A cringe factor for Mum!

I'm in a bit of a daze today. Here's the reason why...

There's been an advert on the TV during the last 2-3 weeks showing some horrific pictures of people with large swollen legs. As the ad was all in Samoan we had no idea what it was on about and sort of ignored it, until one of the girls at netball mentioned elephantitis and then I put 2 and 2 together and got 5! What they were advertising was the annual campaign to wipe out this disease in Samoa. It is a mosquito bourne disease. Some mosquitos carry a minute worm and when you get bitten it enters your system. The worm then lives in your lymphs and obviously damages them as it causes a build up of fluid and swelling usually of the legs. Well anyway I didn't much like the sound of this worm thing so figured we'd better sit up and take notice.

Pills for this disease were being given out on Friday and Saturday last week so we went along on Friday but no one was there, even though the advert said there would be. TIS - This is Samoa! So it was back again the next day, Saturday morning on our way to netball. Here comes cring factor 1. There were 2 people sitting at a table in the carpark of the supermarket, surrounded by flies, dishing out these pills. It took a while for the man in front of us in the queue to register all his children (and for their names to be written down) and then just as long for them to painstakingly count out the pills for him (on a plastic plate with a plastic spoon). Everyone needed to take 10 pills in total, 1 big one and 9 little ones.

Here comes cringe factor 2, any pills not needed were then picked up in the fingers of the woman counting them out and put back in the bottle for the next person aka me!It didn't take long for the 2 of us to get our pills....

We took them last night. Were meant to take them then and there on the spot i.e. standing in the carpark under observation but as we were heading to netball they let us take them away. Advice was to swallow all the pills at once with a sugary drink and then get a good nights sleep. They can cause a headache and dizzyness. Well I'm holding my own today but I sure do feel "weird" and a bit unfocussed so I gather the pills are doing their job. I have no idea what I have taken but the whole nation seems to do this once a year without question and I figure the consequences of not are pretty bad so here's hoping .....