Tales from the Journey

In the beginning, God created all manner of crawling and flying things, including the African tumbu fly, known in Uganda as the mango fly. I suppose, like all of God’s creatures, the tumbu fly has a role to play in the intricate ecology of this magnificent planet. Perhaps it pollinates the mango tree and helps it to produce the delicious, peach-like fruit. I don’t really know about that, I’m just taking a guess. But surely it has some purpose beyond causing myiasis in human beings.

“Myiasis” means the invasion or infestation of bodily tissues or cavities by larvae of flying insects. It is not an attractive sounding experience. One of the common causes of myiasis in Africa is the tumbu fly. It has a nasty habit of laying its eggs on the clothing of human beings. That often happens while laundry is drying outdoors.

The problem is not that you have insect eggs on your clothes. You’d probably never notice that. The issue with the tumbu flies is that the larvae emerge and burrow into your skin when the clothes are worn. You don’t notice that so much. They must be really small. But then, inside your skin, they start to grow. This is where it starts to sound like the movie “Alien,” or that scene in “The Matrix” where they inject that electronic insect thing into Neo. As the maggot grows, feeding on your flesh and blood, it creates a large, nasty boil in a couple of days. It’s sometimes possible to identify the maggots’ breathing tubes as two black dots in the boils. The sore begins to ooze some combination of pus and larva feces. Supposedly they are only hitching a ride for a while, and when they mature they emerge to change into a fly, leaving no permanent damage. I don’t think you really want to wait for that, however.

So when you see the boil, you can coat it with something like Vaseline, or triple-antibiotic ointment. That keeps air from getting to the worm, and it starts to suffocate. So it backs out looking for oxygen. That’s when you can use a needle and mash the tender boil really hard and force the maggot out. The sore will heal up in a day or so.

That’s what happened to me. Fortunately, the boil was on the calf of my right leg. I could think of other locations where the experience could have been much worse. The strange thing about this was the timing. One day we were sitting around talking about this very thing, and how people who hang out their laundry must iron every piece in order to destroy the eggs and keep this from happening. We all shivered at the description of the condition. Then the next day, this boil appeared on my leg. Dr. Pepper thought it might be a spider bite. But a couple of days later, in Durban, we removed the larva.

It is funny how things are in this world. Some little fly, just trying to do her job of pollinating mangos and reproducing, chooses to use your skin in the process, without asking permission. She has a part to play in the grand scheme of things, but causes some suffering to others along the way. I guess that I benefit from the little fly, because I enjoy eating mangos. (Their skin causes a horrible allergic reaction to Melinda, however, which happened in Oaxaca, but that’s another ecological puzzle.) We are like that, too, it seems. We play our part, try to contribute to the world, but even with the best effort on our part, we end up leaving suffering in our paths as well, often unintentionally. Paul saw that as the evidence of the fallen nature of all of the creation:

Romans 8:18-22 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

The remedy to all this is hope. We live with hope that someday, God will create a new heaven and a new earth. We will enjoy its beauty. And it will be marked by none of the suffering that mars this fallen world of ours. The mango flies will have to find some other means of reproducing. Or, if they use our legs it won’t hurt. I hope.