Fet Milner

Victoria Falls vs. the Parasite

I read earlier today that that the volume of water going over the Victoria Falls every day is roughly equivalent to the amount of diarrhoea that plunges from the world's collective bowels every day as a result of intestinal parasites. Having never been to Victoria Falls, I can't quite visualise the volume, though Google reliably informs me that it averages 1,088 cubic metres per second (that's 9,400,320 cubic metres per day). The Huka Falls, by way of local comparison, apparently pours out a mere 300 cubic metres per second (a paltry 2,592,000 per day), meaning that it takes the Huka Falls three days and fifteen hours to equal twenty-four of the Victoria Falls' hours by volume. Already, I have an image in my head of the Huka disgorging eighty-seven hours of vile brown effluent.

Parasites, like children, are designed to propagate themselves regardless of the cost to the host. Parasites, like commerce students, are unthinking in their devotion to such capitalist ideals. Of all parasites, though, I must admit that few excite me as much as the rightly-maligned Guinea Worm. The Guinea Worm only rarely causes extensive diarrhoea; rather, it spends its time burrowing through the limbs of its human hosts.

Freakishly, the Guinea Worm can grow up to a metre in length, and the width of cooked spaghetti. Having grown in the human gut to such proportions, it chews its way through the intestinal wall before proceeding, usually, to the legs (though the groin is not uncommon). Those suffering under the tyranny of the Guinea Worm's bite live in agony -- normally unable to stand -- as it works its way to its final location; they are also able to observe its progress along the length of their skin. Once it is happy with its location, it chews through the last layers of skin and waits for the victim to enter water, when it releases its hundreds of thousands of diabolic progeny.

The Guinea Worm can only be treated by waiting for this moment and catching it by its head, so that it may be slowly pulled from the body. Due to the worm's fragility, this can take anywhere from a few days to several months, during which time the sufferer lives in pain. The Guinea Worm was once known as the Fiery Serpent, and even warranted a mention in the Bible: "Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses, and said, 'We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us'." So the 3.5 million people who had Guinea Worms in 1986 know who to thank.

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