How Science Opened My Eyes To Grandma’s Lies: An Entry into the Sankofa Storytelling Contest.

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My Aunty Doreen was being wheeled into the theatre for a Caesarean. Everyone was at different levels of worry and had various reasons for their anxiety. But in my little 5-year old mind..I was worried the baby would look like me.
Why would such a thought cross my mind, you may wonder..
Well if you have a grandmother who regales you with myths and presents them as undeniable and unquestionable facts..then you could find yourself in my shoes. Just a few days prior, I passed over Aunt’s crossed legs in a bid to get to the other side of the living room..and Maami assured me that the baby would look just like me when it’s born because of that act.

I’m happy to inform you that the baby arrived safe and sound (with exceptional lungs I must say..cried loud and strong) all 5kg of him..and looked nothing like me. But the shocking part was that he looked nothing like my uncle either..he’s an albino 😊.

You see..growing up with Maami (due to rough financial patch at the beginning of my parents’ marriage, they had to seek greener pastures away from home) in our little township far from the hustle and bustle of city life..was a total experience.

The ambience was amazing and serene, atmosphere clean and free of impurities, our mud house was cool during the hot days, the new pipe water always had fresh clean water for drinking and the stream was perfect for washing, bathing and playing.
Chief among what made Maami so special was that she had an answer for EVERYTHING.

When I had back pain, it was because I had eaten too much candy; I had rashes because I didn’t bath well; and when it was raining and sunny at the same time..it was because an elephant (or a lion) was giving birth.

Since I was still young I couldn’t disprove her claims and I never had cause to doubt her until one fateful day when I was 10 years old.
I had just finished playing at the stream with my other friends and felt the urge to urinate. I found a nearby bush and proceeded to do my business. What happened next shocked me and set off a cascade that would change my thinking forever.

I urinated blood.

I thought I was hallucinating as this was towards the end of the process..but the pink urine making its way into the ground was as real as the sun shining mercilessly on my back.

I hastened home shouting ‘Maami! Maami! Maami!’ all the way till I pushed open the front door. She just regarded me with her characteristic dour expression and asked ‘Is a masquerade chasing you? Why are you panting like an antelope that has not drunk water for 4 days?’
After I had regained breath, I told her what had happened earlier..and she laughed. She laughed!
‘Good. Now you have joined the ranks of men in this town’
Well I didn’t want to be a man yet so that was rather an inconvenient initiation.
She then explained that it was a common occurrence among the males in that community and was considered a rite of passage.
As usual, I was pacified and even proud that I too had ‘passed blood’ and was now considered a ‘man’.

A month later, some people came from the university in the big city to conduct a research. Those handpicked for the study were all boys in my age group and the questions asked concerned the ‘passing of blood’ I had experienced just a short while back.
I wondered what all the fuss was about so I befriended one of the researchers who was a female doctor and asked why they were interested in our ‘rite of passage’. It was she who opened my eyes to the reality that the urination of blood was not normal and was rather a manifestation of parasitic infestation..Schistosomiasis.
Apparently, our swimming and playing in the stream exposed us to the parasite which penetrated our skin while we swam.

She gave me some books to read on the subject of parasitology and even though I struggled with some of the big words like Onchocerciasis and Trichuris trichuria I grasped the basic fact that she was right, supported by science and research. And Maami was wrong.

After the interviews, they conducted a mass deworming exercise for all of us boys and then bid us farewell.

Needless to say, I determined from then on to always crosscheck everything anyone ever told me..and see if it was backed up by science or logic before swallowing hook, line and sinker.