A SCREAM IN THE DARK

Today we are camping at the Kunene River, which is on the border with Angola. A beautiful campsite with an extremely grumpy manager who does not give us a second glance. We do not care because we look back on a few wonderful days. We evaluate how the first distribution went, open a bottle of wine and play games of Yatzee until long after sunset. How beautiful can it be. When the full moon is high in the sky, we prepare ourselves for a warm tropical night. But then… A scream. “Goddammit, I’m being stung!” Corine comes stumbling in with a face contorted in pain and falls into a chair. I can see from everything that it is fucking serious. In no time I shine our UV torch over the ground and yes… a scorpion! (Scorpions light up in UV light.) While Corine is screaming from the pain in her foot, the first symptoms of paralysis occur. First her leg falls out and then the rest of her body becomes paralyzed. I decide to look for the camp manager in the dark, who is already in bed. I wake him up and tell him what happened. Fortunately, he only needs a few words. While he first gets a container of petrol, we run back to Corine. We find her crying in pain. The poison has now reached her neck and head. After we have soaked the place where the scorpion stung in petrol, the manager reassures her with the words: “You won’t sleep tonight because of the pain, you will feel shocks and your heart will race, but from tomorrow on it should be better.” A small clinic is a few hours away, but the body will not be able to cope with the road conditions.

It’s going to be a night of horror. Intense pain and a body that can hardly do anything anymore. We are scared.