Stories abound on the pesticide whirlwind which moves across Apac

The whole of Oyam District, neighboring Apac, has by now been sprayed. Some people say the number of malaria incidences have not gone down.

Apac is currently being covered. Some people say the sprayers fail to reach ‘the deep villages’, the most inaccessible parts of the district. Others report that they developed an influenza-like reaction after their house was sprayed.

Some say the spraying team is not been looked after properly and work whole days without proper lunch provision, being paid very little and receiving inadequate training; some say they do not want their houses sprayed. The educated elite, based in Apac town, is now hesitant: do they also want their houses sprayed? It will be interesting to see who decides to say no thanks.

The public sphere has been clogged with genuine, half-baked and fantastic stories and rumours about the DDT Project; in the middle of everything, some pro-organic and anti-toxidity organisations have stirred up opinions by circulating an electronic slide presentation on the internet and publishing statements in New Vision on the side effects of DDT.

Here in Apac, there is always a conspiracy theory to uncover somewhere, with the President at the apex as the Commander-in-Chief that he is. As such, some feel the ‘license to spray’ is a sign of a bias against the Langi by the government and an effort to create a social experiment in this marginalised region. Would they spray the President’s own district?, people ask.

Experiment or not, it remains to be seen whether the rate of malaria will dramatically decrease.

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