[Daphne – I’m not saying they’re saints. I’m saying they’re people. They are no different to the rest of us, with all our peculiarities. It’s the distinction you make that bothers me: THEY have to work. No, everyone has to work. Why single out one group and not another? The biggest freeloaders in this country are not Africans. They’re Maltese. The ones who think they’re owed a living are not African (they don’t come from a welfare society, for heaven’s sake) but Maltese. The ones who are abusing your country are not African, but Maltese. Nobody is abusing your countrymen except for other Maltese.]

Anyway, on xarabank.com there was this lady doctor from Hamrun who used to insinuate that most of the African immigrants had exotic and very unpleasant diseases and constituted a serious health hazard to the local population. She used to say that she knew because she was one of the doctors who had to screen them.

[Daphne – I imagine that this is the same ‘lady doctor’ who, or so I am reliably informed by a doctor friend, spends her time in between venting against Africans inciting hatred of me on the viva malta forum, which is operated by the dreadful Norman Lowell and his miniature sidekick, my former classmate Arlette Baldacchino. It’s not only perfume that comes in little bottles. Another liquid that begins with P does, too. Here’s where the sentiment comes from. It’s the same school of thought which held that the Jews caused the medieval bubonic plague in between poisoning wells –

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3724/is_200301/ai_n9222019/pg_1%5D
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3260391,00.html
http://www.queerty.com/magazine-claims-gay-men-spread-skin-disease-20080815/
http://hgs.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/3/1/21
http://www.newsnet14.com/2007/12/deadly-africans-escape-to-spread-disease/

[Daphne – Meningococcal disease? Are you seriously trying to convince me that meningitis and septicaemia were unknown in Malta before the arrival of sub-Saharan boat-people? Get a grip, Mario. As for hepatitis, you don’t get it by standing next to somebody in a queue. Hepatitis A is the result of poor personal hygiene or deficient sanitation. You get Hepatitis B in the same way you get HIV or other STDs, by injecting your heroin using a contaminated needle, or by being treated with contaminated blood products. You get hepatitis C in more or less the same way. So if you’re thinking in terms of the bubonic plague, forget it. If you want to avoid hepatitis, don’t avoid Africans, avoid the hepatitis way of life.]

[Daphne – MRSA stands for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and one in three Europeans carries it on the surface of their skin, or in their noses, without developing an infection. If the bacteria get into the body through a break in the skin they can cause boils, abscesses, or impetigo. If they get into the bloodstream they can cause more serious infections. Note the key-word – Europeans: so are you going to lock us all up in solitary confinement, then?]

[Daphne – Fear of diseases: the age-old threat of the foreigner and the diseases he brings with him. Beriberi is not an infectious disease, no more than scurvy is. Nobody has any natural immunity to TB; you get it through inoculation. If you are Maltese and around my age, you have certainly been inoculated against it. TB was eradicated in Malta through inoculation, and not through some genetic mutation called ‘natural immunity’. What other diseases are there? HIV? Don’t have sex with immigrants, then. Apart from that, most of the diseases prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa are borne by parasites and transmitted through insect bites and not through person-to-person contact. Malaria is one. Another has been present here for centuries already and devastates a significant percentage of the dog population while affecting a few people: leishmaniasis. If you got MRSA, it wasn’t from an immigrant. MRSA started in British hospitals around the early 1990s, and spread from there to the rest of Europe. It has been present in Maltese hospitals for more than a decade. One of my grandmothers died after contracting it, and that was in 1999.]

[Daphne – My point is that it isn’t infectious. Isn’t that what people are scared of? Or are we now going to begrudge the follow-up treatment of a few people with beriberi? I can’t see what you’re complaining about anyway, given that you’re the one selling the solution, apparently.]

One more thing which bothers me, and believe me, this is happening, is that we are importing medicines for exotic diseases the likes of which we had never imported before because such diseases did not occur before the influx of immigrants. I’m not saying we shouldnt treat these people’s inherent tubercolosis, beri-beri and the like. Its a fact.

[Daphne – Every Maltese person is inoculated against TB, or should be. We got ours at school. They used to line us up, then a nurse would come along and give us a jab. It was a particularly nasty one, as I recall, with a ‘punch’ thingie rather than an injection. Beriberi is caused by vitamin B1 deficiency, not a bacteria or a virus. You can’t catch it, no matter how many immigrants you sit next to on a bus (and I don’t mean you as in you personally). You’d be better off worrying about the STDs brought in by legal immigrants, tourists and those with a temporary work permit. And again, I don’t mean you personally, but in general.]

Pat, Daphne, As for the Adidas getup, those three africans who asked me for work could have played in any Premier matches in the UK, they were so well attired. I dont think anyone donated Arsenal and Everton tops with matching Adidas shoes now, do they? They like as much as bought them with money earned in Malta. No poblem with that, but i think they have their sense of priorities mixed up.

I just wanted to make a point. Come here, behave yourselves after a fashion, try and integrate, and the Maltese will welcome you. Just dont take advantage of us. Believe me, we need immigrants here in Malta to do what we have become too lazy to do. Besides which, some of them are running away from horrendous situatons. But the song remains the same.

One last point. What I usally donate are not hand me downs, Daphne. They are medicines, fresh stock, and not expired goods. The JRS asks, I just give. Thats what a jesuit education gave me. And its not my “zejjed”, either. I never ask where they go, be they to Africans, or anyone else. If you had to ask me, I woudl do the same.

[Daphne – I never went to Gynae outpatients at the state hospital. I went to Tancred Busuttil and Eddie Agius at their clinics. But I had my babies in my early 20s so I wasn’t high risk, and the state hospital to which I had access was St Luke’s under Labour, not Mater Dei under this government. I spent most of last winter collecting and sorting clothes for a friend who volunteers at the detention camps and open centres. Some things went straight into the bin. Others were brand new, or very good quality even if used. Other people just gave money to be used to buy new clothes and bedding, or shoes. We can all be said to have our priorities mixed up. Some people spend excessive amounts on themselves instead of helping those with nothing. Some would say that’s a mixed-up set of priorities, other might beg to differ. My issue with you is that you beat the people of an entire continent about the head because of the perceived behaviour of three people you encountered. Imagine if we had to be judged by the behaviour of the Maltese in 1970s Soho. Haven’t you ever taken issue with a Maltese person in a departmental queue? Do you run down the whole of Malta because of that incident? Some of my fellow Maltese are the most vulgar, coarse, common and ignorant people I have ever encountered. I don’t use them as a yardstick for the entire country.]

So that is it. You may have missed my point. I am not against blacks. I am against illegal immigrants – be it those who come here on a boat or Ukranians entering the country as students and working illegally as prostitutes. However you chose to distort my arguments.

In fact I have already addressed this issue in another thread with Jo Saliba. I duly told Jo Saliba that those who come here illegally to find a better life should be sent back. Only those who come here for fear of being killed in their country should deserve our compassion and given a refugee status – those are black people too.

Tonio Farrugia
St. Paul’s Bay