www.brevard.edu/clarion
Volume 80, Issue 7 Web Edition SERVING BREVARD COLLEGE SINCE 1935
Follow us on
Twitter
(aBCCIarion
October 8, 2014
Senior applies for Fulbright National Geographic
Digital Storytelling Fellowship
By Kara Fohner
Editor in Chief
Michael St. Marie, a senior Integrated Studies major
specializing in Graphic Design and BORG, has applied
for the Fulbright National Geographic Digital Storytell
ing Fellowship. St. Marie hopes to use this grant to spon
sor a trip to Uganda. Once there, he will use photography,
his chosen medium, to raise awareness about the jigger, a
parasitic arthropod that is known to burrow into exposed
skin, where it will eventually lay and hatch eggs.
St. Marie originally traveled overseas in 2011. Since
then, he says that he has spent two months in Kenya,
three weeks in Ethiopia, one month in Zambia, and
over the course of several years, roughly two months in
South Africa.
“I’m proposing to tell the story of jiggers in Uganda,
because it’s a huge factor in people’s lives,’’ he said.
“People are really ashamed of having jiggers. They don’t
talk about it.”
Parents, out of shame, do not even speak about jiggers
with their children. While they know how to remove the
fleas, they likely will not pass on their knowledge because
they are embarrassed to even acknowledge the problem.
Removal, says St. Marie, is as easy as cutting the jiggers
out with a safety pin, but the longer the infestation lasts,
the more the jiggers multiply. “There was one family
that came in, and the kids had elose to 500 jiggers on
their entire bodies. There were four kids; each of them
had hundreds and hundreds of jiggers.”
Their mom, however, only had nine, as she knew how to cut them out.
“That’s where it’s a social problem,” St. Marie said. “As a whole, it’s not
a life-threatening issue, but it affects all areas of life. It affects education and
occupation, it affects social life., you can’t go and play soccer if your feet are
full of little bugs that inhibit you from walking or running. It’s about quality
of life.”
St. Marie has been working for Sole Hope, a non-profit organization dedi
cated to education about jigger removal and the destigmatization of the condi
tion. Now, he hopes to travel to Uganda again in May, where he will spend the
first three months of this project working with the MIC AH initiative (Mission
for Civic Awareness and Health), which is based out of Uganda Christian
University. MICAH will send students from different areas of public health
and public administration into rural areas to collect data on jigger patients.
“It’ll be the first comprehensive academic research on jiggers in Uganda.
I’ll traveling with these students, going to the villages, talking to people and
interviewing people—trying to get a view of how this affects people’s lives
in the country,” St. Marie said.
The next phase of his project will be spent comparing the perception of jig
gers in an urban setting to the perception of jiggers in a rural setting. These
comparisons, the data collected, and St. Marie’s interviews will all contribute
to the third phase, in which St. Marie will create infographics to help raise
awareness.
“It really feels like the stars are kind of aligning for this project,” he said. “It’s
a good time because 2016 is an election year in Uganda. I think that there will
be an opportunity for some attention to be drawn for this issue in the country
and maybe get some long term solutions for this problem.”