Last night I dreamed I was in Sudan, and the rains had begun.

Malaria season was upon us,  and I was summoned to travel to a nearby village to treat a sister who was very ill with Malaria. I put together a kit with all the familiar supplies; Rapid Detection Kit (RDT), Artusunate, Amodaquine, Quninine, in all their familiar packages.

It was just getting dark, and the area had been instability in the area, and our base manager said I couldn’t travel alone at night. Tabea, a German doctor and constant ally in Sudan, spoke up and said she would travel with me in her familiar German Accent.  Just as we set out on bumpy roads,  the rain we had been smelling in the air began to fall.

I awoke to the sound  of sprinklers out my window, watering a lawn in the early morning, and fragile sunlight making it’s way in the window. My husband sleeps peacefully beside me in on soft sheets. No Mosquito nets, no heat, no Malaria, no Africa.

I have left Africa, but Africa has not left me. I have left Africa, but Malaria never will. I am here in the comfort of soft carpet, abundance of food and nearby bathroom, but Margaret  still welcomes too thin children with burning black at our clinic at the end of that muddy dirt road.

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