Where jiggers leave no toe untouched

By Maina Muiruri

It was a picture that portrayed a sad reality few people who read The Standard yesterday may have grasped.

The Page Six photo showed members of the Ahadi Trust laying flowers on the grave of a woman who reportedly died from complications caused by a jigger infestation.

The woman, Mary Wambui, hailed from a little-known village called Kagaa, in the newly created Kandara District, formerly in the larger Murang’a District. I grew up in a village just separated from Kagaa by a steep ridge.

Throughout childhood and primary school years, I experienced the ravages of jigger infestation that the area’s people have endured over the years.

Steep hills

It is a beautiful part of Murang’a, marked by steep hills and rolling ridges covered in lush, green eucalyptus and cyprus trees.

Ahadi Kenya Trust Executive director Stanley Kamau examines three-year old David Njonjo of Gatundu North District whose feet and hands are badly infested by jiggers. Photo: Maxwell Agwanda/Standard

Many streams, coloured brownish-red by the region’s soil, course along the beds of every valley. A long time ago the streams teemed with finger-sized fish, tadpoles and frogs. But all life in them has been sapped by frequent dry seasons that have reduced them to seasonal flows.

There is little to indicate that in the midst of the rich green cover lies a menace that has beaten persistent efforts by the Government and NGOs to eradicate. The area’s ochre-red soils are said to be the best breeding environment for jiggers.

Jiggers have ravaged the place for long. They are even the subjects of local folklore, where it is told how they ate up the toes and fingers of lazy people in the community.

The menace is invisible as it lurks in form of small, black fleas that inhabit the soil, especially in homesteads and chicken coops. The jigger flea (chigoe) enters the toe or finger, especially at night, mainly choosing to dig in under the skin covered by nails.

The flea is painless as it burrows in but it soon turns into an itchy scratch. Within one week, if not removed, it hibernates under the nail and grows to the size of a millet seed. It can last up to one month before it dies.

Cause of worry

Jiggers used to be a major cause of worry for parents as they could wreck the feet of small children till they could not walk.

In serious cases of infestation, 20 fleas would enter one foot in one night. They used to be removed using sewing needles, safety pins or the sharp thorn from a sisal leaf.

Those who know how to deal with them manually wait until the flea has hibernated for three days. Then, it is visible enough for a needle to pick out. In the meantime, the itch calls for attention anywhere.

Many mothers would make it a daily routine to check through their children’s toes or fingers. Dipping toes into salty water reveals the tip of the intruder as the jigger, irritated by salt, emits a small drop of black liquid.

Another way to deter them was to wet all toes with paraffin before going to bed. As a result many children’s beds ended up smelling of paraffin.

Children were also encouraged to accompany cows as they were taken to the communal cattle dip once a week, to plunged their feet into the dip’s chemicals.

Classrooms, which often had an earth floor, were also points of infestation. It was mandatory for every pupil to carry a can of water to splash on the floor in the morning. Jiggers are known to keep away from wet surfaces. Indeed, they thrive during the dry season and disappear when rains set in. Teachers and pupils would spend most mornings wading in muddy classroom floors.

But despite all these efforts, the stubborn flea still ravaged many feet in the villages.

Itchy feet

Woe unto one who left too many fleas lingering in their toes. The scratching of itchy feet can keep one awake all night.

Then, when they had to be manually removed, like in schools where teachers forced infested pupils to have them plucked by fellow pupils, small wounds would be left around the feet.

Since no pupils wore shoes, walking home after jiggers had been removed was a trying exercise. Grass and small stones would get into the holes where they had been and the pain would be unbearable.

During massive infestations like in the middle of dry seasons, jiggers became a major cause for concern. Church leaders would exhort young people to visit old people on weekends and remove jiggers from their feet. It was common to see many old people who had no toes at all. We had a grandmother whose feet were just stubs after her toes fell off to jiggers. Often it has become a political issue. Former Mathioya MP Joseph Kamotho was accused of abandoning his constituents to the mercy of jiggers and it became a big campaign issue in 2007. NGOs have even been launched to address the problem. The infestations continue to this day, and could getting worse, going by the fatal report in The Standard yesterday.