Collecting Vaccinations Like They're Loyalty Points

One of the more unexpected discoveries during the preparation for Zambia is that modern medicine has become heavily invested in my travel plans. Over the past few months I have had conversations about hepatitis, tetanus, cholera, malaria and several other conditions that sound faintly Victorian. At one point I found myself sitting in a pharmacy discussing mosquito bite prevention with a level of seriousness usually reserved for military planning.

It wasn't quite how I imagined preparing for an adventure.

The cholera vaccine was a particular highlight.

For those unfamiliar with the process, the cholera vaccine is not an injection.

It is a drink.

This means that, in pursuit of public health, I have now reached the stage of voluntarily drinking a cholera cocktail.

I appreciate the logic, but remain unconvinced by the marketing.

I asked whether I could add a bendy straw, a slice of lime or perhaps a small cocktail umbrella, but was swiftly rebuffed. The pharmacist looked at me in the way healthcare professionals often do when they're trying to decide whether you're joking or simply odd.

The taste is difficult to describe with any precision. The closest I have managed is that somebody appears to have dissolved disappointment in artificially flavoured strawberry salt water.

As somebody who has spent the last twenty years taking medication every day, you might imagine that I would be entirely unfazed by this sort of thing. Yet preparing for Zambia has introduced me to an unexpectedly impressive collection of vaccines, boosters, preventative treatments and certificates, all designed to ensure that I arrive healthy enough to be useful and return home in broadly the same condition.

Meanwhile there have been vaccination records to check, booster appointments to arrange and enough conversations about malaria prevention to leave me with the distinct impression that mosquitoes are taking a personal interest in my travel plans.

This does not come as a complete surprise.

Mosquitoes and I have history.

Every summer they somehow locate me with alarming speed and remarkable accuracy. Given a choice between me and an entire field of alternative options, they invariably make a direct and confident decision as though working from a reservation system.

I don't know what criteria they're using, but I appear to score highly.

Somewhere in southern Africa, I am convinced there is a mosquito newsletter. Right now, one of the little bloodsuckers is reading

Upcoming arrivals

Steve is travelling internationally from the end of July to mid August.

Excellent availability. Reserve your table now. Book early to ensure prime blood vessels.

The reassuring thing, of course, is that all of this serves an important purpose.

International volunteering requires more than enthusiasm. It requires preparation, responsibility and a healthy respect for the fact that different parts of the world come with different health risks.

Looking after your own health means you can focus on the work you're there to do and the people you're there to support without inadvertently becoming a drain on the limited resources you’re there to supplement.

Like travel insurance, power banks and practical footwear, it is one of the less glamorous aspects of volunteering. Nobody posts photographs of themselves proudly organising vaccination records. Social media tends to favour sunsets, wildlife and meaningful cultural experiences as opposed to carefully maintained immunisation histories.

Yet behind every volunteer photograph is usually a long trail of appointments, paperwork, forms, risk assessments and practical arrangements that made the photograph possible in the first place.

One thing I've learned through all of this is that volunteering begins long before the plane leaves the runway.

It begins in GP surgeries, pharmacies, forms and appointments. In all the quietly sensible decisions that mean, when you finally arrive, you can concentrate on why you came rather than wondering whether you should have packed a hazmat suit.

Those aren't the moments that appear in the photographs, but they're the reason the photographs are possible.

The vaccination programme has been another reminder that Zambia is no longer a vague future plan sitting somewhere on the horizon.

It's happening.

Soon.

And while I suspect the mosquitoes are already making their own preparations, I would like it formally recorded that I am preparing for them too.

At this point I have accumulated so many vaccines, boosters, certificates and preventative medications that I may well be covered for diseases that have not yet been discovered.

I can only hope the mosquitoes got the memo.