DDT means different things to different people. It may indeed have bad things inherent in its application. \u00a0However for those of us who lived on the upper reaches of the big rivers where decent sized boats could still navigate, the arrival of the DDT men was just another part of jungle life routine. \u00a0Their bright yellow built up dugouts arrived like clockwork (more or less) every three to four months at all the little jungle communities persevering on the river banks. I say persevering because the jungle itself seemed to be alive and in a constant state of reclaiming the pitiful little plots of cleared area where the people lived. The common perception is that humans are destroying the rain forrest; maybe so but it wasn’t true of the humans in those places at that time in history. \u00a0If the jungle man didn’t keep his machete sharp and active the jungle would take back everything that man had worked so hard for in an amazingly short period of time.<\/p>\n
Of course everyone knew when the DDT boat arrived for two reasons. 1. The arrival of any boat was something special and 2. you couldn’t miss that bright yellow color. \u00a0Greetings and news would be exchanged between the men and the villagers. \u00a0Most of the DDT men had been hired by the health department right out of the villages they serviced so they were no strangers to these jungle villagers. \u00a0The men were never in any great yank to get down to business so maybe later in the afternoon they would go from house to house letting everyone know they’d be spraying the next day. \u00a0Each house whether there were twenty or just one, had a number painted on it. The numbers had to be updated as houses were added or taken down. \u00a0To get your place ready for the men to spray (in the beginning days the spraying of each house was mandatory) really meant “getting ready”. \u00a0Everything in the house you didn’t want to be soaked in DDT had to be covered up. \u00a0Mostly this meant moving everything in every room, including pictures on the walls, EVERYTHING, to the center of the room and covering it up with anything you might have. \u00a0In those days people didn’t have tarps as much as today so folks used anything they could come up with.<\/p>\n
The powerful hand pump spraying unite would reach way up into the palm roof and cover every wall, sometimes till everything dripped with DDT. \u00a0You really didn’t want to go back inside till things dried out a little. \u00a0Inevitably some one in the village would forget to pen up their handful of chickens and before next morning light the rooster would crow no more. \u00a0The chickens would all have died from eating roaches or spiders poisoned by the DDT.<\/p>\n
Of course if those famous jungle ants that march in columns of thousands upon thousands had recently paid the village a visit there wouldn’t be as many dead bugs for the chickens to have eaten, consequently the chickens would have fared better. About these famous “make myself right at home ants”. For the uninitiated these critters can be a little unnerving. \u00a0They will seemingly appear out of nowhere advancing with purpose over a wide area in columns up to several inches wide. \u00a0The experienced jungle folk know that trying to stop this relentless advance is pretty much futile. \u00a0The secret is to “go with the flow” which being interpreted means you move out of your home so this flowing mass can take your place over. \u00a0They are there to help! \u00a0If you’d been plagued by roaches or crickets or spiders they will clean all these bugs out for you and won’t even send you a bill. \u00a0They do an especially good job cleaning out your palm roof which tends to become home to all manner of unwelcome pests. As the ants move out the back door and down the back walls you return to your home which has been rid of all the pests through the front door. \u00a0Easy as pie! \u00a0So the guy that forgot to pen his chickens up won’t have fared too badly if the ants had recently been through.<\/p>\n
In spite of the success at wiping chickens out the real purpose of the spraying had nothing to do with chickens or roaches or spiders. \u00a0The DDT men came to spray for one purpose only, that purpose being to exterminate the anopheles mosquito. \u00a0The female of this species spreads malaria and is responsible for more human deaths and misery than we can imagine. \u00a0The periodic spraying of DDT did help keep the mosquito population under control. That fact became clearly evident when the spraying was halted because studies shows DDT is harmful to humans. After the spraying was stopped malaria became much more of a problem and many, many jungle people died with both the vivax and the falciparum strains of the desease.<\/p>\n
After the DDT boat had moved on to the next village everything in your house had to be washed down. \u00a0Except, how do you wash a palm roof down or how do you wash down a dried earthen wall or the dirt floor? \u00a0Inside the house about the best thing you could do is sweep up the mess, move your belongings back and carry on till the DDT boat comes again.<\/p>\n
If it has been determined that DDT is bad for humans then it must indeed be bad. What I am equally sure of is that these DDT men who came in their bright yellow boats helped keep death dealing mosquitos at bay and for that many of us are grateful.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DDT means different things to different people. It may indeed have bad things inherent in its application. \u00a0However for those of us who lived on the upper reaches of the big rivers where decent sized boats could still navigate, the arrival of the DDT men was just another part of jungle life routine. \u00a0Their bright […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-204","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}