My housemates have a running joke that I literally take on all the illnesses/bad things that happen for the team. Eilidh said I should start making a list of all the things that have happened; although that sounds amusing, I think I’d rather not make the list until I get home. But I will tell you the latest news…there’s a dead, rotting frog stuck in my bedroom sink drain and I can’t get it out until the mainenance man comes. Okay, that’s not the worst…

So the bugs here are disgusting. I HATED spiders back home, like literally hated them and was scared of the tiniest little one. In fact, if I found a spider in my room I would yell throughout the house to my brothers to get them to dispose of the spider for me. Well, here, I actually enjoy spiders…that’s how disgusting some of the bugs are here. Fleas, flies, bees, gigantic cockroaches…the list goes on. It’s not abnormal to have bites consistently on our bodies, so the other day I had a itch on my bum and thought nothing of it. But the itch got more intense as the day went on. And it started spreading. Still, it’s not abnormal, so I thought nothing of it. I put some after bite on to stop the itching.

The next day, the bites were worse, and they had multilplied. One was on my back, one on my side, and others on my bum. When I looked at the bite, it looked very strange; it looked like there was something inside the bite mark, like a dark dot. I asked the girls in my house for advice as to what to make of the bites and they suggested that I wait it out and see what happens before trying to break into one of them. But at the end of the day, when the bites were looking worse, we decided to open one up. Eilidh (“Dr. Duncan”) broke into one and I nearly cried, not exactly because of the pain but because of her reaction, “Eww it’s still alive!”

We found out that the bites were actually “maggots” living in my skin! It was so painful and DISGUSTING!!! There were 8 of them. Another guy in the house also had some in his back, so although it was also disgusting for him, I was glad I wasn’t the only one.

Apparently, it’s not abnormal for this to happen, especially at this season. So how do they get in the skin? I guess what happens is that when we hang our laundry out to dry, the flies lay eggs in our damp clothes and when we put them on, they get in our skin and basically use our skin as an incubator until they are full grown. Then they eat their way out of the skin. GROSS, ITCHY, and PAINFUL! So, obviously, it’s good not to wait until they come out on their own, but to squeeze them out as soon as possible. Poor Eilidh was the lucky one to do the honors of getting them out of me. I will spare you the other details, but it is definitely the grossest thing I have EVER experienced!

So, for your enjoyment, I included a lovely picture of the larvae/fly that was in me and Ludger.