Diseases in Honduras

You can find some interesting diseases and illnesses in Honduras, some real, some infectious, some imaginary, some serious, some not. 

My thirteen year old sweep-help told me this:

“When my mom was pregnant with me, she was really sick. She had cancer. Stomach cancer. Sometimes it was so bad, she could feel the cancer moving around through her body. She could feel it move in her chest and in her shoulders. Sometimes, the cancer even made her feet wiggle. But fortunately the neighbours came by every day and prayed for her. That cured her. Now she’s fine.”

Also very intriguing, told by yet another one of my little helpers, Saudi, age 13:

“Women with babies have to be really careful not to breastfeed in bed. Because there’s a snake that tries to drink all the milk. I know of a woman it happened to. Her baby son was really skinny and eventually died. What happened was that the snake lived under the bed and at night it would suck the milk from the nipple while it put its tail in the child‘s mouth, so it wouldn’t cry. The baby couldn’t drink any milk and died. The mom got a fever and died too.

This happens a lot.”