Berta’s Travel Shenanigans

As we enter the final days of life on this last phase of Raleigh the ´interesting factor´ has risen to an exceptionally high level of standard.  Overall, life in La Fortuna has involved a cast of interesting characters quite out of their comfort zones in this phase –  in turn, this has resulted in both individual and group behaviours and attitudes that are high-strung and also quite discouraged and frustrated. A few animal related ´events´ have unfolded over the past week.  Most bizarre, and personal, has been the invasion of the worms…torsolas/botfly worms to be exact.  Here is a description:  “Botfly (Dermatobia hominis), whose larvae mature inside flesh. An egg-laden female botfly captures a night-flying female mosquito and glues her eggs on to it. When the mosquito is released and bites a victim, the host’s body heat triggers an egg to hatch. It falls off and burrows in. The larva secures itself with two anal hooks, secreting an antibiotic into its burrow, which staves off competing bacteria and fungi. Its spiracle pokes out of the tiny hole, and a small mound forms which will grow to the size of a goose egg before the mature larva falls out. So here I was, thinking that I had a few infected mosquito bites that were burning on occasion.  Alas, I had 5, that´s correct, 5! torsolas burrowed in my leg and stomach – yeah, I know…effin disgusting.  These worms were picked up in La Cangreja (my previous jungle phase) and turns out that 6+ participants have had them as well.  Extraction procedure was as follows:  duct tape over ´bite´, which suffocated that worm for 6 hours or so; rip duct tape off; handy fellow project managers recoiling in horror; grabbing with tweezers as the worm ´surfaces´ for air; and, finally, me left wondering when I ever decided signing up for this experience was ever a good idea!

The second major animal-related drama has to do with the town´s dogs.  First, one of our participants, Charlie, was bitten by his ´family´s´ dog whilst trying to go to the long drop – so we got him to a clinic for a rabies vaccination as it is still a problem here in Nicaragua (so I guess its a good job that we got those shots!).  Second, another participant, Floris, returned from Esteli the other day to discover the puppy he unofficially adopted from his host family had died.  Very sad as the puppy´s brother was trying to comfort it making for a scene out of the Lion King.  Finally, people from the clinic arrived yesterday to seize the dog that had bit Charlie.  Except they didn´t come very well prepared and, to make a long and rather graphic story short, it was a long and drawn out process…essentially, the dog´s head needs to go to Nicaragua´s capital city to see whether it was rabid.  If that is the case, they will need to return to La Fortuna and kill all the dogs in the town…and we might still be in the town when this happens.  Overall, I feel like I´ve been a character in a classic novel written in the 1920´s where treatment of and attitudes towards animals in poor farming communities is quite different than those of today…

That being said, I have really been enjoying my time in La Fortuna — we hiked to these amazing waterfalls (El Cebollal Abajo) a visit to a waterfall where a somewhat proper bathing experience took place; spanish is slowly improving in that I can actually understand some conversations; we are picking up paint to finish the community centre by tomorrow; the well in the next town is just about done; our family is great and the children beautiful; and I just really enjoy Nicaragua in general and look forward to returning in a month´s time. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 11:14 am and is filed under Raleigh phase. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.