Everybody has a story

Alanta colley a feeling in her gut – that public health education and poo jokes make perfect companions.

I love talking about parasites – that moment when an audience gasps, that sense of tension when you can feel them shrinking in their seats, and the release when they laugh. But if anyone told me 10 years ago that I’d have a comedy show based on the parasites I’d picked up while working in public health, I wouldn’t have believed them.

I come from a long line of teachers, so there was a bit of an expectation that I would be one too, but the greater world beckoned. It took a while to find my path: my first degree was in history, and I thought I was going to go into nuclear policy.

I was enrolled in a masters in international security studies, and shortlisted for a scholarship, but missed out. The people organising the scholarship told me to go out and explore the world, so, after backpacking for a while – including a job in Ireland calling newsagencies to see if they needed more scratchies – I found myself in Cambodia doing an internship with UNIFEM [United Nations Development Fund for Women].

One thing we were working on was trying to set up a textile factory enabling women with HIV to work. It was the first time

I’d really been aware of public health, which involves finding ways to work with communities to stop disease before it happens. On a human rights level, I felt in my gut it was the right pathway, and something I wanted to be involved in.

Cambodia was also where I encountered my first parasites – giardia and blastocystis. They’re both amoebic parasites you contract through drinking contaminated water. For five months I had explosive diarrhoea and vomiting. I was working in a tiny office, and the boss sat just outside the toilet door – you get fairly intimately acquainted with your workmates in that environment. It’s so amazing how you can adapt to a new type of normal. It was embarrassing, but I also found it funny. My friends would get sick as well, and discussion of poo was a very common topic.

Giardia is a bit hard to get rid of. You take a broad-spectrum antibiotic that blasts your intestines. The antibiotic is like a bomb you send through the system, and for months afterwards I couldn’t eat wheat and dairy because the bacteria that do the work had been killed off. Even before I had giardia, though,

I was morbidly fascinated by parasites. Their entire biology has been harnessed over millennia of evolution to take advantage of another organism, and without that other organism they can’t survive. It’s bizarre. It’s sort of a ‘train crash’ thing – I’d find ways to read more about parasites and horrify myself. I’m really interested in gut flora and gut bacteria, too – many bacteria are also our friends.

I came home from Cambodia to study the masters of international public health at Sydney Uni, and then took myself off to a small clinic in eastern Uganda. For part of the time, I got a placement with an Anglican diocese in Kenya, and worked in health education with the church community. It was difficult, because after I’d talk, a preacher would get up and tell everyone that condoms were made in cold countries, and when they were brought to hot countries, the heat would crack them. Also, alcohol turned women into lesbians, because women would never be attracted to other women without the devil’s brew. It made me realise that, while the need was great, I was swimming upstream. So I went back to Uganda and worked with a small public health organisation

for the next year-and-a-half, running initiatives with 10 villages. We organised nurses to do testing and health programs, and also worked on sanitation campaigns – increasing the number of latrines and rubbish bins they had, that sort of thing.

While I was there I got malaria twice. It feels like you’re moving through concrete; you get an incredible headache that’s like having a bowling ball in the back of your head. There’s fever and exhaustion and diarrhoea, as well. If it’s not treated it can kill you, but there are some very good treatments. Within half an hour of taking them you can feel it regressing.

I also got a ‘jigger’ in my foot – that’s a sand flea that lives in the dirt. When an unsuspecting barefooted host comes along, it latches on and digs into the skin. The pregnant female swells to about three times her body size and leaves her reproductive organs in the hole she’s created. As you walk around, you’re distributing her eggs. It felt like a blister, and I only noticed it when it hadn’t gone away for two weeks. Ugandans are very experienced with them, and my workmate removed it for me – he got a sterilised safety pin and stuck it in my foot and dug it out. The eggs are in the blister as well, so you have to burn everything you’ve wiped your foot with.

And then I got schisto, or bilharzia, which is a waterborne parasite that’s so small it swims through your skin and into your bloodstream. There was a very beautiful watering hole that I knew had schisto, but it was too good an opportunity – sometimes you have to take the risk. I didn’t have any symptoms; that’s the thing with parasites, you can carry them around and sometimes not know you’ve got them. After I moved back to Australia, I worked with Engineers Without Borders in Melbourne, and started reviewing comedy shows. I also went to storytelling gigs and did spots, and after two years I was ready to tell a joke. The first couple of times I tried to do comedy, I couldn’t even get on stage – I walked past the venue. I managed to get two minutes out the second time.

Eventually, I wanted to see if I had what it takes to write a whole hour of comedy. A friend suggested the title Parasites Lost, and as soon as he said it, I knew the show I could write. I could talk about the parasites I’d contracted; how those parasites work; fun facts about parasites; and my adventures and misadventures along the way in dealing with them. I wrote it in 2016, and trialled it on an audience at the Melbourne Fringe. It was terrifying, very much like parasites – I guess that’s the attraction for me, and what draws me back. After Melbourne, I did the Adelaide Fringe and then Melbourne Comedy Festival – it sold out there, which I didn’t expect. But it ticks the box of morbid fascination, and talking about poo is usually funny. It’s an enormous act of faith in an audience that when you share some of the uglier bits of yourself with them, they’ll act with kindness and laugh rather than judging you. So far it’s worked out.

One thing I’ve learnt through parasites is that we’re not the independent organisms we think we are – we’re part of a much broader ecosystem. We think we’re in charge of our bodies, but so frequently aren’t. Sometimes it feels like we’re just going along for the ride in these flesh vehicles of ours.