The internet speed has miraculously returned this week. I'm told President Kagame paid for extra bandwidth at the university so we are back to having semi-normal connectivity again. We've moved into a new house not too far from our old place. I need to charge my camera battery and I'll post pics. It is a cute house and is shared with one 6 foot 6 inch Swiss guy named Roman who is a GIS expert, an older Swiss clinical psychologist who works with genocide victims, and a Canadian political science professor at NUR. So far, so good! Everyone seems really nice and accommodating and it's nice to have the company. We even installed our fancy box frame mosquito net. It is so much more roomy and much less claustrophobic than our old "bell" shaped net that we each always felt smothered in.
Poor Okan had a parasitic flea embed itself in his pinky toe of his foot. It itched a lot and there was white stuff under the skin. We showed it to our friends who have lived in Rwanda for years and they confirmed it was the same parasitic flea that they had earlier in January. So I played surgeon and got out the best implements I could (sewing needle, insulin syringe needle, alcohol, tweezers, and nail clippers) to extract the parasite and its' egg pouch. It took almost an hour to get it all extracted and cleaned out. Luckily it was embedded in a very calloused part of Okan's foot so cutting it open and taking out the parasite and egg sack didn't hurt Okan. I think he was so grossed out by it that he would have gladly let me amputate his entire toe! But luckily such drastic measures weren't needed. So Okan has withstood his first parasite of Africa with no ill effects! Once the parasitic flea and eggs are gone there are no adverse effects except to let the small hole heal. Actually, it is a fairly benign parasite and even if we hadn't extracted it (our friends told us how as they have had it several times), it wouldn't have permanently hurt Okan, just caused more itching and would have been super gross once the eggs hatched! So we've taken the sheets off the beds and sprayed the bed with some chemical our friends gave us that is meant to get rid of any and all parasites (like bed bugs, etc.). Hopefully we can steer clear of any more of these!
The rainy season is supposed to be ending soon (mid May). But it really hasn't been horribly rainy these last few months. Of course now that I've typed that I'm sure it will start pouring rain for the next month, just in time to correspond with starting my field work at Nyungwe next week.
