Reflections on sunday : Oh, Africa, that some of us still suffer jigger-infestation!

Today is 10.10.10. Interesting date, don’t you think? Imagine, the next time we are ever going to see a similar date will be the next millennium, (30)10! When it comes, I guess we should celebrate. Hoping, of course, that you’ll be in my corner of Heaven. Hoping, too, that there is life after death. But there must be, else this would be an unfair world. I would hate to imagine that a person who has led a life of jiggers and is killed by them just disappears like a person who has led a life of plenty, and nothing happens to finally level them. If you are like my dictionary, maybe you don’t know what a ‘jigger’ is. You see, when I check for the meaning, my pea-brained dictionary assures me the word means ‘gadget’, ‘drop’, apparatus’ or ‘glass’! You’d think the damn thing was born in the Rwanda of today, where jiggers have become a thing of the past. But why blame this innocent dictionary? I’m sure it was created by an Englishman who was born after the jiggers had been eradicated in his country. Yet all he’d have needed would have been to visit any of our neighbouring countries, where even today stories abound of people dying from jigger attacks. So, if you read the story of Mzee Augustin Okoth’s family and didn’t understand what was afflicting it, go to your computer. In Google, punch in the words ‘jigger’, ‘chigger’, ‘chigoe’, ‘bicho do pé’ or simply ‘sand flea’. When you see the meaning, your first reaction may be a chuckle. With the spread of hygiene and shoes among Rwandans, for that’s all that’s needed, jigger-infestation has been eradicated. But what you don’t know is that as recently as 1993, jiggers were a living reality, just as they were and still are in countries sharing our borders. When I see Mzee Okoth’s wife, Justine Okoth, being assisted to walk because her feet are sore with jiggers, I shudder. I shudder because I am catapulted back to the painful veracity of the 1950s. Then, an army of jiggers had erected a permanent garrison in my feet and knees, sometimes even encroaching on my elbows. I remember the first jigger that took up residence in my big toe. I woke up one fine morning feeling a bitter-sweet itch: bitter because it was irritating but sweet because it felt pleasant when scratched. In the end I let it be, even if I could clearly see the black dot on my skin. However, by the third morning the dots had increased to three and the first one had become very painful. Surprisingly, extracting them felt pleasant and I sat down with a safety pin and removed them with pleasure. Fool me, though, I didn’t seek old folks’ wisdom on exactly what to do with the open sores. I knew the technique of removing the jiggers, all right. You see, the female flea (like mosquitoes and other predators, yes!) burrows into your skin and lodges there, when it is pregnant. It sucks your blood while the posterior end is outside the skin to ease disposal of eggs and waste. The exterior end is the black spot on your skin. Extracting the jigger is rather like extracting a tuber, like cassava or potatoes. You carefully widen the opening in your skin, around the black spot, and then lift the jigger, which by the end of three days is swollen with eggs. This must be done carefully so as not to puncture the flea and spill the eggs in your open wound or else they’ll mature inside again. I followed this procedure to the letter, but my folly was in leaving those open wounds. The following morning, the pain in those wounds was excruciating because multiple jiggers were already lodged there. Now, if you think you know what pain is, try to push a pin in those open wounds! I was not ready to commit suicide and, for the following weeks, the jiggers ravaged my feet, my knees and even climbed to the elbows at liberty. I went into hiding since I knew that my old folks would get them forcefully removed if they saw them. When they finally caught up with me, however, I was left looking worse than a messed-up quarry! I didn’t get up from my bed until after a month. Luckily, my wounds were smeared with cow ghee and I didn’t get tetanus or gangrene and I didn’t lose any limb. Even then, though, jiggers continued to stealthily enter my feet but this time I removed them regularly. The consequence of this constant removal is that the toes, and fingers if also affected, acquire big heads. In their swollen state, also, the toes tend to push the feet outward. Why this is so, search me, but that means that the oldies who were once victims of jigger-infestation can never hope to escape the scrutiny of those among you who are given to a streak of malice. But, malicious souls, I assure thee that thou beareth us thy malice in vain! ingina2@yahoo.co.uk