When I was first applying for the Peace Corps a few years ago a lot of Returned PCVs started coming out of the woodwork and telling me about their experiences overseas. One of these people was a man I worked with at the Agency on Aging who served in Gabon in the 80s. We had a few conversations about the good, the bad, and the ugly of Peace Corps service. For him the worst was the chiggers. Chiggers are these tiny insects that live in high grass and love feet. He told me of one time a chigger bored into his toes, laid eggs under his toe nails, and then hatched causing his toe nails to fall off. That was the first time I questioned whether or not I really wanted to move to Africa. Eventually I decided that it wouldn't happen to me because I'd always wear close toed shoes.
Three days after arriving in Ethiopia I stopped wearing sneakers and, like most Peace Corps volunteers, started rocking the Chacos everyday. The first few months I was very cautious and always checked my toes, then I realized that no one gets chiggers in Ethiopia and totally forgot about it. Well, if you've been following my Peace Corps service at all you know that bad things happen to me pretty regularly. Last week I was running a summer camp with my fellow volunteers in SNNPR and my toe started to hurt. There was a black circle and I thought that it was a planter's wart. Kind of gross but not a big deal. A couple days later it started hurting more so I investigated with tweezers. The little black sphere-ish thing came out relatively easily, and then this gooey white sack started spilling out. The eggs. This being my first chigger removal it was very sloppy and I broke the egg sack, only time will tell if they are about to hatch, but I think i got it all out. Now there is a pretty sizable hole in my toe and the thing I was most scared of coming to Africa has happened. In retrospect I shouldn't have been so worried about it, there are much worse things.
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