Worms

One of the driving hypothesis of my research here is that girls experience of puberty will be different based on their exposure to pathogens, specifically helminths and in layman's term WORMS. And yesterday confirmed that yes in fact there are worms here in Bangladesh. Greg and I were speaking with one of the postgrad students here and told us a most horrifyingly squeamish story. He remembers sharing a bed with his cousin and waking up to feel a wet squishy thing near his ear. He looked over and a worm had crawled out of his sleeping cousin's mouth, across the cousin's cheek leaving a slimy trail and then migrated over to my friend's own body making its way into his ear! I was horrified, how gross I exclaimed. My friend calmly concluded, "Yes , here we are friends with the helminths." It wont be long until I meet these friend's; hopefully in the stool samples I collect rather than my own loo!