Honestly, I can’t say I have any up close and personal experiences with parasites. I haven’t even been infested with lice or mites, and when living with or existing as a child, such things can be quite easy to contract. And if I was infested with a parasite, I honestly don’t think I’d be as good of a sport as Mr. Lebo.
Who is Mr. Lebo, you ask? Mr. Lebo is an elementary science teacher with Princeton Regional Schools who kept a science blog, Mad Science, while teaching students in Madagascar. The blog, since 2010, has been inactive, and his last blog update was on a Madagascar Children’s Home blog, Akany Avoko, in 2013. His activities since then are a mystery as his other listed blogs have no active links.
I am going to focus on Mr. Lebo’s extraordinary experience with his parasite infections, which were recounted on his Mad Science blog in November 2009 and January 2010. He takes a new spin on focusing on parasites from a personal account. Instead of taking a clinical account or the usual ‘Ew! Gross! THAT was in my body?’ response to parasitic infection, Lebo makes lighthearted fun of his infection through hyperbole and joking. He carries an almost admirable respect towards the parasites that once made home in his body. His attitude while spinning his tale with parasites mixes fun and education together, when usually parasites are anything but fun.
In his first entry, titled a fun “♬♬♬ I Love You...You Love Me...We are One Big Happy Parasitic Family ♬♬♬,”Lebo describes finding a black spot in his foot in which he discovers many parasite eggs (he doesn’t wait until they hatch to find out what it is). He starts off his post in a very casual tone, taking use of meiosis. (For you science people out there, not the sexual reproduction of cell division, but the figure of speech.) He demonstrates this underexpression of emotion in his line, “And, as it turns out, the parasites have been enjoying me as well.” Not the typical reaction to discovering parasites. But it gets better. Lebo draws in an abrupt, unexpected transition in paraprosdokian, pulling his calm, casual emotion into panic, based on his usage of exclamation points. Lebo plays with these shifts in emotion from reserved to panic by inserting sine dicendos (ie. stating the obvious) and returning to exclamated statements. One such instance, “There shouldn’t be eggs in my foot” plays a humorous tone to Lebo’s potential suffering.
In Mr. Lebo’s second adventure with parasites, he discovers a female sand flea, colloquially called jigger sometimes, in his toe with heaps of eggs. Lebo’s love of song returns in “This Little Piggy…” Yes, he even includes the fun child song in the beginning of his post.
Definitely sounds like a fun time, right?
Maybe not so much. This time, the parasite eggs are numerous, and the jigger has come along for the ride too. (It is unknown if the first infection, two months earlier, was of the same species.) There’s less of paraprosdokian and abrupt transitions between calm and panic this time around. Instead, Lebo’s characteristic “parent explaining to child” tone comes in. He describes the jigger as a “mommy” since it was carrying eggs and affectionately refers to his toes as “piggies” in honor of the leading song. He is more educational this time around, going through the process of infection and how he removed the flea and her babies from his body.
Although Mr. Lebo’s blog has since been defunct, he has some peculiar information about science from Madagascar and an interesting tale of parasitic infection. Definitely worth a look, and Mr. Lebo deserves some kudos for going through parasitic infection with such an open mind.
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