We attended a serious course in jungle expedition medicine before going into the jungle of Borneo to look for wild orangutans. The Special Forces doctor who taught us said that we could encounter more then 1,400 different kinds of parasites. Sometimes we both suffer from the occasional nausea that comes and goes and we should probably see the doctor some time soon to get a cure. We have both had parasites and Helle has been hospitalised in Africa on a few occasions, as well as, in Denmark. Uri had cerebral malaria a few years back and spent some excruciating weeks in the hospital with nightmares and hallucinations. He couldn’t even remember who came to visit. It all ended with black water fever, where he peed pure blood for a couple of days. It was terrible.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, we travelled through areas with many rebel groups to photograph mountain gorillas. In Papua New Guinea, we flew to the Hela Province and found ourselves in a tribal war. Many large animals, including a female lion, elephants and hippos have attacked us both. All of these episodes could have been very dangerous, but when you are there in the situation, you don’t perceive them as such (except for the lion attack). For some reason our brains seem to accept reality as something quite normal so we never really considered doing something else. Since the malaria, there has been malaria again, dengue fever, stinging bees, biting ants and more than a hundred ticks on our bodies in a single day. It is all a part of the game and we would not change it for the world.