour pancake type bread) with assorted curries to share.  After a couple of mouthfuls I declared that it tasted strange & would not eat anymore.  This decision was closely followed by the other girls. The boys bravely continued on due to their insatiable hunger.

I was awoken during the night by my partner clambering out of the tent trying to race to the toilet.  Unaware of the urgent situation unfolding I slept through his constant travels to the toilet. In the morning I was to discover that the boys had played tag team to the toilet block all night.  To make matters worse the toilets had no running water as it is connected to the generator during the day & were all blocked by the morning. 

We gathered our ‘patients’ onto the bus to travel to our gorilla trekking base camp, heads laying in laps, pale faced, with occasional groans of despair emitted.  The bus trip took twice as long as we had sick stops every 30 minutes, even though everyone was loaded with loperamide (immodium).

At first I thought that this food poisoning would soon pass but as the hours passed & the one toilet in the campsite compound became occupied constantly, I knew it was time to resort to my Travel Doctor Health Guide & travel kit medications.  We only had 3 days til we trekked. 

My fellow travellers from Canada & England were quite impressed with the small comprehensive guide & diarrhoea flowchart. I assessed, diagnosed, prescribed & dispensed as required to the group.  One Canadian guy was so impressed that he pulled out his digital camera & started taking photos of each of the health guide pages for reference later.

Word had spread quickly around this small African town Kabale that a few muzungus (white people) were held up sick in the compound.  As we were the only muzungus in town, the locals started to visit us.  Some just to stare, others to give advice & some to tell us the town was praying for us. At first it was quite nice but then it felt like we were animals at a zoo.

As the time passed I busied myself between playing nurse, town explorer & shopper.  The patients were in constant need of cold lemonade, toilet paper & medications & other random requests.  By then every shopkeeper knew my name & I was constantly stopped & asked for updates on the patients. 

We had one day left to get the boys ready to walk with the gorillas.  We were desperate to get them better so we were willing to try anything.  Finally through shear desperation we decided to visit the local doctor.  Within 5 minutes of our tour guide making a phone call, a motorbike was picking the boys up & dropping them at the doctors which turned out to be 20 meters down the track.  All the girls wondered down watching the motorbike zip back & forth. 

The doctor’s clinic was a small wooden shack which was packed with local patients.  Immediately we were ushered straight through into the doctor’s office.  We were quite overwhelmed & confused as we were happy to wait in line.  The doctor was a middle-aged rotund man who spoke English well.  Within 30 seconds he announced ‘Malaria’, wrote something on a piece of paper & pushed us out into the next room where a man was preparing to take blood. But I was armed & ready with our own syringe kit.  Malaria! ‘No, it is not malaria!’, ‘don’t worry it’s not malaria’, I kept saying to everyone, we are packing on the repellent, we have no bites, you’re taking malaria tablets! But we waited for the tests results outside in the fresh air. 

Then my partner started vomiting loudly & fiercely on the dirt road. This drew quite a lot of spectators.  People rushed from outside stores, from across the street & watched my poor pale faced partner vomit profusely.  Within seconds we had over 50 people standing, laughing & yelling, ‘Muzungu Tapika! Muzungu Tapika!’ (White person vomiting).  What a spectacle!  I stood rubbing his back, not even embarrassed but laughing & saying ‘yeah Muzungu vomiting ha ha ha’.  Finally it was announced ‘No Malaria!’, ‘Take these tablets twice a day’ & we left with no diagnosis & no idea what these large white tablets were called. 

The boys took the tablets along with my continuous remedies like hydralyte & by the next morning were on the road to recovery.  They started to gain colour in their faces, able to join in on our card games, & even regain their appetites slowly & a lot less visits to the disgusting toilet.  We were able to swap our gorilla trekking permits to the following day which gave the boy’s one more day for recovery & a lot less stress of missing the gorillas. 

When the day came to trek the boys had improved remarkably although still not 100%.  They found all the strength left in their bodies to make the trek.  We were hoping that it wasn’t going to be a long trek.  & we were in luck! After 30 minutes of hiking, a group of gorillas were sitting in a banana plantation munching happily.  The gorillas were amazing!  So although it had been a difficult & partly humorous journey to the gorillas it was defiantly worth it, even though my partner shudders every time at the mention of Ethiopian food.