fancy playing dodge ball with bats?

 I inched my way through the tight space by crawling on my stomach. I sat up for a brief moment enjoying a bit of head room, but then in an attempt to keep up with the rest of my group, I continued creeping along the cool, rocky surface ever so carefully on my hands and knees. I could see the tiny cavern’s entrance ahead of me. I slithered across the rocks trying not to fall and started to make my descent into the cave. My heart raced as a swarm of slimy, black-winged creatures started flying toward my head! I screamed as one bat after another came rushing toward my face and body as I attempted to enter their sacred home. I quickly backed away from the cave trying to dodge the furious black, flying, freaky, animals that surrounded me.

My other friends, far more adventurous than I, were already inside the cave and I could hear them urging me to join them. I yelled back, “heck no, I’ll just wait out here!” My friend’s voices echoed from inside the cave assuring me the bats weren’t bothering them inside the cave, so I just had to be brave for a few minutes as I made the initial decent into the cave. I have never really cared about what others think of me and I didn’t fancy the idea of playing dodge ball with the bats again, so I had decided to sit this adventure out. I would wait for my friends outside the cave, but then out of nowhere, I was filled with a sudden burst of boldness (or stupidity) and I crept back toward the cave entrance. I agreed that if all my friends would point their flashlights toward the entry to the cave (bats don’t like light, so I thought they would leave me alone if I was in a spotlight of flashlights) I would try to join them.

This freaky spider was what
appeared on my camera after
just shooting a pic in
the dark.

With all flashlights pointing in my direction, I carefully descended into the blackness of the cavern. I breathed a sigh of relief as I was reunited with my friends, far away from where the bats were flying around. Linking hands with my friends we explored the tiny cavern that we found ourselves in. We were expecting a slightly bigger cave considering we had been told by our African tour guide, an old man that looked to be well over 75 years old, and told us we could just call him Boss, that this cave was one of the best in West Africa. A few paces to the right, a few to the left, one or two behind us, and one or two in front of us and we had seen the entire cave. We decided Boss has lied to us, or that West Africa’s caves were pretty pathetic. Either way, we took pictures into the darkness not knowing if the photos would even turn out, or what would be in them, but nonetheless they would document our great Ghanaian, cave expedition.

Before we left the cave, Boss called us all together in a circle to tell us some interesting facts about the caves in the area. Some of the caves had reportedly been used for hideouts or lookouts from enemies; others were used as prisons of sorts. Next, Boss grabbed some of the dirt from the ground beneath where he was crouching, he picked it up in his hands and flicked it in the air reporting, “And this…this is bat s*#t!” He repeated the phrase again and again. I started laughing, but then I remembered a bit of high school biology class and something the teacher had said about bat s#*t not exactly being a friend or something to mess around with. As Boss chuckled and flipped bat s#*t here and there, I decided it was time for my little cave adventure to end and my friends and I made a quick exit from the bat infested cave.

I hadn’t thought about my West African caving expedition (or maybe that over exaggerates the adventure) for a while, until this past week when I was sitting in class at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. My professor said, “Nurse, what are you going to do? A 19 year-old male comes to your travel clinic reporting he is flying overseas for a spelunking trip, in less than 3 days, and he asks you if you think it is necessary for him to have any vaccines.” I had no idea what I was going to tell the young man, I knew it was something important otherwise the professor wouldn’t have asked the question, but I was clueless. My first inclination was to ask the boy why he waited until 3 days before he was leaving to seek travel health advice, but that really wouldn’t solve anything. I didn’t know the answer and that is part of the reason I am in this course. Tropical diseases are not something we cover heavily in North American nursing programs.

The professor went on to discuss rabies, the transmission of rabies, where rabies exists, signs and symptoms of the disease and treatment (of which none really exists especially after the first symptoms appear because at that point, death is right around the corner). The more my professor talked the more I realized my moment of boldness, in Ghana the year before, that led me down into bat mecca, was really a moment of stupidity. I had not realized or had totally blanked out the fact that bats carry rabies. The travel clinic I had visited before heading out to Africa asked me how likely it was that I would come into contact with dogs or animals on my time overseas. We decided it was highly unlikely for me to find rabid animals on the ship (because there is a no animal policy) and I’ve had a lifelong fear of dogs, so I assured the nurse I wasn’t about to go petting dogs in an African market. We didn’t even think about my potential contact with bats or monkeys for that matter (remember African Wildlife, October 21, 2008). So, I had headed to Africa unvaccinated against rabies. All I can say now is I’m signing up for a rabies vaccine and praise the Lord, I didn’t get bit by a bat or didn’t get any precious bat s#*t or spit into the open cuts and scratches I had acquired on my trek through the jungle that had led me to the “one of the best caves in West Africa.”