Children in Kenya seem to have different medical problems to us in the 'civilised' west. When you consider that I didn't meet and talk to many children, just mostly those around the workshop site, I encountered these two children ....
This delightful chubby little boy, about six months old, was still being mostly breast fed, but he had an enormous umbilical hernia. I have seen many, many young children in Kenya with this 'problem' and asked his mother about it. She didn't see it as anything to worry about at all, explaining to me that as he grew, it would go down. And she could well be right, for I can't remember ever seeing an adult man with one ... and men are often stripped to the waist when working, or naked when washing in ponds and the lake. But I know if this child was here in the UK, he would be under-going corrective surgery.
This little boy is the one who was being weaned onto mango last year, and is about 18 - 20 months old now. He was round and chubby, like the boy above when we saw him previously; now he is weaned he is thin and looks under-nourished ... often a common feature with children of this age. But it was his scarred legs that I noticed (apart from the pretty pink sandals !). He must be getting bites from mosquitoes regularly to have such scars, and thus malaria, which can be a killer of children this age. One of Pauls twin sons had malaria while I was there.
Once a child grows up, constantly exposed to malaria, he will develop some sort of immunity, and either not get malaria at all, or only very mildly, whereas the poor mzungu, when he gets malaria, will be very ill, sometimes dangerously so ! But I know at least two wazungu who don't take anti-malarials, having lived in Kenya by the lake for many years, and they never get malaria. Its a risk I'm not sure I would take, having had malaria several times when living in Kenya.
No comments:
Post a Comment