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I Got Stung By a Scorpion in Africa

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I got stung by a scorpion on my Africa overland tour in Malawi and it was one of the worst experiences of my life.  This is what happened:

THAT NIGHT

 

I had just arrived at a local pub with my overland tour group, near our campsite at Lake Malawi.  I didn’t want to go to the pub because we had to wake up at 4:30am the next morning for one of the longest days of driving of the tour, in order to cross the border into Tanzania.  But I was convinced to go for a quick drink.

Lake Malawi
Lake Malawi

I sat down at the outdoor pub, put my bag in my lap, then felt something really sharp stab my right wrist.  It was really strange because I didn’t see what did it, but it felt like there was still a needle stuck in my wrist.  Yet there was no trace of a thorn, bite or cut.

5-10 minutes later, I got up and sat down on another bench.  I felt something on my dress, so I instinctively brushed it away with my left hand, when something bit or stung my left pointer finger MUCH harder this time.

I jumped up in a panic and said “something’s on my dress and it just bit me.”

One of the girls from my tour looked all over and under my dress for what had done it.  Then she turned me around and said “there’s a scorpion on your back.”

I looked over my shoulder and saw a small, sandy colored scorpion on the upper back of my dress.

scorpion sting experience
Scorpion photo by Musides. Wikipedia

The locals and my tour guide started freaking out and yelling to get hot water, but I barely noticed because I was processing what had just happened and the potential severity of it all.  I had a flashback to when I was in Sonora in northern Mexico and found a black bark scorpion in my accommodation and how the locals told me that if that scorpion stings you, you have to seek medical attention immediately or you can die.  Now, I was in the middle of nowhere in Malawi, late at night, so getting anywhere quickly wasn’t going to happen because the roads were so terrible.

I calmly asked my guide “just tell me the truth- am I going to die?”

He said scorpions in Africa weren’t fatal, but the venom would make me feel terrible over the next few days.  But the locals were spooked and said they’d never seen a scorpion in Malawi before, which was very unsettling.  Typically, scorpions are a threat in the dry parts of Africa, but it was the wet season in Malawi.

At first, it felt like wasp stings (and I am very allergic to wasp stings and other insect bites), but it got progressively worse very quickly, to the point where my entire left hand felt like it was broken and I couldn’t move it.

We weren’t supposed to have wi-fi at this campsite (you can go a week without wi-fi while traveling Africa), but luckily, one of the guys in my tour group had been able to hack into some wi-fi.  So I messaged my sister and a few of my friends about what happened.

I knew the wi-fi would cut out shortly for the night, but I only had time to tell that to my sister.  I told her “I won’t have wi-fi again for a few days.  I don’t know what to tell you, but if something happens, someone will call you… don’t tell Mom.”

The last thing one of my friends said to me was “aren’t scorpions poisonous?”

And then I dropped off of wi-fi for the next 48 hours.

I was given some Advil, which did absolutely nothing.  I couldn’t sleep at all that night because the pain was so severe and it continued to worsen.

 

THE NEXT DAY

 

We woke up at 4:30am for the very long drive to Tanzania.  The pain was severely horrendous.  The scorpion’s venom is a neurotoxin, so it attacks the nervous system.

My right wrist sting caused my entire right forearm to go numb (like the pins and needles feeling x 100), but it was also incredibly painful.  I had very limited use of my right hand, but I couldn’t move my wrist and I couldn’t do anything that required strength.

However, my left hand and arm were excruciatingly painful and couldn’t be used or touched at all.  My finger that was stung felt like 10 knives were stabbing it, while injected with gasoline and set on fire.  It legitimately felt like it was going to explode.

With the way my finger was feeling, I was worried there might be tissue damage and that I could lose my finger.  I asked the guides if that was a possibility, but they didn’t know for sure, so they begrudgingly said I could go to a hospital later if I wanted to.

Later at our lunch stop, I dipped my hands into antiseptic and my finger freaked out from the water and became 10x more painful, which I didn’t think was possible.  The pain wouldn’t subside and it was unbearable.  And the numbness in both arms had spread to my jaw.

I couldn’t do it anymore.

I was given two heavy duty painkillers which knocked me out cold on the floor of the truck for the next few hours of driving.  Some of the people in my group kept checking to make sure I was still alive.

I was woken up when we arrived at the hospital in the middle of nowhere in Tanzania (about 20 hours after I was stung), which was a filthy, run-down, terrifying dump of a place that looked like it was straight out of the horror film “Saw”.  There are images from that hospital that are forever burned into my memory.

After a few hours of waiting, the doctor confirmed that I would not die or lose my finger.  He grabbed my fingers and started moving them aggressively because he said I needed to get the blood flowing to the area in order for it to heal.  It was excruciatingly painful, but he was right and I needed someone to do it for me because it was far too painful to do myself.

 

THE AFTERMATH

 

I couldn’t use my left hand or arm at all for 4 days.  After 5 days, as warned, I came down with an intensely horrible fever, which knocked me out badly for a few days and I felt nauseous for a week.  This all happened in the tropical paradise of Zanzibar, so it was a huge shame because Zanzibar was the only place on my 2 month camping overland tour that we had a break from camping and the freedom to chill and explore on our own, but I couldn’t really enjoy or explore it very much.

It took about a week for me to be able to use my left hand and arm again.

All in all, the scorpion messed me up for over 2 weeks and it took over a month for the nerve damage in my finger to heal properly.

But despite all the horrible physical effects, one of the worst things about the whole experience was how some of the people on my tour made me feel.  My tour guides were not overly concerned or helpful even though they weren’t certain if losing my finger was a possibility or not.  And they weren’t overly interested in taking me to a hospital because it was inconvenient and not a part of the organized tour schedule.  Some of my tour mates were appalled by this and they were really worried, helpful and concerned for me, while some others also felt it was an inconvenience.  Needless to say, I got the short end of the stick with my overland tour, and not just because of the scorpion.

For more information about what to expect on overland tours in Africa, see the link below.

 

MORE ON AFRICA

 

What It’s Like to Travel and Camp in Africa on an Overland Tour

What To Expect While Traveling in Southern and East Africa

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