Parasites and diseases at Palotaka: Our Childhoods’ Nightmares.
7 min readBy Kur Wel Kur
Dear readers,
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“The healthy ones cared for the ailing ones; if God sent an angel of death to detract some among them, they buried their dead ones.”(Kuol Manyang Juuk: Tell Ajoh’s Children, Stories of Liberation and Peace in South Sudan)
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No children must grow, learn and live far away from their biological parents, even in the face of abject poverty, children should look in the eyes of mothers whose tears stream down, warming their cheeks as they see poverty written over their children. Children must find themselves as they break into the dark corners of their maturity in the watchful eyes and under the rays of their parents’ love.
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In the blazing furnaces of high fever, children hope for soothing hands, determining bodies’ temperatures, on their foreheads and words of concerns from their parents. However, at Palotaka, we stared straight in eyes of the angels of deaths; those angels (of deaths) reserved the ‘killer diseases’ and allowed the opportunistic diseases to extinguish our precious but vulnerable lives. Some of us died of nostalgia.
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As routines of going to work and of taking classes sank in our veins, our growing cells, tissues, organs and systems (body’s) yearned for balanced diets; unthinkable dream, so malnourished, we became. Fatigue enslaved us so we failed to care for ourselves. Parasites scrambled and partitioned our dear bodies. Jiggers, lice and bed-bugs sucked our blood from our heads to our toes.
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Jiggers
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Jiggers (chigoe fleas), tiny dark red insects (endoparasites), that live in the sand and dusty places. Only breeding females burrow under the hosts’ skins; they expose only the breathing, the reproducing, and the excreting organs. In Palotaka, these notorious parasites sent most of us to edges of their endurance; they attacked the vulnerable parts such as under the toes, under the fingers, in between the webs of toes and the webs of the fingers, around the palms, soles and in extreme cases, jiggers attacked the knees and elbows, especially on the top of the “funny bone”.
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Jiggers maimed many boys because they (jiggers) displaced fingers’ and toes’ nails. As a result, the parasites deformed the affected fingers and toes. Itching and irritating that accompanied the feeding of the parasite tossed the victims into emotional and psychological despair, especially when the Jigger severely affected their (victims’) fingers (digits) so they couldn’t scratch.
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Out of those parasites: lice, bed bugs and scabies; jiggers terrorised us. As opportunistic parasites, jiggers infested the lazy older and young boys. Females(jiggers), under the hosts’ skins, sprayed the ground with thousands of tiny eggs, white as snow and watered the feet of the victims with their( jiggers’) waste products so the feet, always remained wet; the victims would flounder or waddle because of jiggers’ injuries.
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The horrible smell from jiggers’ injuries sickened the air. Though with their fingers and toes deformed, groups’ leaders expected the jiggers’ victims to attend work! An impossible demand because most of the work in Palotaka involved either trekking (barefooted) to the forests for hatching materials or pacing to the teachers’ and ‘hakuma'(government ) farm(s) for cultivating or weeding . But none of the jobs was easy to even healthy boys, leave alone the jiggers’ victims.
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Lice
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Lice, being ectoparasites and wingless, they crawled to explore areas of untidy clothes and dirty unkempt heads; two different lice infested us: head lice colonised our heads; the parasites mimicked the hair colours, which ease theirs camouflage so the black lice buried themselves in our hairs; however, theirs eggs stayed cream, which dangled on tips of the hairs above the ears, sides of heads (humans’), foreheads and the back of the heads. The parasites preferred to glue theirs eggs in less hairs dense areas of humans’ heads, maybe theirs eggs need sunlight to hatch but the lice, themselves, crawled deep into densely parts of the heads.
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However, the body lice, specialised to live under dirty clothes, they look ed pale white and bigger than head lice; they found theirs comfort in the seams where they retired after feeding. They glued their eggs in seams because some ( of our clothes) seams’ ends stand serrated, which became hatching homes for the parasites’ eggs.
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Itching and irritating symptoms that followed when the parasites imbibed some blood, crazed us. At night, the scraping sounds filled our dormitories; the sounds sickened the ears and scratches that resulted from scraping, burst into gangrenes, which emitted the rotting smells as the oxygen drove out the gases such as methane, hydrogen and hydrogen sulphide.
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During the day, especially in summer times, we quarreled and wrestled for spaces in our groups’ compounds to spread our lice infested clothes under the glaring sun. The sun would lash the lice with its scorching beams; however, the legions of lice would survive, which continued their parasitic lives on us. In the whole of 1991 and half of 1992, we would scan around for sheets of rusted metals or cans in order to cut out pieces.
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We ground the rough edges by rubbing those rusted metals against rocks to attain smooth and sharp edges. We pruned our hairs with those rusted metal pieces; after which we used corncob as a comb to scoop out the battalions of lice. Friends flocked under trees, taking turns to cut or scan their hairs for lice as monkeys do; some did good jobs, but others tortured their friends as they half-pull the hairs instead of just pruning them. The blood oozed endlessly as the desperate rescue mission continued.
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Bed-bugs
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As we stayed in Palotaka, the busy minds among us embarked on solving some of our problems, problems such as sleeping on floors, by sculpting or crafting beds out of woods (teaks). However, every problem we solved, stemmed off, even more complex problems. Our wooden beds attracted bedbugs. As other annoying and blood-sucking parasites, bedbugs feed in stealth manners; we would experience their bites after they disappeared. They became active at night (nocturnal); and they emitted pungent smells.
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We would submerge our beds in the nearby ponds or leave them outside under the pouring rains or under the scorching summer Sun. However, three to four months later, though their body weight reduced and their colours changed from dark-red to pale pink, bedbugs would still be alive. We would shake our beds, lift them and drop them to expel bedbugs; and yet the eggs when they hatch, would continue the lives of their parents, sucking our blood.
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Apart from parasites, we suffered from other communicable diseases such as flu, malaria and chickenpox. No medicine and we couldn’t prevent them from infecting us either. Our inexperience to identify seriousness of some infectious diseases made our situations worse. Some boys would complain of pain in their joints, necks or backs; however, groups’ leaders would think those boys faked sicknesses in order not to attend work or school. Some boys lost their lives as a result.
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Chickenpox
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Chickenpox burst in Palotaka; a cousin of mine caught it (chickenpox) before everyone else. The teachers quarantined him in some 15 minutes pace, house. However, after a day, more boys joined him; more boys continued to pour in, every day. Chickenpox came with high fever, skin rashes and torturing blisters. The victims would shower in every 30 minutes to cool off and would cover their naked bodies with blankets and bed sheets because of blisters.The doctor administered no medicines except some hydrogen peroxide on their blisters. Chickenpox continued to infect us until over 75% of us caught the disease. Fortunately, it (chickenpox) took no life.
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In conclusion, No children should lead their ways in emotional maturity and in psychological healing; children look over their shoulders to check their parents’ approval in order to tackle problems. In all their talents, their parents become their first fans; children need their parents’ presence for them (children) to attain their normal growth.
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In the face of high fever that discourages the appetite, children long for their parents’ voices; the gentle and the caring voices, which encourage them to eat, by describing the ingredients in the presented foods; voices, which assure them that they will recover soon.
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Above all, children shouldn’t dispose ones of their own
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Yrs. faithfully,
KUR WEL KUR.
KUR WEL KUR.
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