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Living with LF

The following stories are real accounts of what it's like to live with LF.

Kulthum Samum is 14 years old. She first noticed her leg starting to swell about a year ago. "At first, I did not know what it was," she says. "I went to see the traditional healers in the village, but nothing they did was of any help." She starts to cry and she says: "Last year I gave up school because my friends were laughing at me and making jokes about my leg. I don't want to go any more."

Hamsi Issa Mwalawa in 65 and has lived in Mikindani all his life. He has advanced lymphoedema of the legs. "I first started to see symptoms in 1988," he says. "First my right leg started to be affected, then my left. I've been in this condition for about seven years now." Hamsi used to sell chickens for a living, but is now unable to work and relies on his family to support him.

Asha Saidi Nkupa mimics pain and madness as she tries to describe what it is like to experience an LF fever attack. Flies swarm around her swollen, cracked and weeping limbs. Her legs look like they are caked in layer and layer of thick mud. But they are not: this is her skin, displaying the elephant-like qualities that earned it the name elephantiasis. "I couldn't imagine that anyone would want to give us free tablets," she says, adding that, to her, protecting the children is what is really important. "I am praying that every other child will not get this disease."

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