Packing Advise-Black Items
Read many posts about avoiding black colored items in East Africa as they attract flies. Trying to understand severity. One of my Christmas gifts was a small sling day pack/water bottle carrier which I asked for specifically in Khaki. Realized when I received it, that the netting to hold the bottle is black. Am I going to be a fly magnet with this? Thanks for any insight.
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Comments
You’ll be fine.
It will be fine. The key thing is it is not clothing. The tsetse flies bite you through clothing or not.. I was bitten through a black band on my socks and it hurt. And they can carry sleeping sickness. You can never tell whether there will be any tsetse flies, sometimes I haven’t seen a single one, one time there were quite a few.
Are the tsetse flies year round? So, NO black or dark blue clothing of any type? Even socks?
Like I said, I was bitten through a black band on a sock. Some entire safaris, we have never seen any. Perhaps SeaLord might give an insight at present. We arrive in a week’s time.
Black and blue clothing does attract the flies. Perhaps spraying safari clothes and items with permethrin spray prior to travel should provide an extra layer of protection? The sprayed clothes do best when washed separately from non sprayed clothing, and not in hot water. You can buy pretreated clothes and socks from several companies but its not cheap.
Much cheaper just avoid those colors.