tickbite

The reason I got tickbite fever and she has never got it, says A., is because she's "a sturdy Mashona" and I'm not.

The reason I got tickbite, my mother-in-law says (and she's never had it), is because I should have stuck a match on the tick's tiny bottom and burnt it off me. Or smothered it with vaseline so that it suffocated and fell off.

Not scratched it, like I in my foreigner's ignorance did.