On Waiting for the Worm to Crawl Out of My Skin and Other Musings

Posted on 11 May 2013 by potholesandpilipili

There is a delightful creature here in Tanzania that makes one of the simplest tasks- doing laundry- quite the adventure. Called the mango fly, or sometimes the tumba or putzi fly, it likes to lay its eggs in wet laundry hanging out to dry. Once put on, the eggs in the clothing hatch and the larvae burrow into the wearer’s skin, form itchy painful bumps while they incubate, and eventually erupt from the skin like your worst childhood nightmare. Apparently you know that it’s one of these charming little monsters because you can see the little black dot of the larvae’s eye under the skin and a tiny hole through which it breathes. Go ahead; you know you want to Google it.

I have been given numerous pieces of information and advice- of varying degrees of usefulness- on how to avoid this charming little hiccup of an infestation: Flies only lay eggs in clothes that are laid out on the grass to dry, not in those on the line (false). Only hang your clothes up during the day because the flies are dormant during nighttime (false). It’s fine to hang your clothes outside as long as you don’t wear them for two days afterwards because the eggs hatch within two days (partly false). As long as you iron your clothes before you wear them to kill all of the eggs, you won’t have problems (true, but less useful if you do not own an iron).

If, however, you find yourself in the unenviable situation of playing host, there are a few options open to you. Cover the air hole of the larvae with one of any number of substances- clear nail polish, Vaseline, lip balm, thick lotion; all have been suggested. This causes the larvae to come up to the surface to try to breathe, at which point you can grab it with a tweezers and pull it out (a painful process). Or they may suffocate and then you can *pop* them out (also uncomfortable). Here is the problem though…they incubate at different rates, so while you may be able to do this with one, you may have to wait days while you watch for the other larvae to be ready. You can also go in after it and try to excise it from your skin. Or you can let it run through its life cycle and erupt on its own. However, since each of these options still involves a small worm making its way from under my skin to its surface, you can understand that I have been eager to avoid any acquaintance, however passing, with the critters. I therefore choose to wash all of my laundry in the sink and hang it up to dry in my room.

Until this week, that is. I was trying to frantically pack up my room for the big move to Ifakara, my field site. I had a couple of things that desperately needed to be washed, but the only way they were going to dry fast enough for me to finish packing was if I hung them outside. So I did. Not thinking, two days later I wore one of them. Didn’t even cross my mind until last night…when I noticed a weird itchy red bump on my knee.

I should backtrack a bit. Yesterday was the day of the move. Boarding the bus at 6:45am, we sat at the bus station until 9am before finally pulling out on the road to Ifakara. I had last made this journey in 2011 and I remember as a 10 hour long arduous nightmare with no bathroom breaks. Fortunately this time I was leaving from Morogoro rather than Dar, which shaves 3-4 hours off the trip. Unfortunately, my memory of no bathroom breaks appeared to be accurate. My solution was to eat and drink nothing from the time I woke up to the time I arrived in Ifakara nearly eleven hours later.

We left Morogoro and headed west on the Dar road. As I watched the mountains surrounding the town fall behind I couldn’t help but feel a bit sad, despite my new adventure. I had really fallen a little in love with Morogoro while I lived there and felt I had made a wonderful group of friends. It seemed a bit cruel that I had to leave again so soon after returning from the States and that after spending three months in one social circle, I had to start again in a new place. But that conflicted with my other major feeling, which was of excitement. I love to travel and I love to go somewhere new. Even more importantly, I was finally going to be able to start my research, the culmination of years of work to this point.

The trip was long and fairly uneventful. The scenery was beautiful in many places because you pass through Mikumi National Park and by the Udzungwa Mountains on the way. I had a front row seat on the bus, and so was able to look out the large windshield and had a bit more leg room than usual. In Mikumi, I saw the same baboons, gazelles, and giraffes as usual (yes, I have progressed to the point where seeing giraffes is now like seeing deer in the US), but also this time caught a glimpse of zebras and wildebeasts. Unfortunately we were moving too quickly for pictures, so those will have to wait until my safari next weekend. The mountains were also beautiful, and I’m hoping to have a chance to explore them while I’m in Ifakara.

I pulled into Ifakara around three in the afternoon and found a taxi to take me to the guest house the professor I am working with suggested. It is nothing fancy but it was clean and had a ceiling fan and I plan to only be here a couple days or so. Of course the shower doesn’t work, so I am using a small spigot a foot and a half off the ground for washing. Still, overall happy.

Except for the red, itchy bump that I noticed on my knee as I was getting ready for bed last night. Usually I would assume mosquito bite, but this didn’t look like the typical bite and had what looked like a white patch forming on its head. Now if you know me at all, you know that I am often a bit obsessive about health issues, and it is not unusual for me to diagnose myself with the help of my dangerous amount of health knowledge and my intimate relationship with WebMD. I fired up the computer and began comparing pictures of mango fly bites with my knee. They looked similar. I poked, I prodded. I went to bed and tried to sleep, but every hour or so, I would turn on my flashlight and take another look. The white part was getting larger, and a black speck appeared in the middle of it. “Here we go,” “I thought, “my first time.” Was there a breathing hole? Maybe? Sometimes it looked like it. Sometimes not. I poked and prodded some more. I covered it repeatedly in Vaseline. I don’t know why I thought it would be better to see the worm come out than to have it come out in my sleep if it chose to do so, but what can I say, I have a morbid curiosity. The white part bulged and the black speck appeared closer to the surface. I couldn’t sleep. I tried to read. I forced myself to wait another hour before checking again. Finally around 3am, as I poked it some more, the bump came to a head and burst open, releasing….

….pus. A whole lot of pus. We’re talking an unreasonable amount, actually, for such a small bump. Apparently I simply had a badly infected mosquito bite. So sadly, dear reader, you will have to wait a bit longer until I experience my first mango fly.

A Quick Plug…

Posted on 8 May 2013 by potholesandpilipili

When I first came to Tanzania, the plan was to spend 2 months in language school and the following 8 months conducting research at my field site. Unfortunately, the illness episode hit and my trip back to the States delayed my well-laid plans because it didn’t make sense to move to Ifakara before I knew if I would be coming back to Tanzania. But now there is no reason to delay further. Since I’ve been back, I have been very busy preparing for the move to my field site in Ifakara, a small rural town southwest of Morogoro. I will be living there for the remainder of the year and conducting my research with the cervical cancer screening program at the hospital there. So my days recently have been filled with laundry, buying supplies, visiting favorite places, and saying goodbye to friends. One of those friends is Ingrid, a German woman who is has been here in Tanzania for three years as a missionary with the Lutheran Church.

A pet project of Ingrid’s has involved working with and supporting a group of craftsman in Morogoro in their bid to rent space for an artists’ co-op where they can sell their work. Her (and their) work has finally come to fruition and I was excited to see the early stages of the space’s development before I left. Some friends and I stopped by the set of spaces the craftsmen have rented in a single story building in town. The group includes two painters, a fundi who sews cloth goods, a furniture maker, a woodcarver, and a baker. They have painted the interiors bright beautiful colors and had set up a few displays to showcase their goods. Currently, the rooms were not stocked, but a small subset of goods had been brought in. These included a handful of paintings, a very comfortable chair, cloth bags, floor mats, and blankets. My friend’s new puppy nosed around while we admired the goods and picked out a few things to buy to support the new venture. We also were able to meet Mama Blasida, the baker who will sell her creations out of one of the storefronts. It was a great opportunity to share in this blossoming enterprise and on the extremely small chance that any of you ever make it to Morogoro, I would like to recommend that you check out Aminifu Craft Group!

A Night For Netball

Posted on 4 May 2013 by potholesandpilipili

Today’s entry will be short and sweet. I just returned to Morogoro, so between catching up with friends and sleep, there is not a lot to share. However, tonight was the night of the student-teacher football match at the secondary school that shares a campus with our language school. The field was packed with participants and spectators, and we could hear the cheering from the dining hall. A few of us decided to wander over a take a look but were quickly distracted by the goings-on at our end of the field. The football match was made up entirely of boys, but on a small, make-shift basketball court on the near end of the clearing, a group of girls and women were engaged in what at first glance looked like a pick-up basketball game. I love basketball, so naturally my curiosity was peaked and I went over to watch.

Quickly I saw however that it was unlike any basketball game I had ever played. There were too many players on the court. The players didn’t move around the full length of the court, but rather seemed to stick to certain areas. About half the girls were wearing soccer uniforms, so we determined that they were one team- the students- and that the teachers in street clothes made up the other team. Many played barefoot. Instead of dribbling (which would have been difficult on the dirt ground), the players would stop as soon as they received the ball and would not move until they could pass it up the court. Once the ball made it to the end, the ball was passed to a player inside a small half circle outlined in the ground. No other player entered the half circle, and the player, without jumping would throw the ball up and try to score through a metal hoop with no net. At first, I was confused. Was this basketball with concessions made to the limits of the playing surface and lack of a backboard?

Calling over to one of the students, we asked her what they were playing. “Netball,” she replied. I had heard of netball, but since girls in the States have played basketball for several decades now instead, I didn’t realize that it was still popular in other areas of the world. She laughingly told us we should join in, but since we didn’t know the rules and it was really an event for the students and teachers to bond, we declined and stayed on as spectators.

A Homecoming

Posted on 3 May 2013 by potholesandpilipili

After a delightful 22 hours in Amsterdam, I made the last little jaunt back down to Tanzania. Originally I had planned to spend a day or two in Dar es Salaam and I booked a night at the Transit Motel just near the airport to catch up on some sleep before moving somewhere more central in the city. But the truth is, when I woke up in the morning, I was so antsy to get back to Morogoro that I decided instead to go directly to the bus station. Fortunately, I was able to get on a bus right away and by mid-day, was on my way.

As the landscape rolled by, I have to confess I felt thrilled to be back. It was a surprising feeling in a way. The first time I came to Tanzania three years ago, I felt a little ambivalent about it. I liked it, but I wasn’t immediately drawn to it in the way that I have felt in only a few other places during my life. But it sneaks up on you. At first, the heat and bustle can be overwhelming. But now, I reveled in the beautiful scenery, the sounds of Swahili, the bright colors of kangas and kitenge around me. After three hours, the green mountains of Morogoro came into view and I felt like I was coming home.

I had texted friends in Morogoro to let them know I was coming, and luckily Shantelle said she could come pick me up at the bus station. I had two very large duffle bags with me that I could only just carry, so I appreciated the ride. Unfortunately, I arrived a little bit early, and so as I exited the bus and waited for the bus driver to open the luggage doors, I was surrounded by porters eager to carry my bags for an exorbitant tip. They are extremely aggressive and often pull your bags from your hands, relying on speed and the fact that you probably don’t speak Swahili and can’t protest to “encourage” you to use their service. Then they insist, sometimes to the point of following you from the bus station, that you pay them a tip that is sometimes reasonable, but oftentimes equal to the cost of your actual bus ticket, just for carrying your bags all of twenty feet to a taxi. I don’t mind tipping for actual services rendered and so sometimes I won’t fight this if I have a lot of luggage. But today, having just arrived, I had no small bills and furthermore, simply needed to pull my luggage from the bus and sit on the platform until my ride appeared. So I was having none of it. The minute the doors were opened, I had the top half of my body completely inside the compartment pulling my bags free. Immediately, hands on all sides descended, grabbing handles, offering assistance. Swinging the bags from side to side, I muscled my way out of the crowd, saying “I don’t need help!” in Swahili over and over to the crowd of men around me. I emerged from the throng, plunked one bag on top of the other, sat down firmly, and cross my arms, ready to wait.

Of course, this attracted a lot of laughter, and after the initial buzz around the bus dispersed, I found myself the object of curiosity by some of those same porters. Soon a small group had gathered around me, eager to see how much Swahili I knew and if I wanted to exchange phone numbers and be “friends.” I quickly realized how much I had forgotten just by being home for five weeks, but at least I was able to have a simple conversation (and avoid contracting a new boyfriend by saying I was only there for a few days). Shortly after, Shantelle arrived.

She drove me to the language school, where we were just in time for tea. Nearly everyone I knew was still a student or living there, and after greeting all of the teachers and staff (and being told over and over how kibonge, or fat, I had gotten while home- which given how much weight I had lost while sick was, I hope, meant to be a compliment), I found myself settled outside on the benches with a cup of tea and good friends. It was so wonderful to see everyone again, it hardly seemed like it had been over a month since I left.

And…I’m Back!

Posted on 30 April 2013 by potholesandpilipili

So my temporary hiccup turned out to be five weeks at home with my parents, getting medical tests and recuperating. The best case scenario happened and it turned out that my Dar es Salaam doctor’s fears of a more serious chronic condition were unfounded. After consulting with a doctor in the United States, it looks like I was simply the victim of a severe viral infection, likely from bad food or water. After A LOT of rest, I am much better than I was and incredibly excited to be back. Even though the doc says it may be as long as six months before all of my symptoms go away, I feel quite grateful that this problem was not long-term.

I arrived back in Tanzania on April 29^th, after a short stopover in Amsterdam. With a 22 hour layover there I decided I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go into the city since I had never been before. Fortunately, they make it easy to do so. Lockers are located right next to the customs line at the airport, which is also connected to the train station, so it was simply a matter of dropping off everything but a small backpack in a locker, a five minute wait in the customs line, another five minute wait for a train ticket, and then I was sitting watching the Dutch countryside go by.

The one thing I have always wanted to see in Amsterdam is the Van Gogh museum. When I was a kid, my family spent four months traveling through Western Europe because my father had a fellowship to study the architecture of new museums in the region. Imagine two adults, three kids aged ten and under, two (yes, only two) suitcases, and a pet grasshopper in an old mint chocolate chip ice cream carton (R.I.P.), all packed into a small car on a four-month road trip. During that time, we traveled through England, Scotland, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. As a result, I spent more time in museums before the age of eleven than most people do in a lifetime. For me, life-long nerd and bookworm that I am, it was mostly great. Sure I got bored or restless on occasion, but in general I was old enough to appreciate the art and history. My poor baby sister who was only five at the time still gets slightly twitchy whenever anyone suggests a museum trip.

As a way to keep us engaged, our parents encouraged us to use sketchbooks, explore the galleries, and talk about our favorites. As a kid, mine was always Van Gogh. His works were the first I would seek out if the museum contained them, and I would always notice on the information signs when works were on loan from the museum in Amsterdam. I asked my parents about it- a whole museum devoted to Van Gogh, they told me! But, unfortunately, even though it seemed to me at the time that we were going to every city in Europe, Amsterdam wasn’t on our itinerary. So this time, I was determined. Twenty-two hours in Amsterdam? PLENTY of time!

But fate has a funny sense of humor. Twenty-one years I had been waiting for this opportunity. I would no longer consider Van Gogh my biggest art-world crush, but I still have a strong affection for him. So when I went online to book a ticket for the museum and avoid the lines, I was slightly devastated to learn that the Van Gogh museum was closed for one four-day stretch during 2013. Guess when it fell? But while I am occasionally one to complain when things don’t go my way, I am certainly not one to let it ruin a trip. So I did a bit more research, picked up a little tourist map, and when my train arrived in Amsterdam I was ready for exploration.

I got into town around 3pm and, by sheer fluke, the hotel I had booked, The Bellevue, was right across the river from the train station. I seriously had not even looked at a map until I was on the train; I just made sure the description online said that it was downtown. So, I checked in and dropped off my bags in the efficiently designed Ikea-decorated room and twenty minutes later was sitting on the back of a tour boat in the river. I couldn’t tell you anything historically interesting about the buildings or neighborhoods we went through because the guide was inside and we couldn’t hear him on the deck, but after the previous 24 hours spent either in airports or on planes there was no way I was going to spend another hour cooped up. So despite the chill and the wind, I spent the next glorious hour soaking up sunshine and architecture and feeling very, very lucky.

The next day was to be a national holiday in the Netherlands- Queen’s Day- which promised to be an even bigger event than usual due to the fact that the current queen was stepping down to make way for her son. I couldn’t stay for the big celebration since I would be flying out at 10am, but it was clear that Amsterdammers were starting the party early. All over the city, as we made our way through the canals, we saw decorations being hung and boats being readied for the water. Many people had finished their preparations and were lazily tooling down the canals with friends, music, and bottles of wine, just enjoying the day. Nor were residents of the many houseboats that line the banks to be left out; deck tables and chairs were set out and greetings shouted down to us as we went by.

After a thoroughly enjoyable hour, I left the tour boat behind and walked towards the Dam, the large square downtown. On the way, I stopped to buy a collectable spoon (yes, I collect spoons during my travels; yes, I am a senior citizen) and marveled at the sheer amount of nudity on Amsterdam postcards. My little tourist map noted that there wasn’t much reason to hang out in the Dam, and sure enough, there wasn’t. Other than one wonderful, delightful little trio of musicians, that is. Now, in my lifetime, I have seen hundreds of street musicians. If you live in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, or any number of cities, you’ve probably seen many too. But never in my life, ever, have I seen (or thought I would want to see) a trio comprised of an accordion and two saxophones. Perhaps this is perfectly normal in some places and I don’t know why I thought it was so funny, but I literally burst out laughing in the middle of the square. They were actually lovely to listen to and completely fit the mood of the day. Alas, I had limited time and a city to see, so after depositing a few euros in their hat, I moved on.

I was very interested in seeing the Anne Frank House, but knew it had a reputation for incredibly long lines (understandably). Still, it was only 5pm and it was open until 9pm, so I decided to make my way over there. When I arrived, true to what I’d read the line wrapped around the block. It was a Sunday evening and I thought that perhaps the line would get shorter as it got later since people were likely working or traveling the next day. So I spent a fantastic couple of hours just wandering. Which is really the best thing to do in a new place, in my opinion. Amsterdam is a beautiful city, and with the festive atmosphere, I could not have had a better day. I didn’t want to waste daylight hours eating dinner, but I did feel that I would be remiss in not enjoying a half hour with a glass of wine at an outdoor café, so I checked that off my list and watched the bicycles roll by before heading back to the Ann Frank House at 7:30pm. The line was still around the block when I returned, though not as far around the block as before. I think it speaks to the impact that her story has still today that by 8:30pm on a very cold, windy Sunday night, there was still an hour’s wait to get in. Even once they came out and said that most of us probably wouldn’t get in before the 8:30 cutoff, people stayed. Luckily, I was made it in.

The Anne Frank House is one of those things that you should really see for yourself. Perhaps it is partly that I grew up in a city with a large Jewish population and so the Holocaust loomed larger in the social mind. But for me, it was a very powerful experience and one I would recommend to any visitor to Amsterdam. It’s hard to really describe the emotional impact and physical aspects of the house, so I will just say that we were able to go through the whole annex, which is fascinating for anyone who has read her diary or knows the story. Below, in the newer part of the museum, we were able to see actual pages from Anne Frank’s diaries, as well as video recordings of her childhood friends talking about what they remembered of her. It can be easy to feel disconnected from history at times, but these videos were a stark reminder that Anne Frank was not only a real person living through such atrocities, but a child too.

When I finally made my way back out to the street, it was nearly 9:30pm and I was pooped. Between the two flights and walking around all day, plus jet lag, I could barely keep my eyes open. I was also starving. Knowing I would never have the energy to order a meal in a restaurant and stay awake long enough for it to arrive, I kept a look out as I strolled back and found a tiny to-go pizza place near my hotel. Amsterdam was even more beautiful at night, and I was truly sorry to have to make my way up to my room.