Mosquitoes 1, Brunners 0

Life in the tropics has brought a whole new range of experiences, joys, unpleasantnesses, moments of laughter and moments of misery.  New experiences: dancing salsa in the pouring rain when a thunderstorm broke on a night out; watching tiny, jewel-bright green hummingbirds flit around my friend's balcony; swimming in balmy, clear, turquoise seas. Things that bring me joy: not wearing a jumper for months on end; storm clouds that pile up in towers and make for the most marvellous sunrises; flame-trees and jasmine and bougainvillea and strange red cactus-like flowers; avocados the size of rugby balls in season for six months. Unpleasantnesses: months and days that are so humid you feel like you're walking in soup every time you step out of somewhere air-conditioned (which in Cuba is many places, as a/c is by no means a given); the heels of my shoes going mouldy because of the dampness in the air; the smell of rotting rubbish amplified by heat and humidity; and masses, masses of mosquitoes. 

Unsurprisingly for the tropics, mosquitoes are a problem in Cuba, though it has to be said that the Cuban authorities are also pretty damn good at public health and have a policy of fumigating heavily when it's mosquito breeding season. As zika spreads throughout Latin America it's actually pretty rare on the island, though there are outbreaks reported from time to time. Significantly more common is dengue fever, a virus that leads to some fairly dramatic fever-like symptoms lasting between three days and two weeks, and which can be very dangerous if you develop the hemorrhagic version. It's transmitted by the Aedes Aegypti mosquito with its distinctive stripes and white legs. And as luck would have it, that's one of the mosquitoes I killed in my office this week... 

Followers of this blog (bless you! still here?) may recall that my office at the International School of Havana is basically a mosquito breeding ground, for reasons that we've still not managed to establish. None of my mosquito-repelling measures seemed to be effective: the clever whizzy mosquito-trap, all the way from America, is catching some of the flying death-carriers but also seems to be catching baby geckoes, which I find both distressing and gross; the rose-scented mosquito repellant just makes the mosquitoes move location for five minutes; and all the Off spray in the world does not stop them biting me several times a day. I have an electric tennis racquet-mosquito death-dealer, which makes a satisfying bang-crack when I actually manage to zap one of the damn things and which can apparently be heard through the paper-thin wall that separates my office from Michael's - Georgie told me they were in a meeting when they heard a loud crack and me proclaiming loudly, with great satisfaction, "Ha! That's the fifth today!" Apparently Michael turned to Georgie, rolled his eyes and said "All. The. Time."

The conclusion to all this chatter about mosquitoes is that the bastards finally won. Not three days after saying to Dolly (our marvellous Services Manager, baffled by all the mosquitoes in my office) "Honestly Dolly, it's a miracle I haven't got dengue yet", I woke up to discover a bright red rash on my chest, which over the next twenty-four hours spread slowly over the rest of my body. I called Berrin & Georgie, who confirmed that yes, that probably was dengue, that I was to stay in bed, drink tons of fluids, take nothing other than paracetemol and call them if I started passing black stools (ew!) or having trouble breathing (eek!) as I was probably developing the bad kind of dengue. Apart from being depressed that the only treatment for dengue is paracetamol, I braced myself for a week of deeply unpleasant symptoms.

Astonishingly, despite the dengue rash I appear to have suffered from what can only be described as 'dengue-lite' - I didn't have the blinding headache or joint pain that most sufferers report having, but I did have feverish spikes over the past three days and the rash not only covered my entire body but was unbelievably and at points excruciatingly itchy. I felt like a bit of a fraud, to be honest, waiting for the headache and 'bone-breaking' joint-ache to kick on and doubting whether I did in fact have dengue at all until the marvellous Daivy, my housekeeper and mama Cubana, walked in and said "Oh, dengue!" 

I've spent the past three days cooped up at home in self-imposed quarantine (as I don't want to risk being bitten and having some evil little mosquito spread the dengue even further) and spreading aloe sap on my body in vast quantities in a desperate attempt to soothe the itching. The cats are confused as to why I've been at home for so long, and I'm getting cabin fever - though at least I'm not getting serious dengue fever. Incidentally, I have also learned that you absolutely, definitely, positively should no way never shave your legs when you have a dengue rash; it seemed like a good idea at the time but led to almost an hour of extreme stingy pain that I never want to experience again. Actually, having managed to get away with dengue-lite, I never want to experience dengue in its full-fat version either. If only we can get the damn mosquitoes out of my office.