Tips for Traveling to Africa

Medicine

My mother is a travelling pharmacy. When we go on vacation she has one large plastic bag full of vitamins and supplements, and another filled with band-aids, aspirin, allergy medicine, cold medicine, motion sickness pills...pretty much anything you would need if you had to do without medical service for a few months. I've always thought she was a bit over prepared. There are plenty of pharmacies in Italy, Iceland, and other countries where we've traveled. Medicine, though, is apparently something you want to bring with you when travelling to Uganda or any other African country where drugs can often be out of date, bad generics, or sometimes even placebos. So while this all still feels a bit paranoid, I now have my own personal pharmacy of supplements and pills.

Chief among them is Ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic, and Malarone malaria medicine. I have been vaccinated against every possible disease you can get in Uganda or anywhere else but there is no vaccination for malaria. Worse yet, I'm a mosquito magnet and the Anopheles mosquito found across many African countries carries the deadliest form of malaria parasite. I'm taking no chances. I have pills, bug spray, and every night I'll sleep under a mosquito net brought with me from Ireland. I never would have thought to bring my own mosquito net (and hooks that screw into the ceiling to hang it from) if it weren't for tips I'd received from friends who have been to Africa.  There are a few other items that I wouldn't have thought to pack either. My suitcase inventory now includes a flashlight (torch), suitcase locks, a door stop, ear plugs, extra plastic bags, and a travel pillow. I have never been so well prepared.

Information Technology

The biggest conundrum for me though is technology. Normally when I travel I am the IT equivalent of my mother - a walking data center. I bring my laptop, iPad, and iPhone and not one, but two wi-fi networks so that I am always connected. But my friends who have been to Africa tell me not to bring any technology with me that I can't afford to lose. Three months ago I lost my iPhone in Brussels and you would have thought from my reaction that I had lost a child instead. I was beside myself until some wonderful anonymous person turned it in to the lost and found. My technology is like my electronic family - it would be smarter to leave it all at home. But I'm a technologist working on technology projects...how can I not bring it with me?

The answer, I hope, is inexpensive substitutes that will not be a complete tragedy to lose. I bought an Acer Android tablet that got good ratings and cost less than 120 euros.Thanks to Camara I also have a loaned laptop that has a longer battery life and weighs far less than my one at home.  The final dilemma then is what to do about my iPhone. It's not just a phone, it's my mobile email, internet, camera, recording device...everything I need for research. But to be honest, my iPhone is my baby (if babies were small, square, and made of metal and glass). If I lose it, the emotional trauma will only be outweighed by the replacement cost. And I'm not even sure I'll be able to use it as a phone. I've heard it's hard to get the microsim card in Africa that iPhones require...so I may just buy a used Android or Blackberry in one of the shops here in Dublin and be done with it.

Visas

For the past few weeks, packing has been the least of my worries. I wasn't even sure I'd be going to Uganda this summer because I ran into visa problems. Along with the application there are forms, photos, proof of vaccinations, money orders, etc. that have to be sent - I expected that. What I didn't expect was that the embassy would run out of visas. How, you ask, does one run out of visas? I don't know, but in a country aggressively competing for tourism dollars you would think they would have an extra stash of them somewhere for emergencies. Unfortunately they did not, so the month that I allowed for the application process wasn't enough and I had to push my travel back a few weeks. Which is OK - Dublin is beautiful this time of year.

But the visa setback is still a bit disappointing...my classmates at Trinity have all gone off to their respective countries, posting Facebook updates that sound like they're having the time of their lives. I feel sadly left behind.

But the good news is that the visa is finally on its way. It's currently somewhere in Illinois, working its way toward me over the next few days. I have optimistically registered on the US Smart Traveler Enrollment Program website. Hopefully I'll leave soon.

One of my friends said that he doesn't worry about visas...he just shows up in a country with his passport and hopes for the best. So far it has worked for him, but I have another friend who tried that same tactic a few years ago in either Vietnam or Indonesia...I can't remember...and couldn't get in the country.  So in addition to the wise advice from all of my friends documented above, my advice which I can now say from experience, is to allow plenty of time for the visa application.