A drama in three parts:

11/9/08, 7am: While in Vatomandry, I was bit by some unknown creature. It is somewhere between a mosquito bite and a bee sting. The bite is on the top of my left foot. It looks like a mosquito bite that I scratched, but has a four-inch red, painful and hot-to-the-touch circle around it. It is bad enough to make me limp and cancel my trip to the market. It is noticeably swollen. I don’t know what it was or if I should be worried, but for whatever reason I’m not. If it isn’t better tomorrow I might be. But it has been getting worse for the last 2 days and should get better soon.

11/9/08, 1:30: Ok, don’t ask me why I wasn’t worried earlier, but I am now. I circled the bite this morning, thinking to compare it’s size in the morning tomorrow, but it is growing before my eyes. It has already expanded half an inch beyond the line and I can no longer pretend I just did a bad job circling it. I can’t walk at all, it is continuously leaking fluid and my foot has swollen to about 3 times its normal size. Now I am a little worried; maybe it is time to call the doctors.

11/10/08, 11:30: Well, I can’t really walk. Yesterday one of my neighbors went to the hospital to get some medicine that the PC doctor prescribed for me. I am extremely grateful for his help, I couldn’t have gotten it myself. When I woke up today it had not gotten worse, which the doctor said was a good sign. However I still had to walk 1.5km to school on a foot so infected it would barely fit into my shoe. Now I am sitting again (see vacation) but this time with a good reason: if I put my foot down there is a terrible throbbing pain. I probably shouldn’t have gone to class, but there is so much to cover in the curriculum and not enough time to do it.

Update: Foot is getting better, I can walk. The real bummer is that I will never know what actually bit me. Somebody do some research and find the meanest-looking bug on the island and we’ll all agree on that.