THE FLIGHT OF MOSQUITO VILMA
On a cool Amazon night, Vilma the Anopheles mosquito decided to go out looking for food. She thought: "For dinner, I want some sweet blood." Vilma flew around the community searching for someone to bite, until she entered a house and saw a lady lying in her bed without a mosquito net, and said: "Perfect! Here I'll bite and eat well!" Quietly, she approached the lady's leg and with her needle-like proboscis, she took all the blood she wanted until her stomach was full. What Vilma didn't know was that this blood was contaminated with the malaria parasite, which moved from her stomach to her saliva.
Days later, mosquito Vilma was hungry again and decided to leave earlier for a nearby farm where a young man was planting cassava wearing a short-sleeved shirt. She set her eyes on the young man, approached when he wasn't looking, and said to him: "Gotcha! For leaving your arm uncovered, I'm going to make you suffer!" Although mosquito Vilma victoriously began her escape, the young man was quicker and ended her flight with a slap where he felt the bite.
About two weeks after the bite, the young man began to feel ill because he didn't know that in Vilma's saliva was the Plasmodium parasite that was making him sick. Due to fever, sweating, headaches, and chills at the same time every night, the young man felt worse and worse. His worried parents went to Grandfather Israel to examine him, and the wise grandfather told the parents to treat the fever and chills with lemongrass but to go to the hospital in the morning to be checked. And indeed, with a blood test, the young man was quickly confirmed to have malaria. He immediately remembered mosquito Vilma who had bitten him at the farm and thought: "You mosquito, whose flight I ended, I won't let you make me suffer more. I'm going to take the complete medication and drink the remedy made from Remocaspi bark that the wise grandfather prepared for me."
Just like the young man, two, three, five, and up to 10 people in the community got sick, because mosquito Vilma wasn't the only one infected. The concerned families decided to organize a community work day to clean their yards and remove containers with stagnant water, as they realized that in this water, mosquitoes lay their eggs. They also learned that they should use mosquito nets, window screens, and long sleeves so that mosquitoes like Vilma wouldn't make them sick again.
THE ENCOUNTER BETWEEN THE AEDES AND AHUE FAMILIES
In a community on the banks of the Amazon lived the Ahue family: Don Pedro, Doña Elda, and their children Esmeralda, Mariana, and David. Their wooden house was cool and welcoming, full of small plants in their yard with flowers of many colors and scents. But I must tell you that the Ahue family didn't live alone in that house, because in the Caraná palm leaves of the kitchen roof lived the Aedes, a family of mosquitoes who decided to move to that cool, dark place they found in the kitchen.
On a rainy day in May, the Aedes mosquito saw a copoazú fruit shell that Esmeralda had left in the yard after eating the fruit. She noticed that the shell was full of water and perfect for laying her eggs. Her husband, Mr. Aedes, fed on nectar from the flowers in the yard, but for the female mosquito, this wasn't enough because she wanted to feed on blood while waiting for her offspring to be born. So, the Aedes mosquito left her home on the roof to go in search of her precious food and saw David playing with his mother.
Seeing the succulent meal, she launched herself at the boy, giving him a big bite, and was satisfied with her dinner, while David only felt a slight sting and stopped to scratch before continuing with his game.
After four days, David began to feel sick with high fever, headache, and muscle pain. Doña Elda prepared a herbal remedy that helped him feel better, but they noticed that very small red dots like a rash began to appear on his neck. So they decided to go down to the hospital, where they examined him and realized it was dengue fever. The Aedes mosquito had a big secret—she was very greedy and didn't tell her husband that a few days earlier, she had left the house for a while and bit Mariana's friend, whose blood was infected with the dengue virus.
But this story doesn't end here, as the encounter between the Aedes and Ahue families isn't over. Remember the offspring that were born from the water in the copoazú shell and went to live with their parents on the caraná roof. They are their ten children, black mosquitoes with white spots on their legs and silver chests, and they're ready to bite. So if you don't want to live with an Aedes family, I recommend washing water tanks, not leaving stagnant water, using mosquito nets when sleeping, and burning tocai, chili, or copal to smoke inside the house to drive away mosquitoes.
