While in Swaziland, I had to learn how to wash my clothes in a river. On the surface, that doesn’t seem to be all that difficult. And in general, it is not. Except for washing bluejeans. They are big, and thick, and it takes forever to rinse the soap out of them. And jeans are hard to wring out. Also, you have to keep from letting them touch the bottom of the river while smooshing them around to get the soap gone. Rivers in Swaziland, where I was, were only 6 inches deep, maybe a foot deep if it rained recently. But if they brush against the bottom, they get a muddy ugly greasy smear on them, and rewashing them to get the mud stain out, is harder than the original washing. The stuff sticks like the devil. Then, when you have the pile washed, and piled on the bank, you need to put them somewhere to dry. It is tempting to spread them out on a sunny flat rock, and let the heat from the rock and sun dry them more quickly.

Swazis would hang their washing on tree branches, or on a nearby barb wire fence. And if the wind blew at all, they would become hooked on the thorns of the tree, (Almost all the trees in Elulakeni near the river were thorn trees) or they would become wrapped around the barbs on the fence wire. Because the barbed wire was rusty, it would often leave rusty lines across your nice clean clothes. Especially white t-shirts. Sometimes my t-shirts would come out looking like I was a punk rocker, from the barb wire imprints. They dried much cleaner if you dried them on the rocks, and quicker too. I often wondered why the swazis never did that. One thing you learn, in a foreign country, is that the people did things based on years of experience, and to imitate them could avoid the problems that they knew about, but maybe you did not. Such was the case with drying clothes.

There were these insects in Swaziland called Toomba flies. They would be flying along, and see clothes drying on a flat rock in the sun, all warm and moist, and would fly underneath the clothes, and lay their eggs on the underside, and fly away again. Then the clothes would dry, and you would fold them up, and put them away. Then, later, you would take out your t-shirt, and put it on, and go down to school, and the heat of your body, and your sweat, would cause the deposited eggs to hatch, and the larvae would burrow into your skin, and begin to grow. Toomba larvae would grow to 6 inches or longer, while safely burrowed into your skin, and it would cause a boil like bump on your skin. At some point, the boil would become an issue for you. It would itch, and keep getting bigger, until you had to do something about it. The safe solution was to pop the boil, and grasp the end of the larvae, which would be wiggling around, and SLOWLY pull it out of the boil. You had to try and get the toomba larvae out whole, because if you broke it, and part of it, now dead, stayed in your skin, it would fester, and become infected, and would require cutting into the boil, now a painful infected sore on you, to remove the left over part. I, fortunately, had read about this, in the copious information that every Peace Corps volunteer is innundated with during training. So, I, like my Swazi compatriots and fellow teachers, hung my clothes on thorn trees and barbed wire fences.

Not so for all volunteers. One day I was visiting a fellow volunteer in town, and after dinner that night, he asked me to look at some sores on his back. He had 3 rather large swolen boils there, and in looking, I saw the end of a larvae sticking out of one of the boils. I knew immediately that it was what I had read about. It was a friday night, and the Peace Corps office was closed saturday and sunday, and this week, monday too, because it was a holiday weekend. I told him that he would have to go into the office early tuesday, to have the medical officer take a look. I told him about toomba flies. He kinda freaked out. Me too, it was making me feel queasy.

Him: Tuesday? Is it bad? 

Me: There is a worm sticking out of one of your sores.

Him: Aaaaaa! Is it gross?

Me: Yes. It is so creepy. it is wiggling around. Your sores are getting infected, and are really red and swollen.

Him: Man, you have to pull it out, and the others too! I can’t live with this until tuesday.

Me: Are you sure? It is probably gonna hurt.

Him: Yes, yes! You have to pull them out!

In Peace Corps, you sometimes had to deal with things like this. I felt kinda sick to my stomach. He was really freaking out. And I knew that, in his shoes, I would want them out right then too. The idea of sleeping and going about my bidness knowing there were live larvae rooting around in me, would be more than I could handle, so I said ok. 

I took out my ever present pocket knife, razor sharp because I was a woodworking teacher and had a wetstone, and kept it that way. I sterilized it in a candle flame. I told him not to flinch, and hold still, and I made a small cut next to the worm. It came out a little, and was waving around. GROOOSSSS!! But he needed help, so I really had no choice. I grasped the end of the worm in my fingertips, and slowly started pulling on it. The more it came out, the stronger was my urge to vomit. I could see and feel it writhing around. The first one was about 6 inches long, when I finally got it out, whole, and I put it on the table. He looked at it, and screamed like a little girl, watching it wiggling blindly around. Me too, I was screaming inside.

I got the other two out whole too, both only about 4 inches long. It required more cutting, and I have to give him credit, he sat there and let me, with only a little moaning when I cut the skin. It was a harrowing experience for me. I am not a doctor, and don’t think I could ever be one. I mopped the blood off the sores, and he got out his Official Peace Corps medical kit, a plastic box they gave us during training, full mostly with useless patent medicines, but also had iodine swabs, and a tube of generic antibiotic ointment, and I iodined the wounds, and schmeared on some ointment, and put on bandaids. My hands were shaking. It was the second most gross thing that I had to do while in Africa.

He went to the Peace Corps doc on tuesday, and everything was groovy. And once again, I gave thanks for being an avid reader of the information that Peace Corps gave us.

Friendship Matters