The Nairobi Fly

Last week-end Samantha and I went camping out over Monduli, about one and a half hours drive from home. It is a real feat here (around Arusha) to go out into the bush and camp without being found by some wandering Maasai. And one Maasai inevitably means many, many more. And amongst them all will be the local village “mkuu”, or boss. And the mkuu will charge you a camping fee, which is usually a small sum (although they start incredibly high, and you negotiate down). Then the mkuu calls the anti-poaching ranger, who will bring you a couple of local Maasai watchmen that you are “strongly advised” to hire for the night, as there are plenty of hyenas and leopards around. Anyway, the flow of humanity rarely stems for the duration of your camp out. This time, though, we drove off the road and down deep into a valley. I think that we were down wind from the Maasai boma, as we could hear their cattle bells, but miraculously no-one came looking for us. We spent a night out in the bush with some friends completely undisturbed.

Undisturbed, that is, except by a Nairobi Fly. This little bastard is not a fly at all, but a small beetle. It is one of those animals, like the honey bee, that has a form of defense that entails it losing its own life. Hmmmmm…. it’s like a warning to not mess with its kind, but not a defense that offers the individual much comfort. Anyway, the Nairobi Fly has an abdomen full of a terrific acid that, when you smash him or her against your arm, spreads all over your skin and causes your flesh to begin to bubble up and do all of the horrific things that you would expect from a bug bite in the tropics. I must have had one of these flies land of my arm during the night, because when I woke in the morning I had a pretty bad rash in the crook of my elbow. In the last three of four days it has continued to mature, and I won’t go into any sort of detail. It is certainly not as bad as you are imagining, but it is definitely an uncomfortable ailment. If you are the gory kind, here is a picture of the damage a Nairobi Fly can do (this one is not mine!) It is also fascinating to watch the battle between my immune system and this acid play itself out on my very own arm. I am well on the road to recovery now, so rest easy. Samantha, my wife, is now seven months pregnant. She is doing wonderfully, and wanted me to add at the end of this post that she has been in no way affected by the Nairobi Fly, and that she is in excellent health. Understandably, our family tends to worry about a pregnant Samantha when they read about our life on the Dark Continent.