Guinea Worm

The larvae of the guinea worm is ingested by drinking contaminated water. Once the baby worm is in the stomach of its host, it grows to the length of many meters. It pierces through the lining of the stomach and makes its way through the connective tissues of the body and after about 9 months of incubation, exits the body usually in a lower appendage (usually through the foot or leg, but sometimes through more delicate places I will not mention here). Once the worm has eaten its way through you, its magical journey comes to an end by poking its end out and laying thousands of new larvae when the host comes in contact with water (usually the drinking source for the village, thereby renewing the contamination). Once the worm has made it's exit, the only way to remove it is to roll the bugger around a match, inch by slow inch. This treatment can take weeks, and if the little bastard breaks in the process, you have to start all over again. The process is extremely painful for the host as you can imagine, painful enough to keep people from working the land which keeps them alive. Not only is the parasite excruciating, but also devastating to the economy of the family as well as the entire village.

Jimmy Carter has taken on the challenge of eradicating this organism from Africa (and thus the face of the planet) through his organization, Global 2000. The solution is simple enough in theory, don't drink contaminated water. The problem is that in the many places that don't have pumps, the villagers are forced to drink the rainwater that collects in ditches and ponds. The mission is carried out by installing pumps, and organized trips into villages called "sensibilizations" (its a buzz word meaning to educate people in common sense). In these sensibilisations, one of which I had the opportunity to participate, we distributed filters and taught the villagers how to use them properly. We also talked about treatments and quarantine for those afflicted by the worm.

Burkina Faso has all but won the fight against the guinea worm. There were a reported 34 cases last year, compared to many thousands just 10 years ago. The program is working. The only countries that are loosing this fight, do so because war and violence keeps health workers from doing their jobs. Paradoxically enough, in my attempt to help with these sensibilizations, I became more jaded about development work. I won't go into it too much, but the substantial money budgeted to this project seems to have been completely wasted in my opinion. Most of the money was spent throwing an extravagant opening ceremony for a lot of high level government authorities. Once the party was over and everyone drove off, no one from the program wanted to do anything. In fact I got the feeling that we were not even welcomed, because this means than those responsable actually had to do work. The problem with development work is that it's goal is to eliminate the need for it's existance. Can this formula possibly ever lead to the results we are looking for? If the Burkina Faso Guinea Worm Project is successful, everyone that is employed by it will loose their jobs. It is therefore not in their interests to fullfill their mission, a fact that was very obvious to me throughout the experience. It was very interesting to see what it was like to work alongside the Burkinabe government, I found it educational.

The opening ceremony included theater, dance, music, and catered food for the invited guests.

Here I am distributing water filters. This poor kid is scared of me, but this is not uncommon.

When in the fields, it is impossible to find clean water. These orange tubes have filters in them, and the children use them as straws and tie them around their necks. This kid is being taugh how it works.

This is me stoping the Guinea Worm.