Tuesday, September 04, 2007

I really hope it doesn't happen to me...

One of the annoying things about the rainy season, besides all the mosquitoes and flies, is how difficult it is to do laundry.  You do your laundry on a sunny morning, thinking maybe it won't rain today, or at least maybe your clothes will be dry before it rains.  But inevitably, it will begin pouring with no warning while your clothes are still hanging on the line.
 
Leaving you with a choice: leave them hanging on the line, waiting for the sun to come out and give them a second chance at drying again, or bring them inside and hang them up, where they won't dry very well, but at least they won't get any wetter.
 
Sounds like just one of the many challenges of simple daily living here.  But there is an evil twist: mango flies!  They will lay eggs in your clothes while they are hanging up to dry.  If the sun is out, it kills the eggs, which are too small to see, so you will never know and it will never matter.  But during the rainy season, lacking that bright hot sun to dry your clothes, the eggs don't die.  They lie in wait for you to put on your clothes, and then they hatch and the little maggots burrow into your skin to continue growing, creating giant painful bumps that they will eventually pop out of.  Or that you will pop yourself, thinking it is a boil or something, only to discover a little maggot wriggling around inside you that you must pull out with tweezers.
 
Such has been the sad, sad (disgusting!) fate of a fellow volunteer, who shall remain anonymous to protect his privacy (although I think he has written about it on his own blog). 
 
Just when we were all starting to calm down about our fears about parasites and malaria.  Now I am freaking out about mango fly larvae popping out of me.  EW!

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