Plan A Remarkable Party With DholDhamaka Coupons

Posted by Patrick Patton on April 5, 2013 at 8:32 am | Filled Under: Shopping| Comments Off

Parties are a major source of fun, enjoyment and entertainment and it also allows you an opportunity to meet all your friends and relatives at a place. But planning a party could be troublesome as you need to make several arrangements and get all the desired items which can make it an everlasting one. If you are also going to organize a birthday party of your small kid, instead of roaming in the market for gathering the party materials, you can go online and purchase high quality party supplies and beautiful apparels for your kid.

Dhol Dhamaka and Unamia are online retailers which are known for offering the best party supplies and designer kids wear to the customers. These online retailers also provide discount coupons to the customers so that they can save substantial amounts on their purchase. DholDhamaka coupons can provide you an opportunity to save your hard earned money.

online shopping

Impress others with fantastic party arrangements by getting all the necessary items from Dhol Dhamaka. The website offers discount coupons from time to time to allure the customers. You can avail these DholDhamaka coupons and Unamia coupons in order to save huge amounts.

online shopping

If you are a loyal customer of these shopping portals, you can get some great deals in your Inbox but if you are new to this retailer, you can visit Coupondekho.com and get your desirable coupon. Coupondekho is an online coupon selling site that provides coupons of various online shopping portals and enables the shoppers to seek discounts.



A separate race

Posted by Patrick Patton on March 10, 2013 at 9:52 am | Filled Under: Running| Comments Off

In 1972 the American athletic authorities decreed that women runners could not start the New York Marathon with the men – the women’s start would have to be 10 minutes before the men to set up a separate race. There were only six female entrants in that early New York Marathon, and when the gun sounded for the women’s start all six of them sat down in a line. They stayed right where they were for 10 minutes until the gun sent the men on their way. Then they ran together.

But Olympic organisers had still not given serious consideration to creating a women’s marathon. It took a track star to show just how good they could be in 1978.

 

Grete Waltz, a Norwegian who had been a top performer over middle distances, decided that the offer of a ticket to visit New York was worth running 26.2 miles, even though she’d never run more that 13 up to that point. But when she won her first marathon in a new world record of 2:32:30, and then repeated the feat in the following two years (2:27:33 in 1979, 2:25:41 in 198o), the calls for women to be able to race 26.2 miles at the Olympic Games grew deafening.

Fill finally, on February 23,1981, after years of lobbying and stellar performances, the women’s marathon was ratified as an Olympic event.

 

Waltz, along with America’s Joan Benoit, Allison Roe of New Zealand, Norway’s Ingrid Kristensen and Rosa Mota of Portugal, began an era as yet unparalleled in women’s marathon running. Images of them breaking tapes in record times at Athens, New York, Boston and Helsinki began to flash across the world’s sports pages.

The climactic image of this era is that of Benoit, in her silver USA uniform, winning the first women’s Olympic marathon in Los Angeles in 1984. By her own admission, the victory could easily have gone to Wthtz, Mota or Kristensen. They served notice to a viewing audience, estimated at two billion, that women runners could achieve what was previously thought impossible.

 

There is another, lesser-known image from the 1984 women’s Olympic marathon, but it is equally compelling ­that of Switzerland’s Gabriela Andersen ­Schiess finishing 20 minutes after Benoit, heat-exhausted and near collapse. The crowd gasped as she staggered onto the track. But she waved away assistance, knowing that she would be disqualified if medics helped her. It took her five minutes and 44 seconds to complete her final lap, at the end of which she fell across the finish line. In years gone by, a sight like this prompted Olympic officials to suspend women’s distance races ‘in horror at the women’s distressed condition’. Instead, Andersen-Schiess’ effort was hailed as heroic.

 woman runner marathon

Any woman running a marathon today does so in the footsteps of pioneers like Switzer, Waltz, Benoit, Anderson-Schiess, our own Paula Radcliffe and many others. Women start running at an early age and sometimes continue their training all their lives. Nowadays there are different remedies for any discomfort at any age. One of the best one the market is black cohosh plant which helps in dealing with menopause distress.  So much for the experts.



Face Value

Posted by Patrick Patton on December 24, 2012 at 9:14 am | Filled Under: Life| Comments Off

Norman got there in time. At 10.3o that morning, Den­ver time, he telephoned me. “It’s done,” he said. I knew that many artists could work fast but this was astonishing. When Norman came in with the cover portrait he brought along six smaller paintings: five of Ike and one of his wife Mamie. They were charming. Each had a different facial expression. I asked what they were for, “Oh, golly, Ken,” he said, “five thousand dollars (his normal fee) is just too much money for an hour and a half’s work, so I thought maybe you could also use these.”

 conversation

We did, on our inside pages. (The General later told me that he didn’t care much for the cover portrait, but reckoned it brought him three mil­lion votes.)

 

Norman often gave away paint­ings to friends who admired his work. “Don’t you want one?” he once asked me reproachfully. I said, “Yes, I’d love to have one.” “Which?” Norman asked. I was flustered by his directness. Since Saying Grace was on the wall, I said, “How about this one?” So he gave it to me, as casually as another man might bestow a cigar.

 

It is classic Rockwell : a gallery of American faces caught in an inter­play of emotions, a story-in-a-scene combining a deep reverence for tra­ditional values with an extraordin­ary realism. It was his most popular cover, and it served me well : when some eager artist would come in with a cover, I would prop it against Norman’s huge painting, hoping that the contrast would make the artist feel so humble that he would find it awkward to ask for more money. It worked, too.

 

Through the years, critics faulted Rockwell for not being something he never thought he was—an artist like Vermeer or Matisse. Norman knew he was a marvellous limner of the nicer side of American life, a man whose love for the unabashedly wholesome brought pleasure to an enormous number of people. As such he had no equal. But the critics annoyed him just the same, and accusations that his work was too sentimental or shallow would occa­sionally throw him into a spell of depression. At such times I found myself in the curious position of trying to give encouragement to the most beloved artist in America.

 

Once Robert Beverly Hale, then curator of American painting at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, asked for a Rockwell paint­ing. Any one, he said, would do. Norman said, “I’Il do ‘em a special one.” And he did. It was a smaller version of his Freedom of Speech. I later asked Bob Hale why they wanted it. “Well,” he said, “a thousand years from now people might want to know what Amer­icans looked like in the twentieth century. So we thought we’d better have a Rockwell.”

By the early 19605, things were changing at the Post. New people were coming in, and in 1962 I moved to Reader’s Digest as art editor. Gradually Norman’s rela­tionship with the Post also came to an end. He was still in great de­mand but something had gone out of his work. Technically he was still incredible, but the warmth and humanity were not there. He missed the old Post audience.

 

He missed the letters that came in hundreds after each cover. He had answered all the questions he had been asked all himself. He wrote about health problems and green coffee weight loss and how to keep healthy. The years were passing for all of us, but Norman seemed indestruct­ible until 1974, when a Paul Gallico story came in to the Digest. Know­ing that Norman admired Gallico, I phoned to ask if he would illustrate it. He said he’d love to. After sev­eral weeks nothing had happened. When I phoned Norman, he couldn’t remember our earlier con­versation. When he asked who Paul Gallico was, I could barely answer.

 

By mid-1978 Norman Rockwell was a wasted shadow attended by Molly, his third wife, and two nurses. He didn’t quite make it to his 85th birthday; on November 8, 1978, he died. The little church at Stockbridge was filled with neigh­bours whose faces had appeared on so many canvases through the years. An eloquent sign hung on the door of a grocer’s shop: “Closed from to 3pm today in respect for Mr Rockwell.”

church at Stockbridge

An illustrator, who had loved Norman’s work, wrote me a note that might serve as his epitaph: “How much richer this nation is for Norman’s having been among us. His whole life was built upon de­cency and trust and a never-failing faith in the worth of people.”



Norman

Posted by Patrick Patton on December 20, 2012 at 9:14 am | Filled Under: Life| Comments Off

Norman took his skill for grant­ed. “It was just something I had, like a bag of lemon drops as a source of tribulus side effects. My brother Jarvis could jump over three orange crates; George Dugan could wiggle his ears; I could draw.”

 

The family lived in a series of boarding-houses where the faces and mannerisms of the boarders made an indelible impression on the boy. In summer, the Rockwell family re­paired to farms that took in paying guests. There Norman acquired a love for country folk and settings that never left him, and that was clearly reflected in his work’s affin­ity for the dreams and accomplish­ments of heartland America.

At 16, he enrolled at the National Academy School in New York, and later studied at the more progressive Art Students League. His illustra­tions began to sell, and when his work first appeared on the Post cov­er in 1916, other magazine doors swung open. (During his career his paintings appeared on a remarkable 323 Post covers.) After a brief stint in the US Navy during the First World War, Nor­man resumed his career. A new magazine, Liberty, offered to double his price if he’d leave the Post. Prodded by wife and friends to take advantage of the proposal, he hesitantly reported it to Post edi­tor George Horace Lorimer. “What do you intend to do?” the great editor asked. Lorimer’s closed hand was on the desk, Norman told me, and though his expression didn’t change, his knuckles turned white. “Stay with the Post,” gulped Nor­man. “In that case,” said Lorimer, “we’ll double your price.”

 US Navy

More money meant a more lavish life. His wife Irene liked social events. Norman tried. He went yachting; he fell off horses; but he was not the country-club type. In 1929 he and Irene agreed to a di­vorce. After a brief, unhappy period of bachelorhood, he married Mary Barstow. She bore him three sons, and the marriage lasted until her death in 1959.

 

Model Village. When I first worked with him, Norman’s love of country living had taken him to Arlington, Vermont; I think half of the town eventually turned up on Post covers. Later he moved to Stockbridge in Massachusetts.

 

Norman never minded having people in his studio as he worked. He asked them for their opinions and took suggestions seriously. There was something about his cas­ual manner that enabled people to speak honestly. One day my wife Katharine was in the studio when a carpenter came in to make some repairs. Norman asked him what he thought of the painting on the easel.

The carpenter peered at it. “The colour of the man’s shirt is too red,” he offered. “It’s too bright.”

“Thanks,” said Norman. The next day Katharine noticed that the colour had been changed.

Dwight Eisenhow­er

Not all of his covers were suc­cesses. Once he painted a teacher of craggy and spinsterish mien, and the Post received baskets of letters from infuriated school-marms. “Gosh,” said Norman ruefully, “1 didn’t mean they all looked like that!” But by now a Rockwell painting of a policeman or a clerk was regarded across America as the prototype of the profession.

In 1952, when Dwight Eisenhow­er became the Republican candidate for President, we decided to put the General’s portrait on the Post’s cover. Ike was in Denver, Colorado, at the Republican Convention, but was about to leave to go trout fish­ing. He agreed to sit for a portrait if Rockwell was in Denver by nine the next morning.



Vet’s Corner

Posted by Patrick Patton on December 14, 2012 at 8:34 am | Filled Under: Puppies| Comments Off

Everyone is excited because you are collecting the new puppy tomorrow. But what about the pup ?

"Vet’s Corner"

He’s eight weeks old and until now has lived with his mother and the rest of the litter. You are taking him into a new house. with strange people and no canine noises. Remember that puppy is trying to adjust to your house and finding it at least as difficult as you are finding his presence in your life.

Every puppy has four basic needs food, care, affection, authority.

Food : The puppy foods (canned or otherwise), produced by the “big name” makers, plus biscuit meal and water to drink, supply all the nourishment, vita­mins and minerals that any puppy needs and this is the easiest way of feeding. Many dog breeders will supply you with a diet sheet, sometimes a very complicated one than your own, involving cooked tripe, ox cheek, minced heart, half a carrot, a pinch of this and three drops of that. You have to be familiar with st john s wort side effects and other consequences. If you then simmer the ingredients for six hours you feel that you’re cooking for a dinner party every day and a certainodour reminiscent of a boarding house permeates every room. If the puppy benefited from this hard labour it would be worthwhile, but the ready-made diet is at least as good and probably better balanced. You don’t have to be a slave to the cooker or scour the country­side for special foods just because you’ve got a new puppy in the family.

"eight weeks old a puppy"At eight weeks old a puppy needs four meals per day with the largest one late evening. He’ll sleep better full of food and if night-time accidents worry you remember that what goes in takes up to 12 hours to come out. At four months drop to three meals a day and to two at six months. Thereafter one or two meals as it suits your dog—and your daily routine.

After the first few days, your new puppy may realise that he doesn’t have to compete with his brothers and sisters for a share of the food and become a fussy feeder. He may decide that a slice off the Sunday joint is preferable. Be firm. Stick to feeding times and if he does not finish his food in 10 minutes, take it away, and no more until the clock says next feeding time. If you are worried that he is unwell try him with a tiny sliver off the joint. If he eats this en­thusiastically there is nothing wrong. He’s trying it on—if you lose this battle you are his slave for ever. If a child wanted ice cream. jelly, sausages and baked beans for every meal at in­convenient times would you supply that ? Your job as a caring dog owner is to provide adequate, reason­able food. Your pup. as a reasonable puppy should be grateful and eat it.

CARE Puppies do not live by food alone. Care includes a place of his own. A card­board box is enough for the young puppy. Lay the box on its side so that there is a roof. Puppy feels safe when he’s enclosed on three sides and protected from above. If he decides to chew his box a replace­ment is easily obtained—and cheap. The purpose-built dog bed or basket big enough for the adult dog is enormous for a pup. He feels like a pea in a pod, rattling about and loses all sense of security.

Care includes a collar bearing his name and address—which he wears at all times. It’s his identi­fication. Prisoners escape from prisons : puppies “nip out” of open doors and if your pup decides to ex­plore the great wide world—and gets lost—the collar that’s hanging in the hall is no help to anyone who finds him.

puppy

Care also includes inocu­lations against such ail­ments as distemper. hard pad, hepatitis, leptospira, parvovirus and kennel cough.

Choose your vet when you choose your puppy—or even before and ask your vet to “vet” your choice of dog. Ask your dog owning neighbours to recommend a vet. Phone him, find out his surgery times. Do you need an appointment ? What if there is an emergency outside normal hours ? Much better to get this information in the cold light of day than at 11pm on Sunday even­ing when the children are crying and puppy is howl­ing helplessly.

THE routine inocula­tions are usually started between eight and 12 weeks of age. and until they are completed, keep pup away from other dogs and places where other dogs go. You don’t want him to meet disease until his protection has been established. Car journeys—without meeting unknown dogs—should start at a very early age if you are trying to have a good travelling dog. Next week I shall talk to you about Affection and Authority, which together constitute good training.

 



The control of tsetse

Posted by Patrick Patton on December 6, 2012 at 12:14 pm | Filled Under: Flies| Comments Off

Inoculation of cattle is mainly an interim measure before fly has been completely elimi­nated, but it is no easy matter to persuade the average African to bring in his animals regularly for treatment. If it is done too late the effect is negligible and it is almost impossible to convince the owner of cattle which have succumbed to the disease that had his animals been dealt with earlier they would have been saved.

optimizing-tsetse-fly-eradication-campaigns-in-west-africa

As tsetse live on blood alone, theoretically if the supply is removed the fly will die. With this in mind, in many parts of Africa a huge tsetse area has been selected and thousands of head of game slaughtered in the hope of exterminating the fly. In Zululand alone within the space of eight years over 100,000 head of game were shot. Glossina morsitans, often known as the ‘game fly’, finds its chief source of food in the larger ungulates, although when pressed it will feed on almost any bird or mammal. Glossina palpalis, another species, takes much rep­tilian blood and is scarcely affected by lack of ungulates, so that the eradication of tsetse in this manner is not only well nigh impossible, but ethically indefensible.

To wipe out the game has never been the policy in Northern Rhodesia and the methods em­ployed there include the erection of over 135 miles of game-control fencing. The first of these experi­ments, completed in 1958, stretches for about 65 miles, and by 1963 will run for over 250 miles from the Kafue River to the Zambesi. On one side game can live and breed under natural conditions (here it is the Kafue National Park) while away from the danger zone the farming area begins. Men stationed in four hunting camps along the fence-line control the game and service the fence, but today a break-out is a rare occur­rence indeed.

tsetse fly

Up in the Chinyunyu area east of Lusaka I saw yet another fence-line under preparation, a wide swathe of green straight as an arrow, 200 yards wide and hand-cleared through the bush, where one day the Chongwe game-control fence will run from the Changali Hills to within a short distance of the Zambesi, to pre­vent game crossing from the Luano Valley to the farming area.

Later we crawled down the southern end of the valley, pitch­ing and tossing along a tiny track hewn out of the hillside, little more than the bed of a dried-up mountain torrent, over smooth boulders between banks of matete grass. We emerged into the heart of the valley, where a small village lay in a cleared area, a tiny oasis of culti­vation in thousands of square miles of tsetse country and visible testimony to the success of yet another operation.

One of the major problems in the control of tsetse is how to prevent a re-infestation of a cleared area. This is done by gazetting infected areas and confining movement from fly-belt into fly-free country to authorized routes, and pickets are set up at strategic points on all roads. The simplest of these road blocks consists of a spring-bar gate or white pole bearing the notice `TSETSE BARRIER-STOP’. The pickets are trained uniformed Africans, who stop cars, cyclists or pedestrians, examine them for fly, note any that are found, spray with insecticide and write down the number of the vehicle and the date. There are over 135 fly pickets in the territory, of which twenty have ‘smudge houses’: you drive into these, the doors are shut and the vehicle is thoroughly sprayed. Most of the others have smaller chambers for cyclists and pedestrians. The sides of all roads leading up to the picket are regularly sprayed to trap any fly that may have left the vehicle before it reaches the picket. In addition, large areas of farm and ranching country have been declared quarantine areas and movement in and out of them has been pro­hibited except under veterinary permit. In all there are at the moment twenty-one districts in Northern Rhodesia, representing 4,741,760 acres, where fly is being eradicated near existing settle­ments, cattle ranches and areas where land will be suitable for grazing once the fly has gone.

tsetse flies

A considerable amount of success has been achieved in control of the tsetse fly in Northern Rhodesia and the ultimate prospects are bright, but I am still surprised that, with all the inter­national organizations in existence for malaria control and locust control, each area in Africa subject to the scourge of the tsetse must battle on alone, finding money to finance an unremitting campaign over years to come. There is little glamour attached to the work and small recogni­tion; but, without the constant vigilance of the authorities and the tireless efforts of tsetse super­visors everywhere, nothing could live in the miles of territory inhabited by the fly. On these few men depend the lives and livelihoods of millions of Africans.

 



The eradication of the fly

Posted by Patrick Patton on November 29, 2012 at 12:13 pm | Filled Under: Flies| Comments Off

The first step in the eradication of the fly is to determine its habitat. Measures have long been in force to combat the fly in both the Rhodesias, but today as a direct result of the building of the Kariba Dam and the consequent resettlement Kariba, to new homes higher up, a whole new area is being opened up and cleared of fly. One of my early journeys was undertaken on a fly survey in the Gwembe Valley. I set off accordingly in a Land-Rover with one of the two tsetse supervisors in the area, a trailer carrying our gear and camping equipment for a week, an African tsetse guard, a hunter attached to the Control Department and a couple of labourers to act as car­riers and help in setting up camp.

A course was plotted throughout the area and each morning we went out on foot, accompanied by a local villager who acted as our guide. We averaged about seven­teen miles a day, stopping every two hundred yards or so beside a large tree. Here we lined up, the sun beating down and reflected off the hard-beaten earth, while Saul, the tsetse guard, solemnly inspected our backs, butterfly net at the ready, to catch any fly that might have landed on us. There we would stand, looking slightly ridiculous and, as I sometimes reflected rather grimly, mutely offering ourselves up as a human sacrifice in the cause of progress. Hungry flies tend to settle head up on the catchers; the less hungry ones head down. Having caught your tsetse, the next step is to verify the species, determine its sex and whether it has fed.

tsetse fly

The tree under which we have been standing, thankful of its temporary shade, is then marked. One of the labourers, whose responsibility this is, cuts a square of bark out of the trunk and, if fly is present in the area, paints the bare patch red. Meanwhile the tsetse supervisor notes the kind of tree, the presence of game, already detected by the keen eyes of the hunter always

on the look-out for spoor, and wind and weather conditions. The history of the district in relation to tsetse population must be studied along with some account of the rainfall, temperature and the number of flies caught. The survey is usually summed up in a map of the area, showing the topographical details, the distribution of vegeta­tion and the fly distribution as far as it is known. Later, tsetse lines will be cut through the bush and traversed regularly by African staff and a day-to-day record is kept throughout the year.

sheep

Glossina morsitans are found in almost any wooded area other than the very dense thickets, so it is possible to rule out large tracts of country as being unsuitable. Their natural reaction is to seek places of higher light intensity which brings them out into open glades or other spots fre­quented by animals, especially the junctions of paths about water-holes, stamping grounds of game and so forth. There, from the vantage-point of the underside of branches about ten feet off the ground, they can probably see game passing up to a distance of 200 yards.

The flies’ resting ground is first removed by selective clearing of trees so that it is no longer cool enough for them and the hot season usually kills them off. Intensive ‘fogging’ with thermal aerosol insecticide follows, which acts at once and clears effectively any fly lingering in the vicinity. This is an expensive operation, costing roughly £150 a square mile, as four applications are needed at 21-day intervals, corresponding with the hatching periods of the fly.

tsetse flies

Several natural factors fortunately combine to limit the fly and help in the fight to exterminate it. The pupae for instance are attacked by various parasites and ants eat them, so that from one cause or another, including drowning and baking, probably only half survive to become flies. The flies in their turn have their own pre­dators in birds, wasps, jumping spiders and probably lizards.

It must be stressed that all operations are aimed at the protection of the African and the control of tryps. To this end, treatment with trypanocidal drugs is being used on African cattle where they are subject to the tsetse fly challenge. Well over 200,000 doses of trypano­cidal drugs are yearly used by the Veterinary Department on cattle in Northern Rhodesia, at a cost of approximately £12,500, while the yearly expenditure of the Tsetse Department on fly control measures amounts to a further £160,000.

Once it has been decided that an area is clear enough to allow cattle to be kept, the Veterinary Officer is notified. A simple kraal is erected, opening into a narrow pen through which the cattle pass for inoculation. From time to time blood smears are taken and examined under a field microscope. A wet smear will show any tryps present in the bloodstream, while a dry smear allows identification of the kind of trypanosome. Injections are carried out in fly areas every two months and all cattle in marginal areas are examined once a month. As a result, infection has dropped and herds have increased. At Nyangwena, east of Lusaka, I saw cattle in the first stages of the disease, the trypanosomiasis being arrested by regular inoculation; beside them were magnificent animals, fully recovered, that once might have wasted miserably away.



Death from a Fly

Posted by Patrick Patton on November 23, 2012 at 12:13 pm | Filled Under: Flies| Comments Off

PERCHED precariously astride a flying buttress of rock jutting out from the edge of the Muchinga Escarpment in Northern Rhodesia, I gazed out over the Luano Valley to the Mwepwe Hills, while the evening sun threw great shadows across the folds and contours of what is virtually a southern continuation of the Great Rift Valley which runs the length of the African continent. My companion handed me the binoculars and pointed out away in the distance the small bare brown patches, hand-cleared out of the bush, that told their own story. This was tsetse country and the strips of open ground were tiny areas laboriously reclaimed from the surrounding tsetse-ridden thickets. This vast sweep of thickly forested valley was only an infinitesimal part of an afflicted landscape denied to man simply because of the presence of a small brown fly.

In spite of advances in science, bio-chemistry, surgery and medicine, the problems of disease and starvation remain, and the most elusive of all man’s foes are the insects that carry the disease and cause the starvation. Insects, of which there are more than 700,000 known species, are respon­sible for one half of all human deaths; and there are 100,000 different species in Africa south of the Sahara, the most abundant of all living things inhabiting this great continent. More destructive than the elephant, more dreaded than the beasts of prey, the tsetse fly ranges over an area equal to twice that of the United States, and in Northern Rhodesia alone inhabits 85,000 square miles, roughly one third of her territory.

Great Rift Valley

Appalled by the extent of the problem and fascinated by the variety and ingenuity of the counter-measures in force, I had committed myself to a journey of over 5000 miles through Northern Rhodesia to learn more of this little-publicized campaign. Thanks to the kindness and co­operation of the Department of Veterinary Services and Tsetse Control and the unfailing patience of the tsetse supervisors them­selves, I was able to see for myself what was being done.

Principally known and feared as the carrier of trypanosomiasis or `sleeping sickness’ in man and of bovine trypanosomiasis or `tryps’, as it is commonly called, in cattle, horses and dogs, there are, as I discovered, twenty-two kinds of tsetse fly. Here in Northern Rhodesia four species have been found, but the main infestation is caused by two varieties, Glossina morsitans, the most widespread, and Glossina pallidipes, each favouring a different terrain, al­though in suitable localities the latter can be found superimposed on the former. It was a long time before entomologists and scientists established the fact that the dis­ease borne by the fly was not due merely to its bite, but to the introduction of a parasite from the fly to the man or animal bitten. The tsetse fly cannot drink water and can take no other food than blood. In feeding, it sometimes in­gests small parasitic animalcules, called trypanosomes, which com­plete their life cycle inside the body of the fly, so that after some weeks the tsetse becomes infective to other host animals, whose resist­ance to the trypanosomes varies greatly: some, like the baboon, cannot be infected at all; many, like the croco­dile, are tolerant to the only trypanosomes that can infect them; and some, like man, are immune to most kinds of trypanosomes but are killed by others.

male_tsetse_fly

Once seen, the tsetse is comparatively easy to recognize. It is little bigger than the average house-fly, with unmistakeable scissor-like wings and a neat triangle or hatchet cell formed by the veins on either wing. Unique among insects, it does not lay eggs but hatches out a living larva.

A veterinary assistant charges his syringe with a trypanocidal drug. Most inoculation is done by Africans under European supervision

Although its dangers have long been known, it is only within the last decade or so that any really effective measures have been evolved to eradicate the fly. A hundred years ago, when David Livingstone was making his epic journey along the course of the Zambesi, a trader might lose every ox in his team to the tsetse fly, while at the turn of the century in Uganda 200,000 people died from sleeping sickness in five years.

From the human standpoint, the presence of tsetse is of vital importance, because where there are human beings there are also cattle, and in most fly-belts it is these domestic animals that succumb; in an increasing number of fly-belts too the man-killing trypanosomes occur. They are not nearly so deadly today as they once were, because with increased medical knowledge and new drugs, sleeping sickness can almost always be cured if it is treated sufficiently early; it is also usually possible to break much of the contact between man and fly so that no new cases occur, as only one in several hundred flies normally carries the trypanosomes of human sleeping sickness.

tsetse fly

I learnt that tryps can be spread in various ways. Cattle may stray into a tsetse area and be bitten by infected flies. Traffic from tsetse areas into clean areas can bring a few flies onto a farm; before they die, which they will do, as tsetse can­not live in unsuitable conditions, they will infect several beasts. Human settlement in itself is of the greatest value in the fight against the fly, not only as an aid to its ultimate elimination, but also to consolidate gains already made. Uninhabited country is liable to be invaded by tsetse from neighbouring populated areas. In land that is being used for agricultural purposes, however, the ecological conditions are generally so changed that tsetse are unable to exist and the danger is lessened. Tsetse can also be found on meat, dried fish, tobacco, blankets and even on the backs of cyclists. They will also attach them­selves readily to moving objects such as cars or lorries, as I found to my cost, and be carried many miles from their usual haunts. Cattle already infected will sometimes stray from one farm to another and spread tryps, while game, especially elephant, moving about the country or disturbed from its normal haunts, sometimes wanders from fly-belts onto farms carrying with it a few tsetse.