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TRAVELS AND DIABETES: AFRICA
In a world tour that touched 44 countries in 1,000 days and, of course, all 5 continents, what perhaps, in the beginning, could give me the greatest concern regarding diabetes could be the African continent.
The last, in chronological order, among those visited. I imagined finding practical and logistical difficulties as well as obviously difficult hygienic conditions and risks due to possible thefts.
Instead.
Instead, like every place in the world, it has reserved surprises for me that have undermined all my hypocrisy and preconceptions.
Since the arrival in Dakar, Senegal, every possible problem related to the storage of insulin has been disappearing. Until you venture into particularly remote regions there is no shortage of refrigerators where you can store your supplies and no one has ever denied me help in this regard.
When I visited the Pais Bassari region I found no trace of tourism but I abandoned myself to local customs and traditions. They use old terracotta jars to keep their food cool, and a thin little boy offered to keep my supply right inside these amphorae. The result was effective, obviously, it is not the same as putting it in a refrigerator but for a few days, I avoided exposing it to the scorching Senegalese temperatures.
Africa leads to the development of cunning and sagacity, in fact, the biggest problems came from the next country on my itinerary to the north, namely Mauritania. I found the opportunity to follow a camel driver and his dromedaries on a journey of over 180 kilometers in the Sahara desert. I accepted without delay but soon realized that it was not a very good idea as far as my supply of medicines was concerned. Although at night the temperature collapsed and the insulin could stay cool and at its storage temperature (4-8 degrees) during the day the heat was oppressive and reached peaks of 40 degrees at lunchtime. In the Sahara desert, there are not many plants and the shade is rare, so when we stopped for lunch I had the intuition to dig a hole of about one meter. I closed the insulin in a bag and tied the end to a rope so as not to risk losing it and wasting all day finding it. It worked!
In Morocco, on the other hand, I found European standards and all logistical difficulties vanished. There remained only and exclusively the daily ones or those of knowing how to interpret the foods they offered me. Once the rice disappeared completely, the bread had taken the shape of the typical Arab one, unlike Senegal and Mauritania where it was easy to find baguettes at every corner. Not only that but also the typical Moroccan custom of mint tea, a very sweet drink, which bitter would have put in difficulty those who offered it to me being a real collective ritual. In these cases, once again, there is one and only one resource to help the diabetic traveler: monitoring.
Constantly monitoring blood sugar is what allows us to understand how the glycemic impact of Arab bread is very different from our Western bread and even the typical couscous follows different evaluations.
Fortunately, the reappearance of quality fruit and vegetables has limited this impact.
Morocco was the place where I was able to fully rebalance myself, before returning to Italy.
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