MOSQUITO DAY

Not entirely sure what “Mosquito Day” is… except that it’s today. So Happy Mosquito Day to all – is it a mosquito appreciation day or more a malaria and Japanese Encephalitis awareness sort of day.

The thing is, my youngest child will be most certainly aware of lots of mosquitoes where he is. On a mango farm in Thailand!! I can’t quite believe he’s there but amazingly for him he has a friend whose family all live on the farm so he was invited for a two week holiday. It is also a monkey farm. I tried very hard to be positive about everything he would be doing, but when we went to enquire about vaccinations and the Doctor said, “you really should have a series of rabies jabs, but you’re too late, so if you get bitten or scratched by any sort of animal with four legs and fur then you have to hot foot it to the nearest hospital – the problem is that there is a global shortage of the drugs required, so when they tell you that you don’t need a jab you ignore them and insist upon it whereupon they will probably have to fly you to Singapore”.

WTF.

This is me sitting with my 14 year old who has barely been out of my sight and now he’s flying to Singapore on his own having done an awful lot of insisting whilst dying of rabies with time ticking away???

This was not good for my stress levels last week – which remember were already WAY up too high thanks to my daughter’s exam results and we hadn’t even got those yet.

We went through the whole mosquito drama too – both malaria and Japanese Encephalitis are present in Thailand but where he was is quite a small risk although obviously agricultural areas have HUGE bird size mosquitoes that dive bomb you at dusk so wear protective clothing at all times, spray your clothes, yourself, the bed, sleep under a mosquito net, take anti-histemenes, itch cream, 55% Deet infused spray at least only – OMG you would honestly think he was going to the moon. At this point I was really hoping he’d change his mind and pull out and just hang out with me in the suburbs where mosquitoes aren’t too fierce, but no, I’m not even sure he heard anything she said to be honest – that’s my job, not his.

I lived in Hong Kong for years, travelled all around Asia on our holidays, picked up monkeys, tried to catch bats, snakes, and stroke dogs and whilst rabies was mentioned (look for the foaming at the mouth) it was never suggested that we had jabs. Is it more prevalent these days? Worth the expense? Come on my African friends – I want to know whats going on??