Here in Kenya, there are something called jiggers that are a common problem. Jiggers are little bugs that burrow into your feet and hands and lay eggs. If nothing is done these eggs will hatch and continue to spread and eat away at the flesh of the people they are attached to. They are extremely painful and can lead to severe infections. Jiggers are common among people living in poverty because they can’t afford shoes and must walk around barefoot. These people also live in mud houses where jiggers and other bugs can easily get in. Many people use spread cow dung on their floors and when it dries it keeps away the jiggers. It is a simple solution, but many people here don’t care enough to take the precaution. Most of the people affected are children or the elderly because they are unable to take care of themselves and nobody care enough to give them the help or care that they need. If left alone, jiggers can  cause the person to be unable to walk and cause infections that can become so severe that they can be deadly. Sadly, seeing people with jiggers is very common here. Here are a few photos of what it looks like when people's hands and feet become infested with jiggers. 

A mud hut that many of the people living in the slums or villages call home

We’ve been spending a lot of time in Shimo in these past few weeks. On one of the days when we were walking to see Patrick and Ester, we ran into a mama who asked us to come look at her kids feet and hands. This is how we met Elizabeth. She is five years old and when we first looked at her hands, the fingertips were green because they were so infected and her feet were just as bad. On top of that, a bench had fallen on her foot at school two weeks earlier. It was swollen the first day we went to see her, and when we went back the next day to start soaking her feet so the jiggers could be removed, we saw that the infection had gotten worse. The skin on her foot had turned  yellow because her wound had filled with pus. So we drained the wound, and kept coming back to change the wrappings to keep it from being infected again. Elizabeth was such a tough little girl and hardly cried the whole time. When we first found her five days ago she was constantly sitting with her leg straight and her foot up in the air. She had been doing that for so long that she cried when she tried to bend her knee. Now, she is doing so much better and was even walking around when we found her today. 

Elizabeth and her foot full of jiggers

Elizabeth's foot where the bench hit her.
Believe it or not it looks ten times better than when we first found her.
Also notice the jiggers all in and around her toenails.