Skip to main content

Mosquitoes

You hear about mosquitoes & malaria in African and how it's a problem, how you need to take drugs so as not to catch it and die. It is -- no denying it -- a very real issue, but as to the mosquitoes themselves... well, coming from a Manitoba summer, I was surprised to find there were virtually NO mosquitoes, and the few I saw were so sluggish you could pluck them from the air with one hand. Here I'd steeled myself for a year of constant itching. Actually, it has, in fact, been 4 months of constant itching so far, but that's on account of the moot-moots and other insect life, not mosquitoes.

In Douala, however, they have mosquitoes -- buzzing around inside, outside, in the car -- and I've experienced their bite. Even better, I'm told the Douala mosquitoes have a particularly potent strain of malaria. (So, if I fall ill about two weekends from now, we'll know what the problem is. True to form, it would be at just the right time: around the start of translation week, the worst time possible for us to get sick.)

Other than that, my experience of Cameroonian insect life is
a) mosquitoes are a problem because they carry deadly diseases, not because they're particularly prevalent, and
b) the really annoying creatures are the ones you can't see and/or don't notice their bites until well after the fact when it's too late to do anything about it but SCRATCH.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Winnipeg Transit woes

  “We’ve increased support for municipalities year after year because we know strong communities depend on reliable, stable and predictable funding increases,” Municipal and Northern Relations Minister Glen Simard said in an emailed statement to the Free Press Tuesday. https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2026/06/23/winnipeg-transit-needs-funding-boost-additional-staff-to-follow-new-provincial-accessibility-regulations-city-report This in answer to City of Winnipeg chair of Public Works Janice Lukes plea for the province to cough up money for the needed upgrades. Listen carefully because these are words I won't often say: I gotta agree with Lukes on this one. If the province is handing down new standards, given their higher capacity for raising revenues, they ought to help the city fund meeting said standards. What Simard fails to acknowledge is that those "year after year" funding increases started at the bottom basement after Conservative cuts and likely h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Carney's sound check

 The Liberals are advertising a summer survey. Let me Mr Carney know what you think! Of course, the multiple choice questions force you to give the answers Carney wants to hear, but fortunately, there's an open box for further comment at the end with a 2500 character limit.  I don't have all day to spend on this so it's a slightly in coherent rant, but I can't let this man think everything is fine while he turns this country into a totalitarian surveillance police state whose only industry is war-making.  https://action.liberal.ca/a-summer-sound-check/ Here's what I think, Mr Carney.  The things that "stand out" the most for me are the things that horrify the most. Every single thing Carney has done or championed since April 2025 is awful for ordinary Canadians (only good for Carney's investment portfolio). You can shove your AI. Yes, Canadians need protection from AI but your disgraced grifter of a "AI minister" is the last person to do that...
Post a Comment
Read more

Letter writing success

Last week, several sources linked to a letter appealing to venerable Canadian scientist and nature advocate David Suzuki to withdraw from a supposed climate prize due to its deep ties to an unbashedly colonlialist Israeli organization. The JNF's claim to fame is planting trees in Israel. Pine trees. Non-native trees. Trees that are susceptible to wildfires. Trees intentionally planted atop forcibly-emptied Palestinian villages to try to erase their memory.  The letters worked. Suzuki withdrew. I hadn't gotten around to writing before I got the news. So when a follow up letter to other participants in the prize hit my inbox, I rushed to put my own spin on the letter and sign it. Send your own here I urge you to join David Suzuki in withdrawing from the upcoming Climate Solutions Prize (CSP) festival. CSP was instigated by the racist Jewish National Fund (JNF) of Canada with support from the Israeli government. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet announced the launch of CSP...
Post a Comment
Read more