Sometimes you have an unlucky day. Like when you eat something, but a fly landed on your food before you eat it. And that fly happened to have had dirty little feet because it had been on someone’s contaminated feces before. And then you may think you are eating a delicious steak but really, you are eating a little ticking bomb that will cause some SERIOUS stomach cramps. And then you end up having an unlucky week. Or almost 2 weeks now in my case. And you spend one whole night on your knees in the washroom in an old, dirty Air Nigeria plane, up till the point that you think you have figured out which of the Russian words on the door of the washroom means ‘smoke alarm’. (Don’t ask me why the plane was Russian, or whether that means it was not good enough anymore to fly in Russia but is still fine in West-Africa, I don’t want to know). I could have been wrong anyway, probably smoking is allowed on planes in Russia. Surprisingly a nearly deadly amount of antibiotics didn’t do the trick for long. Thinking I would be fine, I flew up north again for some field work, but shivering with fever I flew back to Accra again after a few days. So, unlucky it was. But good thing my friends always look at the bright side of things. Friend J sent me an email recommending to ‘at least enjoy feeling nice and skinny’, which made me laugh and think about Mariah Carey.
And another friend who works on water and sanitation issues is happy I now appreciate more her efforts in promoting hand-washing with soap and building more toilets so people don’t go to the bush everywhere. In my feverish dreams I was thinking about Mao though (I know, that sounds really random, but let me explain). I thought about how besides the death of millions of people, Mao Zedong was also responsible for one of the greatest bird massacres in history. Here’s a little bit of history for you:
In 1958 Mao Zedong declared sparrows an enemy of the state and started the Kill a Sparrow campaign as they ate all the grain seeds, causing disruption to agriculture. Peasants were told to go out to the fields, screaming at the tops of their voices and making noise in every possible way using pots and pans. The birds were frightened and took off, and since the noise went on steadily, the sparrows did not dare to land. People also carried tall sticks and chased away birds from the trees. Constant flying and escaping exhausted the sparrows soon and they simply fell down and died. The method was highly effective, and millions of sparrows were slaughtered.
Brilliant right? Ok, not really actually, as it caused a famine that killed 30 million people as sparrows in fact eat more insects than seeds and those insects now ruined the food production. But I was thinking it would be an excellent idea to do something similar with flies. And we may want to include the mosquitoes too. It will be the end of malaria and typhoid and God knows what other diseases causing stomach cramps. Just a little free piece of advice here for my colleagues in the health section of UNICEF or anyone else who wants to take it up and get famous. Please mention me and my spaced out feverish dreams in your memoirs though, that would be much appreciated.
