Hacker News Reader

Comment by nanijoe | Hacker News Reader

I dont know what part of Africa you grew up in, but growing up in Nigeria, no one was scared of Malaria.

It is treated pretty much the same way Americans treat getting the Flu

I was born in Nigeria. I barely remember it, but what I can remember, is being constantly told how bad it was. It's entirely possible that my parents had an unreasoning fear of it. When we are kids, they are our source of Truth.

I also remember my sister getting caught in one of those 'squito swarms, near the Delta. That was freaking awful.

Uganda was a bit worse; but we also had other things to be scared of.

I should also mention that Ebola wasn't actually around (that we knew of), when I was a kid, but we hasd some fun diseases. The parasitic ones (like Elephantitis and Belhartzia) were pretty difficult to look at.

Well then, nice to meet a fellow Nigerian :) Ebola is a recent thing AFAIK, so it would make sense that no one was freaking out about it when you were a kid.

To be fair, it does sound like you were in rural Nigeria, so my Malaria experience is likely different from yours

Someone pointed out that us Europeans were probably a lot more sensitive to this than others, who had been around it, all their lives. Also, my mother was the prime vector for my information, and she might have been a bit freaked out by all the fun ways Africa has to kill people.

But I'm still here. I seem to have survived.

My African friends would run around barefoot over the most God-awful crap, and were some of the healthiest people I've ever known.

200000 kids under 5 don't die of the flu every year.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com