Life adjustment no 4. – Having to iron every piece of clothing after you’ve washed and hung it out to dry. No, Tanzanians don’t have a crease fetish. You methodically iron your clothes because of tumble fly. Tumble flies like to lay their eggs on clothes hung out to dry and after you put on your washed and dried clothes your body heat and chemicals activate the tumble fly eggs. You become, in effect a walking incubator. The eggs hatch within hours and the larvae ‘tumble’ out onto your skin where they proceed to dig and burrow. Not too far, just enough so you can see them wriggling around as they munch on your sub cutaneous layers.

snug as a bug in a piece of flesh

Ironing your clothes kills the little horrors before they get a chance to hatch. However, should you still fall prey a cheap, practical solution is at hand. Vaseline. The larvae have to breathe and so push little air tubes through your skin. If you cover a larvae infected area with Vaseline (in the example told to us it was the backend of a volunteers wife) you block their airways and within 10 minutes you’ll have them burrowing their way out, gasping for air. At which point, I suppose you can go over the affected area of flesh with the iron again and finish them off.

A tumble fly fighters first and last line of defence