By the time you read this I should be in Kenya not having psychedelic hallucinations if all goes to plan.

I left it a bit late to get medications for the Kenya trip and two days before departure I visited the travel clinic nurse at my GP surgery.

She advised several vaccinations including Yellow Fever. “The vaccination won’t be effective until 10 days after injection. So the Kenyan authorities could refuse you entry or offer to take you behind the bike shed and inject you with a used needle. On the other hand they may not even notice the injection won’t be valid until half way through your trip. The decision is up to you.”

When I opted to go ahead with the injection, she pointed out the possible side effects – a rash or hives on the skin, swelling of the face, lips, tongue or other parts of the body, difficulty of swallowing or breathing and loss of consciousness.

Finally she pointed out a “serious side-effect” affecting the brain and nerves. “It could kill you. Do you want to go ahead?” she asked cheerfully.

After that vaccination she started on the anti-malaria tablets and told me there were three major types.

I was ready for that one: “I prefer the pill which is also an antibiotic so I’ll be protected from any other illness treated by this pill.”

The nurse had an answer to everything. “As a side-effect this pill makes your skin very sensitive to the sun.

“It is one to avoid if your destination is sunny. You are going 5km south of the Equator to a rural village in the mountains of Western Kenya. Are you certain you want to try it?”

I was determined to go ahead. This was one of the few anti-malaria pills that did not include warnings about psychedelic effects.

On the day I arrived at the village near the Equator one visitor who had already been there a week tested positive for malaria.

Before being whisked off to the regional hospital she told me she was taking the same anti-malaria pill I was taking and she had experienced some pretty weird dreams. She looked like she had gone to sleep and woke up back in the sixties in the middle of flower power.

So far I’ve kept both feet on the ground. My only trip has been to Kenya but the colours here are very bright and intense and one huge black spider seems to grow more and more gigantic day by day.

The nurse in Oxford was full of other helpful hints. She advised me: “If you buy any bottled water and you are not sure the cap is on tight, don’t buy it. Ask for fizzy water. Sometimes people get empty bottles and fill them with tap water to resell. But they can’t counterfeit fizzy water, so you’ll be safe with that.”

I wondered if she got this straight out of Only Fools and Horses.

She also advised me to get Deet insect repellant. “But be sure to get the product that actually has some ‘deet’ in it because one of the cans says ‘deet’ on the label but doesn’t actually contain any ‘deet’.”

It sounded silly but I checked that one out and she was right.

Then the nurse came out with a most unexpected tale. “If you stay in a hotel, make sure you hide your toothbrush or at least disguise it, because the cleaners sometimes use guests tooth brushes as emergency cleaning tools. Your toothbrush could have visited some very unsavoury places.

“Have a good trip,” she said sweetly as she waved me goodbye.

On the flight to Kenya I sat next to a health consultant for the World Bank. She told me the water bottle story and the toothbrush story were probably complete hoaxes.

And since she had lived in Kenya for over 20 years and had never taken any anti-malaria tablets she thought the concern about malaria was overdone, especially since the female mosquitoes that carry the disease tend to bite from around midnight til four in the morning only.

Her advice on the most effective way to cut down on illnesses when travelling abroad was to wash your hands regularly. She too wished me a happy trip and I walked through Kenyan Customs with a different kind of spring in my step.