Currently Gaming Worms Armageddon By Atari see related

            I just returned from a week-long trip from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to help set up a summer mission project for this next summer.  The people are beautiful, the weather is unbelievable and there is an Acts-like revival going on there.  BUT, I just have one small, teensy-weensy amendment to make to an otherwise incredibly helpful guidebook from Lonely Planet publishers.  If you turn to page 69 of the 2006 3^rd edition of Ethiopia & Eritrea, you’ll see a very small warning to the right of the paragraph talking about Kitfo, a delicacy of raw ground beef:  “If you become a massive fan of kitfo or tere sega, best get tested for tapeworms (see p375) when you get home.  Hopefully, there will be no pain to go with your tasty gain.”  This lackluster warning is written in a space so tiny, I can cover it with my thumb.

            For those of you planning on going to Ethiopia and using this guidebook, I have conveniently made a replacement warning for you to insert into your book:

Have you ever wondered how truck stop toilets get the way they are?  Have you ever wanted to see what happens when you combine a volcano, an M-80 and Niagara Falls into your lower intestine?  Have you ever wanted to fear passing gas on a 20-hour plane ride home because you weren’t quite sure what the final results would be so you go to the bathroom every half hour, annoying the heck out of the Indian electrical engineer in 36H who you tried to have a spiritual conversation with but chickened out?  If you answered yes to any of these questions and you have western stomach lining as sensitive as a baby’s cheeks, then eat kitfo! 

            I don’t know what the heck I was thinking, especially since it’s one of InterVarsity’s cardinal rules on missions overseas:  DO NOT EAT UNCOOKED MEAT.  (It’s the one between DO NOT MAKE OUT WITH THE NATIONALS and DO NOT BE A MULE FOR DRUG DEALERS.)  Maybe it was the fact that I was getting only three hours of sleep a night due to jet lag.  Maybe I was trying to prove my non-westerness to our gracious hosts and to eat what they ate.  Maybe it was the fact that I grew up eating raw bulgogi, a Korean beef dish (although I do remember my mom boiling our underwear when we got worms from it).  Whatever the cause, learn from my mistake and for the love of cross-cultural witness, do not do it!

            Having gone and returned from my own stupidity, I have to confess that I am entirely intrigued by the possibility of hosting a tapeworm.  For being a parasite, tapeworms are relatively benign until they reach the 7 meter stage at which they are reaching the limits of your intestinal length.  Do you know that each of the segments that break off (called proglottids) carry both male and female reproductive systems and can crawl around once excreted until they dry up and burst eggs?  Did you know that tapeworms require two hosts—one to injest these eggs that turn into larvae in cyst form anywhere inside the body and then a second host that injests these cysts that hatch into adults?  Finally, did you know that there are about 1,000 human cases of tapeworm infection in the US each year and that likely, thousands more go untreated and unnoticed?  Most of these cases results in cat owners.

           As the Great Healer helps me rise above my personal biases against cats and the deserving masochists who risk loved ones by bringing these harbingers of pestilence into their houses, I have provided a quick diagnostic tool to tell whether or not you’ve got at least one tapeworm:

1. You’ve always wondered why those rice-like granules in your stools seem to be moving but have been too embarrassed to ask anyone about it. 
2. You have similar symptoms to Irritable Bowel Syndrome, food allergies or eating overly spicy food—and you’re not in love.
3. Remember the scene in the first Alien movie where the guy eats ravenously right before the thing pops out of his chest?  You eat like that without gaining weight.
4. You feel really paranoid about having tapeworms after reading this.

           It is disappointingly simple to get rid of tapeworms—you just take some pills.  I’ll also post to tell you of any symptomatic changes if I do have a tapeworm and maybe some photos of it’s development (sort of like those pregnancy books that have progressive development drawings of the embryo).

           Speaking of warnings, here is another one that should be posted in airplane bathrooms:  NEVER, EVER FLUSH THE TOILET WHILE REMAINING SEATED.