inyati13
Well-known member
Preface: I posted a thread about PH Robert Edwards. I hunted with him in Zimbabwe in 1987. During that hunt he became ill. The blood fluke, Schistosoma, are parasitic flatworms which are responsible for a highly significant group of infections in humans termed schistosomiasis or bilharzia. In 1987, there was no cure for schistosomiasis. There was a treatment that killed the fluke in the bloodstream but not the ones that remains in the mesenteries. When the phase in the mesenteries blooms forth and fills the bloodstream with the worm, you develop the symptoms.
Robert looked tired the last two days. His face was drawn and he was pale. The enthusiasm he was showing was an effort. That evening while sitting by an open fire, Robert ask if I knew what bilharzia was. I replied yes, it is a classic study in undergraduate parasitology classes. He informed me that he had been passing blood in his urine for two days. He said he often fished for large mouth bass in non-flowing waters and had contracted bilharzia. Robert’s family lived in Chiredzi. He ask if I did not mind could we take a day off to go into Chiredzi and get medication. I didn’t mind at all, sometimes a little diversion on a hunt is needed.
The next morning, Robert was very sick. He was moving like there was lead in his legs. He was white as a ghost.
We got into Chiredzi and Robert could hardly drive. We went to a modest home where Robert was raised. When he got to the door, a big Shangani woman met him. The woman’s interaction with Robert was not like that of a servant. When she saw him, the concern on her face was that of a mother. We went into the house and Robert sat down while the big woman took care of him like he was a toddler. Robert took me to his room and despite the pain he was feeling, showed me with pride, the trophies that he had collected since a young boy. He had an elephant hair bracelet which was the first one I had ever seen.
We went back to the living room and he collapsed on the sofa. The big black woman found the medication and Robert took the first dose. The medication was developed in South Africa and was extremely effective at killing the fluke circulating around in Robert’s blood. The woman fixed us some lunch. All this time, she is talking in Shangani to Robert and he spoke it as well as she did. He had picked it up from the big Shangani woman who had been his nanny since birth. He was her child in ways that his own birthing mother would never be. And that was the best trophy I gained on that trip.
PS: When AIDS came out, the practice of black nannies nursing white children came under scrutiny because of the possible transmission of AIDS to the white babies in the milk of the black nurse maids.
Robert looked tired the last two days. His face was drawn and he was pale. The enthusiasm he was showing was an effort. That evening while sitting by an open fire, Robert ask if I knew what bilharzia was. I replied yes, it is a classic study in undergraduate parasitology classes. He informed me that he had been passing blood in his urine for two days. He said he often fished for large mouth bass in non-flowing waters and had contracted bilharzia. Robert’s family lived in Chiredzi. He ask if I did not mind could we take a day off to go into Chiredzi and get medication. I didn’t mind at all, sometimes a little diversion on a hunt is needed.
The next morning, Robert was very sick. He was moving like there was lead in his legs. He was white as a ghost.
We got into Chiredzi and Robert could hardly drive. We went to a modest home where Robert was raised. When he got to the door, a big Shangani woman met him. The woman’s interaction with Robert was not like that of a servant. When she saw him, the concern on her face was that of a mother. We went into the house and Robert sat down while the big woman took care of him like he was a toddler. Robert took me to his room and despite the pain he was feeling, showed me with pride, the trophies that he had collected since a young boy. He had an elephant hair bracelet which was the first one I had ever seen.
We went back to the living room and he collapsed on the sofa. The big black woman found the medication and Robert took the first dose. The medication was developed in South Africa and was extremely effective at killing the fluke circulating around in Robert’s blood. The woman fixed us some lunch. All this time, she is talking in Shangani to Robert and he spoke it as well as she did. He had picked it up from the big Shangani woman who had been his nanny since birth. He was her child in ways that his own birthing mother would never be. And that was the best trophy I gained on that trip.
PS: When AIDS came out, the practice of black nannies nursing white children came under scrutiny because of the possible transmission of AIDS to the white babies in the milk of the black nurse maids.
