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SATURDAY SUN August 25, 2012
ASPIRE
Human Interest
Deadly Gamble! Are you one of those Nigerians patronizing itinerant barbers and manicurists? Doctors say you may be playing with fire. By ERIC DUMO Until he almost had his finger chopped recently, Rumi Okochu, 25, was a big fan of local nail cutters known as Maiyanka kumba in Hausa dialect. With just N40, he would have his finger and toe nails cleaned and trimmed neatly. He does this twice a month and have had no reason to worry until about one month ago when he had a shocking experience. “The mallam (nail cutter) almost cut off my finger,” he began. “I don’t know what he was thinking of or where his mind was but I just felt this mad pain on my left hand as he was trimming the nails. When I looked, there was blood rushing out, he said it was a mistake that I was moving my hands and that was why he mistakenly cut my finger with the scissors he was using. Though, the finger has healed, I still feel slight pains because it was swollen after that period. Later the chemist that treated it for me said I have contacted whitlow in that finger. Since that time, I have stopped cutting my nails with all these mallams.” Aigbe Paul, too, has had a terrible experience patronizing local nail cutters that daily patrol many Nigerian streets and communities looking for customers. He said even though he was always scared patronizing them because of the fear of contacting sickness, his last encounter with one of them made him to stop. “For several days I was feeling pains on my fingers and toes. It was as if the aboki cut off pieces of my flesh. Whenever I put on shoes, I was always feeling pains on my toes and it has never been like this that was why I was surprised. But before it becomes something else, I told myself that I would never cut my nails with mallams again. I don’t want to contact any disease or sickness please,” he said. But while the likes of Okochu and Paul have learnt a few lessons and decided to steer clear of this mode of pedicure and manicure for fear of its imminent risk, there are scores others whose addiction and loyalty seem unbroken – even with the dangers they portend and present. At Oshodi, a bustling suburb within the Lagos metropolis, the reporter stumbled on a rare sight in the course of the week. A middle-aged man was having his hair shaved at a corner of the busy road by another man whom the reporter later found to be a mobile barber who goes in search of customers from street to street. The vendor was using a tiny, silver-coloured metal shaped in form of a knife to scrape his client’s scalp to achieve a clean shave. There were two other people waiting in line to be attended to by this local ‘beautician’. It was a normal routine for most of the people here and so nobody really cared if the practice has any danger attached to it or not. Afew questions thrown at some of the men, and it was revealed that some have been engaged in it for many years. “It is the cheapest way to get my hair shaved,” one of them who identified himself as Yemi, told the paper. “At the salon now, to barb your hair, you have to pay N300 and that’s too cost as far as I am concerned. But with this aboki people, one can have a hair cut with N70 to N100. This is not my first time of patronizing this man (referring to the man shaving the hair), he comes here almost everyday and people barb their hair from him.” When the reporter asked this group if they were aware of such diseases like HIV AIDS and that they could be at risk of contacting it by using the same metal object to scrape their hairs, there was a seeming consensus in their response. The men said they were not afraid because if nothing has happened to them since, they see no reason why it would be now that they would be contacting disease by barbing from their customer who most simply addressed as Megida but whose original name is Aliyu Shehu. At the popular Mile 12 market, Mohammed Suna and his brother, Basil, are taking pedicure and barbing services to the homes of people. Now in the business for about eight and five years respectively, they have become regular faces in this Lagos locality and its surrounding neighbourhoods. While Mohammed, the elder of the two, gives a single haircut between N80 to N100 and makes around N600 daily on the average, Basil who specializes in trimming and cleaning finger and toenails for N50, say his daily income is around N300 to N400. They told the paper that their customer base is dropping by the day and that they can’t tell why. “When I first started this work, I could make around N1000 to N1200 but now, it is difficult to even make half of that amount. Even most of my customers don’t call me anymore and I don’t know why. But when I go to Kosofe where our people are many, that’s where I get small customers in a day sometimes. Honestly, I don’t know why it is like this. Even my brother is not making money they way he used to. He told me a few days ago that he wants to go back to Kano because business is not going as before anymore,” Mohammed told the paper.
Local manicurist in action. How safe?
Dr. Bassey Sights of local service providers like the Suna brothers is a very familiar one across most parts of Lagos, especially in localities that have high concentration of the Hausas of Northern Nigeria. In Agege, Ijora, Obalende and Ebutte-Metta for example, their presence is well known and their services well patronized. Many of such practitioners who are mostly men, move around with their tools tucked into portable bags, which they carry on their shoulders. Apair of sharp scissors, a bottle of detergent and mentholated spirit, an aluminum cup and also a small knife, are some of the tools used by practitioners. But while attending to a customer, most of these items hardly go through any acceptable process of sterilization, making the spread of disease inevitable. Experts say there are a number of deadly infections and diseases that individuals who patronize such modes of cleanup can be exposed to. A recent report found up to eight bacteria and five fungal species in some of these tools used by the likes of Shehu. Some of the deadly bacteria include Micrococcus luteus, Micrococcus roseus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Staphylococcus aureus, Hafnia spp, Shigella spp, Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus spp. Those of the fungal were identified as Aspergillus niger, Aspergillus flavus, Mucor spp, Trichophyton spp and Candida albicans. Those in the medical line told the magazine some of these are able to cause grave harm to the human body. Daniel Bassey, a medical doctor, insisted that the practice of using the same tools to service more than one customer was extremely dangerous and is among major factors contributing to the spread of deadly diseases such
as HIV and AIDS in many parts of the country. He advised individuals to take their health issues serious and not expose themselves to unnecessary risks. “The issues concerning most of the things that has to do with our people taking care of their health is that most times people are not getting adequate information. When somebody is poor or not educated, what happens is that the person is not able to have a good bargaining power to get the best quality health care services. Before now we didn’t have the prevalence of most of these diseases like HIV we have today. “HIV, which is a virus, is very deadly and cannot be extinguished by antibiotics. In that regard, we have also discovered that the use of sharp objects that has to have contact with one person’s blood and then also used on someone else without proper sterilization, can contribute to spreading the disease faster. HIVitself is a dermatological problem in the sense that it lives in the blood and can only be passed through blood contact. Apart from through sex, this is a major avenue for transmission of such disease as HIV. “People are aware of this fact but then we still have the prevalence of HIVAIDS because people are careless with their health and safety. If you check the population of the Hausas, lets say you take a sample of 1000 individuals and you decide to test the active adults, up to 60 to 70 per cent of them would be tested for HIV because most of them go through all sorts of pedicure and manicure processes that are unsafe. Some of these things are done so crudely with tools like blade, knives and scissors. “Yes I agree with some people who argue that some of these practices has been very traditional but because tradition is not something that is static but should be dynamic, then there should have been changes over the years. Modernization has offered us a lot of options in whatever we are doing, so I expect that people in this category too should have adapted to these seeming changes. “Having said so, we have been able to convince most of them that they cannot do this forever. They don’t have what it takes to sterilize their equipments because they are mere vendors. When you say you want to me manicured, they just quickly cut your nails and some of them cut so close, exposing the person to grave danger because they would have shaved so close to where the blood cells could have contact with the object used. “It is almost the same thing you find at the salons when you don’t go there with your own clipper and kits. Most of what they use to sterilize their equipments cant completely eliminate the virus spreading HIV. Apart from HIV, there are so many other scalp and nail diseases that these things can lead to. These can move from one person to another and without proper medication, it could lead to some very serious problems. That is why we advise people not to engage in such practices as cutting their nails and barbing their hairs by roadsides vendors who use one object for every customer. It is a very
risky gamble and it is in the best interest of individuals to abandon such unsafe practice,” he said. But some vendors like Ahmed Alimi do not share Bassey’s view. He rejected the claim that they are helping spread disease in the country, maintaining that their mode of operation has nothing to do with endangering peoples’health. “Some of us have been in this business for many years so I know everything about it. In most part of the North, this is the main way people shave their hairs and keep their nails clean. I have never seen or heard anyone dying because he patronized us. So all this one you are talking about is not correct,” he argued. The situation is not peculiar to Lagos it is the same in other parts of the country where regardless of spirited campaigns by the governments and other known organizations on the dangers of sharing needles, blades and other sharp objects, the romance with local pedicurists and barbers have remained largely unchanged. Not even the influx of cheap clippers and handy personal nail cutters and filers have been able to completely eradicate this practice a growing number of individuals even educated ones have continued to be engaged in this risky practice. Buchi Anyamele, a psychologist based in PortHarcourt, capital of Rivers State, told the magazine in a telephone conversation that the major issue is not that people are not aware of the risk involved but that it is sometimes difficult for people to abandon a particular lifestyle in favour of another, even if the new way is the more acceptable. “Africans generally find it difficult to break away from their past in anything they do, and this is one of the reasons why the continent has remained largely under-developed. You cannot blame those people who still give their nails to one man on the roadside to trim or open their hairs for him to shave. It is either they are ignorant or aware of the dangers but afraid or unwilling to switch to another mode of having it done. But I think with more enlightenment, more people would understand why they should not endanger their lives anymore.” The number of individuals who patronize vendors like Alimi across the country is not known but there are fears the figure could be on the rise, especially with daily survival becoming very critical for many in the face of the nation’s dwindling economy. A lot of persons live below the poverty line (less than US$1) in many communities and so investing as ‘much’as N300 for a single haircut or having a safe finger and toenail treatment in a standard salon for around N500, could only remain a dream. Even though, there are cheaper bargains in some places, the situation of the economy might not still leave enough naira notes in the pockets of ordinary Nigerians to address such needs – leaving the likes of Shehu and the Suna brothers a huge part of many people’s lives – a situation that might not likely change in the very near future even with the risk associated.