Mosquito Hunter: Chronicles of an African Insect Scientist

By Clifford Mutero

Mosquito Hunter is Clifford Muteros first autobiographical account. It focuses on the evolution of his entomological career, which was ignited in his early childhood from around the age of six up to the stage when he completed his PhD studies in insect science at age thirty. It is a one-of-a-kind narration that sets out geosocial, historical, and entomological facts with a brand of humor that has the potential to instruct and inspire a new generation of would-be natural scientists through the soft lore behind scientific investigation. Set mainly in a quintessentially rural farming community in Central Kenya and also in coastal Kenya, this narration reflects the abundance of stories based on village events, which were enriched by news and music from the wider world via the bridging power of radio. Significantly, Mosquito Hunter pays high tribute to the various mentors who inspired the author towards research of the natural environment. Chief among them is his father, Felix Mutero, whose all-round mastery of efficient farming practices provided a master class of sorts to the future scholar. Themes ranging from health, education, love, family, music, poverty, and professional politics are all woven into this telling of the making of that rare species, the African insect scientist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524683566

Clifford Mutero

Clifford Mutero is a Kenyan medical entomologist who has worked for many years at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) in Nairobi. He is a visiting professor with the School of Health Systems and Public Health, University of Pretoria. From 2001 to 2014 he spearheaded investigation in support of multi-sectoral malaria control policy-making in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. During this period, he coordinated research under the System-wide Initiative on Malaria and Agriculture to promote holistic understanding of complex linkages between socio-ecological systems and human health, overseeing implementation of projects in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. He has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization and other international bodies on integrated vector management. He holds a PhD in medical entomology from the University of Nairobi. Born and raised in the rural central Kenyan highlands, his childhood straddled the heady pre- and post-independence era whose optimism peaked in the 1960s. From an early age he delighted in story-telling, stemming from his innate ability to keenly observe his immediate surroundings and vividly analyze interpersonal interactions. He has been married to Joy for 30 years and together they have raised two daughters, Waihiga and Noni.

Book preview

© 2017 Clifford Mutero. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/22/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8351-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8352-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8356-6 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Part I. A country childhood in Kenya

Chapter 1   The Big Bang of my career: Exploding the tick

Chapter 2   Gourmet locusts: A satisfying snack

Chapter 3   The Beetles: Sounds familiar

Chapter 4   Tiny terrorists: Bedbugs are forever

Chapter 5   The jigger hobble: Origins of a golfer’s pose

Chapter 6   Bees, safari ants et al: No laughing matter

Chapter 7   Lessons from my father: Farm animal pests

Chapter 8   More lessons from my father: Crop pests

Chapter 9   A weevil diet for health: Post-harvest pests

Chapter 10   The dragonfly: Nature’s helicopter

Part II. The pursuit of knowledge

Chapter 11 Inside the science faculty: Goodbye big game, hello insect science

Chapter 12 Insect systematics: "You cannot determine a species a priori"

Chapter 13 Tsetse: The bug with a uterus and milk glands

Chapter 14 Sorghum shootfly: Tasting with its feet

Chapter 15 First attempt to land a job as a graduate entomologist

Chapter 16 The initiation of a mosquito hunter

Photo gallery 1

Chapter 17 Life in Jimbo: Dancing in the moonlight

Chapter 18 Mombasa: Living at the YWCA

Chapter 19 A bigger bang: Surviving a terror attack

Chapter 20 Off to Liverpool: From nyama boilo to sugar cubes

Chapter 21 Who cares how long mosquitoes live?

Chapter 22 Home, sweet home: A girl with hazel eyes

Chapter 23 Final leg in coastal Kenya: North to Jaribuni

Chapter 24 Mwea: On the home stretch to PhD

Photo gallery 2

Chapter 25 Joy at last

Epilogue

Editor’s note on Gĩkũyũ (Kikuyu) spelling

Dedication

To my parents, for the firm foundation on which they took their stand to build their lives, and for giving their all to bring up my 10 siblings and I in a harmonious, loving and value-instilling family environment purposed to make us caring and knowledgeable individuals.

Acknowledgements

This memoir would not have seen the light of day had it not been for the affirmation and encouragement of my wife Joy regarding my gifting as a story teller. The book was inspired by the curiosity expressed by several friends and relatives whenever I would recount some of my early experiences growing up in the fledgling years of our nation during our interactions. My daughters Waihiga and Noni head the list of those who egged me on through their endless questions about my childhood experiences growing up in Murang’a. The urging by my immediate family to start writing got an unexpected boost when our friend Adega Ouma visited us in Pretoria one evening and wouldn’t leave until I promised that the first draft manuscript would be ready in two years’ time. Joy continued to urge me on afterwards and finally lured me with an offer to edit the book each time I completed several chapters to show I was serious about completing the book. Mosquito Hunter finally became a reality with the help of Joy’s editing skills and assistance in getting it published.

Prologue

The year is 2010, and I have just embarked on compiling this memoir. It is spring in South Africa; the mood is inspirational for reflection. Yesterday was heritage day, a festive public holiday celebrated on 24 September, and the aroma of all sorts of meat on the braai fills the air. Jacaranda blooms have made an early appearance in Pretoria. I spotted some yesterday in Waterkloof Ridge as I drove home to Constantia Park. Soon the whole city will be swathed in the prolific flowers blooming on thousands of trees as far as the eye can see. The print media, including Pretoria News and the community newspaper Rekord, will for the next few weeks splash awesome photographs of streets resplendent in purple.

My family and I moved to South Africa from our home country, Kenya, in 2002. The purple of the jacarandas in Pretoria used to trigger in me a musical rather than a literary kind of inspiration when we first arrived. I would switch my mind to an escapist mode, search through my CD rack and play songs of various genres from the musical era of the ’60s to early ’80s, ranging from Harry Belafonte’s Island in the Sun to Purple Rain by Prince. These first CDs of the season, highlighting the sunny and purple theme colours of a Pretoria spring, would gradually pave the way for my all-time Beatles favourites. As an enduring Beatles fan, I would play the songs I felt best captured the spring mood, particularly Here Comes the Sun, and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Driving down Eridanus Road in Waterkloof Ridge would prompt me to play Long and Winding Road, a perfect description of the road leading to the Waterkloof Heights shopping centre, next to where we lived for nearly three years. The beauty of the place as one navigated the bends on Eridanus Road never failed to make me sing.

While the promise of spring in South Africa has undeniably got me into the mood for writing, the decision to compile Mosquito Hunter has more to do with promises I have made to my family. For several years I have told my wife Joy that I would put pen to paper and record some of my countless real life stories as only I can. It now seems like a good time to fulfil that promise. Our daughters Waihiga and Noni have contributed to my inspiration. When they were young and impressionable, I would regale them with endless stories from my childhood days. I eventually lost track of which tales I had already narrated, and would inadvertently repeat some of them to the point where they began to literally block their ears whenever they suspected I might launch into the retelling of a familiar tale. My favourite places to ambush the girls with my childhood reminiscences would either be at the dinner table in the evenings, or when driving them to and from school.

I never imagined that I would one day lose my erstwhile captive audience for these stories, both factual and fictional. Waihiga and Noni made up my most valued audience prior to their teenage years. Joy, too, when we quietly and informally got engaged in 1985. It warms my heart to know that Joy at least continues to enjoy listening to some of the stories. The upshot of my changed circumstances has been the important decision to stop procrastinating and store my stories in a book. In other words, the reality of a generation gap in my household has put pressure on me to embark on writing Mosquito Hunter. Hopefully, in this way I can retain my valued immediate family audience while at the same time widening the circle, in which I may share some of the experiences of my earlier years with other audiences, both in Kenya and beyond. I have subsequently chosen to debut with factual stories from my youth which was largely spent studying insects, from the time I was about six years old to the period when I completed my PhD at age 30.

PART I

A country childhood in Kenya

Chapter 1

The Big Bang of my career:

Exploding the tick

I stood in awe and wonder. The hissing sound had just begun from the centre of an outdoor fire about a metre away. It was high pitched and furious, as though from a pressure cooker. I didn’t have to wait long before the muffled popping sound came to my ears, followed by the formation of a miniature mushroom cloud of ash. Although the sound was barely audible, there was no doubt that an explosion had nevertheless taken place. Looking back, it was akin to the much-touted Big Bang to which science attributes the genesis of the universe. The nearly two centimetre-wide tick that I, together with several of my playmates, had plucked from the tail region of a grazing cow, had become inflated to almost twice its original size when we threw it onto the hot coals. This tick, as I came to learn many years later, was a species scientifically known as Amblyomma variegatum or the tropical bont tick in common English. It wasn’t the light blueish-grey tick commonly found on the bodies of both livestock and dogs (identified as Boophilus decoloratus). The bont tick was rather rare and dark brown in colour. When engorged with cow blood, the bont tick is about three times the size of the Boophilus tick. Any ordinary-sized tick is known as ngũha in my Gikũyũ mother tongue, but a giant-sized specimen like the one we had thrown onto the coals went by the special name kĩgũmba. My young mates and I had been eagerly waiting for the kĩgũmba to explode and looked forward to sharing the resultant coin-sized burger. This single event marked the beginning of my life-long career. I was barely eight years old. Thus began my enduring fascination with bugs.

This incident took place at my rural home in a village known as Kamune, deep inside Mũrang’a County in Kenya. It was 1963, just before Kenya got its independence from Britain. Generally by age 10, children in Kamune and the neighbouring villages had perfected the art of surviving on all kinds of snacks growing wild, vegetarian and otherwise. Gooseberries, blackberries and a variety of other uncultivated fruits, along with freshly-dug raw sweet potatoes, were the most common form of snacks.

Non-vegetarian delicacies like the one obtained through exploding ticks were rare, and mainly only enjoyed by boys. The main reason for this was that the process of acquiring the tick involved following cows into bushes and grazing lots some distance from the village. Tending cows being a duty reserved for boys made it easier for them to locate this prized source of protein. Information was quickly passed on, even to those like me whose parents rarely assigned them the job of tending cattle. We would nevertheless join the other village boys to have fun in the great outdoors. Meat was a rare commodity in the diet of many households, and boys had to be innovative if they wanted to enjoy it.

Kamune and the adjacent villages had been created by the British colonial government for ease of governing the natives during the independence war. Originally, dykes and wooden stakes had been erected in strategic places around the villages to keep Mau Mau freedom fighters away, while also cutting off any food supplies they might hope to acquire from the villages. The Mau Mau lived in the dense forests around the Aberdares range of mountains and the Mt. Kenya region, from where they waged a decade-long hide-and-seek war against the colonial government, aided by the jungle terrain. The barriers erected by the government were also meant to protect the lives of any village inhabitants viewed by the Mau Mau as traitors sympathetic to the colonial government. The freedom fighters were known for their ruthlessness in dealing with government sympathizers and would not hesitate to carry out executions at will. This instilled fear throughout the villages around Mt. Kenya.

Life in these artificially-created villages was boring to say the least. All one could see upon waking up was the endless rows of mud-walled, grass-thatched huts with the exception of a few, including our house, whose roofs were of rusted tin. It’s no wonder that boredom drove us boys to form groups in various parts of the village and, as one would expect, engage in all kinds of mischief and pranks, including challenging each other to traditional wrestling matches and actual fights. Boys would often venture out of the village to the nearby bushes and cultivated patches of land where they would turn into budding naturalists learning the many names or uses of plants, small mammals, birds and insects.

Sometimes this exploration would go on until late in the evening when children were expected to be back in the house. The consequences of being late were not always pleasant, as many parents had one or other form of punishment waiting to be administered on an unruly youngster. This would usually involve pinching either the thighs or ears, or even a few slaps on the head or face. When such punishment came our way we would loudly scream that we would never repeat whatever we had done wrong. But we soon forgot our ardent promises and would inevitably find ourselves back in the cycle of more mischief and punishment.

Girls, too, enjoyed their own brand of fun, making rag dolls or having hula hoop contests in the moments when they were not occupied with the more serious tasks of fetching firewood or water to fulfil their mothers’ instructions.

As for exploding ticks, I was to learn many years later that this could actually be described as an extreme sport; a do not try this at home kind of activity. Some tick species, including the ones we were exploding, in certain instances can harbour parasites which could lead to nasty infections in both livestock and people. Some of these infections are still not well understood and are the subject of ongoing research. I imagine we were lucky in the sense that tick exploding escapades were very rare indeed and really not counted among a boy’s daily activity.

Chapter 2

Gourmet locusts: A satisfying snack

My interest in true insects intensified, as did that of most other boys in my village, when I discovered that locusts could yield bigger non-vegetarian snacks than ticks. While both locusts and ticks may be referred to by the common name ‘bugs’, they nevertheless belong to different orders of arthropods. In this respect, locusts are true insects in view of their having three pairs of legs, a distinct head, thorax and abdomen, and two pairs of wings.

Hunting locusts was a much more complex affair than picking ticks off the hind quarters of cows. My mates and I learned from very early on that a locust was no easy target as it is endowed with a capacity for long distance flight. The bigger obstacle, however, was the locust’s hind legs. These two limbs are covered in spikes that only a highly skilled locust catcher can handle. Up close the spikes near the locust’s knee joint were a terrifying sight. To my young eyes, they appeared to be as big as a fish bone. It took