THE DAY A LOUSE WAS CAUGHT ON MY HEAD IN CLASS

                             THE DAY A LOUSE WAS CAUGHT ON MY HEAD IN CLASS

COUNTDOWN TO ZERO

Turning back the clock can be daunting. One of the reasons is the reluctance to walk down memory lane and be confronted with some ugly past. Another reason is that not much is remembered or ought to be remembered from such a “distant” past and that besides; one ought to let bygones be bygones.

Nonetheless there is one incident that has stubbornly nagged me. That incident is indelibly engraved in my mind like the giant door knob of some Gothic church door tucked away in the now hidden bowels of Europe. That episode happened to me when I was in Class Three Primary at St. Michael’s Catholic School, today Government Primary School, Musongmabu, Bambili.

SANDWICHED BETWEEN A FRIEND AND A FOE

The incident I alluded to took place one day in class. My seat was the fourth on the first row as one entered the classroom. I shared a desk with Lucia Mubatu who had the best handwriting in the class. Her handwriting was so good that I did everything to copy it during writing time. Unfortunately for me, while her graphics were purposeful, well conceived and well articulated, mine were rushed and uncoordinated. Behind me sat Esther Nkwenti who was incidentally the daughter of my mother’s Goddaughter. I had always thought that I was on safe ground with Esther until she did something nasty to me.  

A FLY IN MY SOUP

During a lesson on day,  I felt a hand reach out and touch the back of my neck. Turning round, I found it was Esther. Her right hand was held up at me and she screamed at the top of her voice: “My Mami, eh! Lice!” Heads turned and I heard sighs and gasps of sympathy, some for joy, from my peers, especially the girls. I noticed that what Esther was holding up was a live head louse still desperately moving its legs in all directions as it struggled to break free. I froze and regretted how such little unnerving animals could let one down so irretrievably in public. Bewildered, I looked at the teacher. He understood my predicament.

“What did you say, Esther?” he asked as he came nearer.

“Lice, Sir. Lice. I caught it on his neck.”

“Then drop it on the floor and crush it with your foot. There is no use holding it up there as you are doing.”

Turning to me, the teacher said, “When you go home, make sure you have a good hair cut.”

“Yes, Sir.” I replied with confusion and shame.

CAUSE FOR CONSOLATION

When I think of that incident I draw comfort from a similar one I witnessed in a post office in Britain later. The victim this time was a Black British man of West Indian origin. He had dreadlocks. We had queued up in the Post Office waiting to move up to the service counters. Suddenly, a White woman who was behind the man reached out and quickly extracted something from the back of his neck. Then holding it up triumphantly like Esther did to me, she cried out as if she had shot an elephant,

“Take this! It’s from your head”

The Rasta man was smarter and cleverer than I was. He turned round with pride and dignity. The rest of us held our breath, not knowing what would be his next move. Surprisingly, he rebuked the woman:

“Put it back! I say, put it back where you took it! It’s mine, not yours! That’s how you White people are. When you see a nice thing with a Black man, you take! You always take but never give!”

Embarrassed, the woman placed the louse back on the man’s neck and slowly but steadily, it crawled back into his locks.

THE WORSE YET TO COME

Having read this account so far, you may be full of sympathy for us victims. But hold your horses, because the tale is far from over. And I should know about lice because I grew up in a large compound where several of us children slept on the same bed and thereby facilitated the transfer of head lice from one person to the other. This usually happened at night while we were asleep and our heads touched each other. Worse still, it was not only head lice that harassed us. We also caught body lice specialized in invading and inhabiting our clothes, especially pants, so that while head lice fed on the blood in our heads, clothe lice  fed on the blood on the other parts of our bodies .

LICE THERAPY

Lice are incredibly resistant to treatment and can hang on to one’s clothes or hair  for fairly long periods The best treatment our parents found for body lice consisted of boiling the infected clothes in water stood in a “head pan” on the fire, and stirred with long wooden sticks so that the heat could reach every part of the garment.

REMEDY OF A DIFFERENT KIND

Back then, treatment was expensive and painful. It consisted of grinding camphor into powder form  , mixing it with kerosene and rubbing it vigorously throughout the head of the “patient”. After that, a loin was tied tightly around the treated head so that no part of it was exposed and so serve as an escape route. The idea was to make them die of suffocation.  But when the concoction touched the skin of the head, it pained.


The following morning, the loin would be removed and the head washed thoroughly with warm water and soap. However, the best t treatment was to shave off all the hair in order to deprive lice of their natural habitat.