A Gross Story

It’s been 10 months since I arrived in Togo and I’ve tried to be pretty good about keeping up a blog. It can be difficult to think of things to write about when life here now seems so mundane and normal to me, but I know that it’s just because I’ve gotten used to things and my daily stories might still be interesting to those of you living back in America. Anyways, in my blogs I think I’ve been fairly good at holding back on some of the grosser details of life in Togo, since I know that people don’t always want to read about bad bowel movements, open sewers, public defecation, rodents, unsanitary street food, bugs, and more. However, as you would expect from the lower levels of hygiene and sanitation that come from living in one of the world’s poorest countries (the Human Development Index ranks Togo as 30th from the bottom), life here can get, well, a little gross. Since this is part of my daily life, I thought it was time to share a gross story.

This past week, I had the pleasure of dealing with my dog falling victim to Tumbu flies. These are wonderful flies that lay their eggs in sand and soil. When the eggs hatch, the larvae search for an animal host and they burrow themselves under the animal’s skin. The larvae then grow and flourish and then after a week, pop out of the animal, become flies, and continue the cycle. I first noticed that my dog had bumps and I assumed they were just bug bites. However, my friend Maggie’s dog had had the Tumbu flies earlier in the year and I was nervous every time I saw a bump that it would be that, so I gave her a call to ask what I should look for. At home, you might call your friends to make a plan to meet up for dinner or to go out for the night, but in Peace Corps Togo, you call other volunteers with questions like “What did those Tumbu fly bumps look like?”, “What did you say worked best to kill all those flies in your latrine?”, “You had amoebas last month, right? What were your symptoms like?”, “When you got bit by that blister beetle, what did your skin look like?”, or “How did you get the bugs to leave your oatmeal?” So, the answer to my question about Tumbu flies, was that you can tell the bumps are caused by them when you see a small hole at the top of the bump; the larvae’s breathing hole. Sadly enough, when I looked closely at the bump, I could see those little breathing holes and my heart sank. I then went outside to ask my host dad about it, as I do when anything weird or gross happens that I don’t know how to deal with. He’s always there to lend a helping hand, whether it’s chasing a bat out of my house or using his machete to scrape a dead mouse of my floor that I found when I got back from vacation. Once again, Tchirifou came to the rescue. He immediately knew what Jeeves had, apparently it’s quite common in dogs here, and stepped up to pop out the first larvae. I held Jeeves while my host dad squeezed a larvae out of him. I was very mature and made squealing and gagging noises the entire time. Unfortunately, Jeeves had about 30 of these bumps and over the next 2 days, I became a real pro and was able to hold Jeeves under one arm and, in one swift motion, pop out a larvae with the other hand and then quickly squish it with my shoe. It finally seems that all the larvae are gone and dead and I can only hope that he won’t roll around in soil where Tumbu flies have lain their eggs and get them again. My even bigger fear, of course, is that I will end up with the larvae in me, since they apparently can lay their eggs in drying laundry. Now that I know these flies are in my village, I have one more thing to worry about getting, but it’s apparently rare for humans to get them, so that’s a slight consolation.

Anyways, so there is a nice gross story for you. It’s been 10 months and it was time to share one. Otherwise, things are going well. We’re busy planning for our girl’s camp and the rains keep on coming, bringing cooler weather and making life a lot more pleasant here overall.