Bubba
Apr 29, 2007, 8:35 AM
Post #7 of 24
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we've had amoebas (I'm assuming that's what you mean by parasites; E.hystolica)
No, Kathy, I had worms. My wife had amoebas and brucellosis some time back and those were very unpleasant but I had intestinal worms which I could have contracted from bad food, water or airborn eggs stirred up by traffic or weed eaters or - perhaps - from sleeping with my darlin´ doggy that little bastard. Worm treatment is cheap and uncomplicated. You take the over-the-counter Vermox for a couple of days a month apart. Unfortunately, I found that intestinal parasites (worms) do not cause one to lose weight. Damn! If they did that I would have left them alone since they weren´t bothering me.
My wife is pretty sure she got brucellosis from eating the unpasteurized dairy products she was buying at the Ajijic tianguis. The vendor there has the most delicious yogurts and cheeses you have ever tasted but that stuff can really make you sick.
An interesting thing about consuming unpateurized dairy products. My wife is French* and grew up consuming unpasterized French cheeses and other other dairy products. However, in France, cattle are properly vaccinated so the cases of brucellosis are fewer than in Mexico where we have personally observed filthy conditions among unvaccinated dairy cattle. Back in 2001 when Lake Chapala had receded considerably there were numerous cattle herds roaming the beach in great numbers. We used to watch this lady milk her cows daily in utter (udder?) filth and then sell the milk at the local plaza.
Irresponsible animal husbandry and agricultural practices are commonplace here in Mexico (and most of the world). Not only did we observe filthy dairy operations on the federal land exposed by the receding lake but also daily passed numerous truck farms planted on the exposed toxic lake bed and those zucchini, melons, corn ears, chayotes, etc. were then sold at the local municipal markets. Recently, the government of Lake Chapala´s Jamay Municipality complained to federal authorities that an inordinate number of the community´s children were developing diseases and deformities as a result of eating fish caught in the adjacent lake. I read the local press and watch television news both here in Jalisco and in Chiapas and the papers and television stations are constantly harping about unbelievably filthy rivers (they love to show pictures of the resulting spume) and toxic garbage dumps and nothing is done about this.
Do you think for one minute that the Mexican authorities would have recalled that e-coli infected spinach that killed several people in the United States last year? In your dreams.
Now, I love Mexico, live here full time and am not leaving but I will tell you, as one who spent a couple of years of his youth bumming about Europe, Africa and India and eating in utterly filthy places, the Bubba ain´t 29 anymore and these intestinal diseases can kill an old goober. What is it that makes us believe that we can eat food prepared in street stalls with no clean water source and blithely think that some food preparer who has to defecate behind the nearest tree has then scrubbed those hands that processed our tortilla?
Bon apetite.
* In France in the 1950s when my wife was growing up in Paris, what the French called "liver crises" were quite common and the result of poor food preservation and distribution practices. Also, after the war, the French were poor and one made do with what one had to make do with. Those poor kids in Jamay don´t eat carp from Lake Chapala because it´s particularly appetizing but because that´s all their parents can afford to feed them. And, nobody in Mexico really gives a damn about the poor. The callousness towards the poor in this country is depressing and these porr folks are the people (the lucky ones) working in the kitchen of that restaurant you adore.
(This post was edited by Bubba on Apr 29, 2007, 8:38 AM)
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