Amy Waddell, from Upper Teesdale, is spending six months in south east Liberia. She is the communications intern for Merlin, the international medical aid agency. In the first of her dispatches, she discovers the devastating reality of malaria.

SUMMER holidays, growing up, I spent day after day in the fields around my Teesdale home, building dens out of hay bales or playing cricket with my brother.

Now I’m in Liberia and a day in the “field” is a different ball game.

This was meant to be a routine trip, visiting four of the ten clinics Merlin supports in Liberia’s remote Grand Gedeh County.

Bumping along dirt roads for hours, I gaze out at the dense, green bush and try to keep up with a heated debate about European football – the Liberian man’s passion.

We are just pulling back onto the main road, after an hour at our first clinic, when the Merlin ambulance speeds past. They have been called to a little girl with malaria at Toe Town Clinic, an hour and a half further on.

Hurrying to get to their patient, the ambulance doesn’t stop for the man on the approaching motorbike, who frantically flags us down.

The Liberian English is too quick for me to understand, but Broh, our driver, is on the radio straight away, warning the ambulance of an accident up ahead.

As we set off in the same direction, a bend gives way to reveal a mass of colour – perhaps 20 people litter the road. A woman sits holding her neck, complaining of pains; a little girl looks lost; a boy, perhaps nine years old, looks thoroughly miserable; and a three-month-old baby sits happily flapping his arms in the middle of this mess.

I do a double-take, following skidmarks off the road to where a yellow taxi lies upside-down on its roof in a pool of orange mud.

A quick tally reveals that eight or nine passengers must have crawled out of the taxi. Twenty yards away, I see Emmanuel, Merlin’s pharmacy assistant, pick one of its wheels out of the bush.

I sit in our jeep, feeling useless, as I watch the Merlin and County Health Team ambulance crew, Emmanuel and Arthur, one of Merlin’s clinic supervisors, get to work, efficiently giving everyone the once over. Apart from a bad cut on one woman’s arm, everyone seems remarkably unscathed.

The team decides the ambulance should take those involved in the accident back to Zwedru hospital – the only hospital serving Grand Gedeh, neighbouring counties and Cote d’Ivoire’s border communities – while we will continue with our clinic rounds, picking up the malaria patient from Toe Town Clinic en route.

Almost an hour later, we arrive at the clinic. A group rushes out to the jeep carrying little Jescea. She is gently passed to her mother in the back, as Emmanuel attaches a drip to the seatbelt fastening above them.

Broh sets off down the road as fast he can drive, dodging potholes and puddles. I keep turning round to check on Jescea, lying unconscious in her mother’s arms. Her mother and I can only look at each other, neither of us able to speak the other’s English or Krahn.

The only time any of us speaks is when we see a black snake, perhaps a metre long, slithering its way off the road. “Did you see that?” Broh asks. Wide-eyed, I nod.

A tense two hours later, we stop at Zai Clinic. Jescea’s drip-line is filling with blood and she has started convulsing.

Linda, Zai’s officer in charge, is in the back of our jeep before I know it. She ties a surgical glove around the top of Jescea’s left arm, to raise a vein, and transfers the drip. She tears injection after injection out of packets to administer glucose and Diazepam, to try to stop the convulsions.

WE hurtle towards the checkpoint on the outskirts of Zwedru, Broh pressing the horn until the guards drop the barrier, allowing us to drive straight through.

Pulling up at the hospital, we rush Jescea to the emergency room.

Broh, Arthur, Emmanuel and I stumble back to the vehicle. It’s 4pm.

None of us has eaten since seven that morning. I’m exhausted.

Moreover, I’m in awe of the way the team, the ambulance crew and the clinic staff have reacted to what the day has thrown at them.

Dealing with malaria is part of Liberian life: more than 38 per cent of people suffer from the sickness.

And many die.

Days later Emmanuel comes to find me in the office: “Our patient didn’t make it,” he says, sadly.

He tells me that because most people live so far from a clinic and have no way to get there, they wait for the fever to pass. It’s that wait which often proves fatal. He also says many people don’t use bed nets, even when they have them: they simply don’t understand the causes of malaria.

I think of Jescea’s mother and wonder how she’s coping with this devastating news.

Malaria is the biggest killer of children under five in Liberia. Jescea was four and a half.

Emmanuel shakes his head. “Our people are suffering because they’re not educated in health. They are isolated and vulnerable,” he says.

Merlin is trying to change this.

Every morning, the hospital and clinics offer health education talks.

To highlight World Malaria Day last month, Merlin’s health teams gave talks in schools around Zwedru.

Drama workshops in more remote communities, without clinics, take the malaria message further afield.

Young people are involved in performing plays and songs to show their communities how malaria is spread, methods of prevention, symptoms of the sickness and the importance of immediate medical treatment.

Robert Boduo, Merlin’s community officer, explains: “One method of malaria prevention is to clean your surroundings.” I picture wiping the dinner table and sweeping the floor, and wonder how this can help.

“Spray is expensive for our people, but they can clear old sardine tins from around their houses, cover outside bathroom holes – anything where dirty water collects will give mosquitoes a place to breed,” he adds.

Yet first Boduo must dispel the many myths about the “other” causes of malaria. Some Liberians believe that malaria can be caught by drinking too much beer; others think it is caught from a day’s hard work in the sun.

Above all, two messages remain clear. Across from me Boduo enthusiastically gestures, holding up one finger and then the second. “People have long distances to get to the clinic, but treatment is free and they must go. And all the family must sleep under bed nets – people always complain they’re too hot.”

Lying on my bed, a film of sweat sitting on my skin, I fully appreciate the complaint and am tempted to crawl out from under my net. And then I remember Jescea.

■ For more information please visit merlin.org.uk