Beth and I have been struggling with Lariam since we started taking it a few months ago. It started with nightmares. The first one that we knew was a product of this anti-malarial joy was an all too realistic dream about rich people on safari being served live baby animals. They calmly cut into them with sharp knives, skinning them alive as they baa’ed and moo’ed helplessly, while I crumbled to a screaming and hysterical mess on the ground. Beth shook me awake as I cried out in my sleep. Oh, but it gets worse.

Dreams about hiding corpses at a certain “Pimps and Ho’s” party in Brooklyn, being trapped in mazes as thorny walls slowly moved in to crush you, and one of my ex’s forcing themselves onto Beth (this was Beth’s dream). Then we graduated to daydreams, flashes of horrible images right before your eyes in broad daylight – usually about the other’s demise. Seeing each other being smashed by an oncoming truck, blown off a cliff on a hike, or dragged violently underwater by a shark. In Lake Bunyoni, it all came to a head, as reality and nightmares collided.

The first few nights in our cabin were somewhat uneventful. I tossed and turned all night, waking up frequently to dart my eyes around the pitch black room in vain. This city girl needs cars driving by in the night and streetlights shining in the window to sleep peacefully. This blinding pitch-black stuff with crickets and creepy crawlies chirping outside is not my cup of tea. But I managed. Then the Lariam kicked in.

Our bathroom, a cleverly constructed eco-friendly outhouse, was straight out of Arachnophobia. One time when I went in I counted 17 African-sized spiders along the walls. (Environmentalist or not, from then on I went outside beside the outhouse… when possible.) That brought on the nightmares in my pitch-black torture chamber, where my Lariam-drenched imagination had no bounds. Spiders surrounded me inside our mosquito net, sliding slowly down on their webs to get to me. They fanned out all over the walls of the net – big ones, small ones, millions of them – circling, dropping, crawling. Nibbling at our toes, crawling up the blanket, and sitting on our faces. I grabbed the flashlight from under my pillow, and turned it on and off all night in semi-consciousness, trying to focus my eyes to check for spiders like a paranoid schizophrenic. Beth and Dallas didn’t sleep much either. (Beth: I’d be woken up every half hour or so by a flashlight beam in my eyes and Lauren’s wide-eyed face looking around frantically.)

After complaining all day about my dreams, we crawled into bed the next night. I had a tight grip on my flashlight, but was trying hard to center myself, taking deep breaths, and willing myself to think happy, spiderless thoughts so I could fall asleep. I fought the urge to turn on the flashlight for a good 10 minutes, and then I caved. “Ok,” I said. “Just one more time, and then I will go to sleep.”

I turned on the flashlight, eliciting a groan from Beth, and surveyed the net. I looked around, and lo and behold, there was a spider. I sucked in my breath and Beth jumped up, following my gaze and the beam of the flashlight. A big, mangy-looking spider had settled itself right above her head on the INSIDE of the mosquito net. We both rushed out, squealing like schoolgirls as a resigned Dallas slowly lumbered out of bed.

As our slightly amused savior calmly went to remove the spider (sorry, Mrs. G, this includes a murder), I swept the flashlight around the room. “Oh my God, there’s one!” and “Ew! Look over there!” and Beth, “Oh Jesus, there’s another one” and the conclusion “Ok, there are actually a lot of spiders in here.”

The place was infested. On support beams of the ceiling, on the walls, in cracks – everywhere you looked, there were spiders. We did a thorough inspection of everything in our bed. I made the country girl crawl in first and take a good look around, and then we both stripped the bed searching for intruders and scrutinized each inch of the mosquito net. We managed to fall asleep, but it was another night of light-and-laser show by Lauren.

Though my nights were filled with Lariam dreams and real life spiders, our days passed quite pleasantly.  We took a short hike around the island one day. Beth and I spent hours challenging each other in best out of seven backgammon tournaments, while Dallas worked on his business plan to export Ethiopian goods. He periodically leaned over to ask Beth questions about creating an LLC, which she surprisingly knew a lot about.

We relaxed, read, walked around, and took in the views of the incredibly beautiful lake.

The place itself was a pretty cool study on how to run a hotel in an eco-friendly way. They used solar power, they pumped their own water, and I already mentioned the composting (though spider infested) toilets. They built the cabins and “geo-domes”, spherical, open-aired, and very sturdy thatched huts, on their own, using local carpenters and local supplies.

They had also thought of a bunch of little things to keep the tourists happy. Boats that you could take out to paddle along the lake were tethered at a small dock, there was an extensive library where you could check out books, internet was available (made possible by solar power and satellite), movies could be viewed via projector at night, and little lounging areas with umbrellas, tables, and chairs were found in quiet little nooks all along the paths around the camp (including a quaint swimming dock complete with lounge chairs).

They even had games (like backgammon) and juggling balls. One day, Beth taught me the basics of juggling, and after a few hours of obsessive compulsiveness, I was actually able to get “three balls in the air” (and this time, not figuratively speaking… for all my NYC friends).

Before we retired to our spider cave, the three of us would sit and enjoy our dinner and then tell stories over Bell and Nile beers. Dallas beguiled us with more of his tales from Ethiopia, which ranged from fascinating to terrifying to hilarious. They really are worth hearing for yourselves, so you should check out his blog at http://www.araptirop.blogspot.com/. We racked our brains for funny stories and old jokes and recounted how-we-met, when-I-was-a-kid, and crazy-X’s sagas by lantern light.

All in all, it was a very relaxing and enjoyable stay at the lake, and anyone passing through should definitely go and stay a few days. Email ahead to make sure they have space… (http://www.susnow.org/).

On our last night (after the attack of the spiders), I was determined to get some sleep before we started our four, yes, four-day trek from Lake Bunyoni to Cairo. We watched “The Departed” on the large screen while Beth had a Coke and I downed a bottle of Hakuna Matata (Beth: A bottle of Tanzanian alcohol that, curiously, didn’t say what it was made out of). That did the trick. I lolled happily in bed by candlelight (I made us keep a candle burning till I fell asleep) while Dallas and I drunkenly laughed for an hour or two (much to Beth’s sleepy dismay), swapping more stories about Madison, crazy X’s, and creepy high school teachers.

After an hour or so, I finally conked out, and slept, mercifully, straight through to “morning” (another 5am wake up call).

(P.S. After our spider experience… oh, and after Beth was plagued by a few crazy spider dreams, too… we decided we couldn’t take it anymore. Beth started to have the added bonus of anxiety attacks during the day, and we concluded that we needed a break from the stuff nightmares are made of. We did a little research about Egypt, Italy, and Argentina, our next stops, and found that there was little-to-no risk of malaria in these areas. So for now, we are Lariam-free and well rested. At least for the next 1.5 months…)