Jigger Diggers

We went to Suzie's Village just outside of Jinja to see the kids and to help her with her Jigger Program.  Many of the kids there do not have shoes and they don't have good access to water.  They have to buy their water from a neighbor and carry it in a yellow plastic jerry can to their homes.  They do not have good hygiene and as a result they get "jiggers" in their feet and sometimes their hands.  It can be very painful and can cause systemic problems if it isn't treated.  In Uganda there are estimated 20,000 infected and 20 people have died as a result of these little parasites.  The families in this village, mostly single mothers, do not have money to take their kids to a doctor and they are embarrassed when their kids get jiggers so they keep quiet about the problem.   We loaded up wash basins and disinfectants and headed out to battle the jiggers.

   

 The bubbles were fun for distracting the onlookers

Sister Chatfield, Ann, another Ann, Sarah, Sister Hansen, Suzan, Sister Squire, Sister Wallace 

The team  

The kids like the feet washing part.  It feels good and they get a sucker to distract them from the hard part.

The jiggers are little worms just under the skin.  They have to be cut out and disinfected.

We had just an hour to shop for shoes for the kids.  We were told that there were 15 children that we were
going to work with.  There was not enough time to go down town to the big market so we just went across the street to the Nakawa market.  It started to rain when we got there and people started to put away their stuff.  We found a shop with shoes still open under a canopy and they had the kind of shoes we were looking for.  We picked out the best ones and there were various sizes and brands of shoes.  All of them were second hand, good quality shoes.  We bought all that they had and hoped we had enough and the right sizes.  It turned out that we had 23 pairs of shoes and there were 23 children that came to get treatment.  As the children were washed up and treated we put a pair of shoes on them to keep their feet clean which is all they need to prevent jiggers.  For each child that was treated there was a pair of shoes that fit right down to the last child.  Clearly one of the Lord's tender mercies.

Clean Feet - New Shoes & a Sucker - It doesn't get much better than this.