If it wasn't for a mad-dog, I would have never got to know Aunty Florie! In hind-sight, it happened just as well.
It must have been 1978 or 1980 or 1981 ... can't recall. Maybe a bit earleir too! A rabid dog was roaming around Saligao, biting random people and pets. Our pom of the time, a cross-tempered full-white furry dog called Duke (we called him Dukie) happened to be roaming on the road somewhere near the fields alongside our home and Lourdes Convent. Duke got bitten too. Ricky and I were at home, as our Mum was travelling to Bombay just then. We went ahead and cleant the dog's wound, Ricky (the aspiring vet, who ended up in computers) doing most of the work. I just played assistant. Later, we learnt, the dog was rabid! There were so many doom and gloom warnings. Of course, the rabid dog hadn't bitten *us*. But he had bitten our dog. We had cleant our dog's wounds. What if we had a small cut, through which the rabies virus entered our system? And there was no cure for rabies. At the same time, three out of five thousand patients contracted rabies (if I recall right) from the vaccine itself! Frightful... And so it went on. Instead of taking the risk, we decided to go in for the 14 injections each! It did seem frightful, specially as we were told the injections were given "in the stomach". (It later turned out that these were subcutaneous... didn't pain much, but the old vaccine took time to dissolve, and one ended up with temporary lumps under the skin of the stomach which lasted a few days, and itched quite a bit!) Somehow, we found out that the Cordeiro family had also been affected by that rabid dog. Someone linked up, and I remember A. Florie saying we could come over to their home for the daily injections, as they would be calling over a male-nurse they knew (someone called Pednekar who cycled down to Saligao from some neighbouring village, if I recall right) to administer the shot, instead of all of us marching to Panjim every day. Due to that episode, we (my brother Ricky and myself) got to know the Cordeiros better, as we trooped to their house (for the injections) for at least 14 consecutive days. We would sometimes still reminisce, with a laugh, about this episode when we met up! I realised A. Florie was a very kind and smiling lady, who always had a good word for everyone she met. She struck me as a lady of few words, but every one counted! She struck me as one of the villagers who made everyone she met feel special when she said something pleasant on meeting you. To my mind, she will be the same old smiling person ... maybe one of her daughters could share a photo of her via this list. If I'm not mistaken, she was one of the many 'Africanders' who returned to the Saligao of the 1970s, and lent a whole lot of vibrancy to our village then. Sometimes, you've got to be thankful even to a mad dog and an Idi Amin (just exaggerating a bit... maybe the Cordeiros came earlier, and not from Uganda!) -- This message comes via the Google Groups "Saligao-Net" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/saligao-net?hl=en Please post regularly to keep the e-village active! To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject.
