When I was a child in the Lowveld heat
I had to do my homework and keep my room neat;
there were massive bougainvilleas and jacaranda trees
and almost all the water had this tropical disease.

“You’ll cut your feet on the glass if you go messing at the dump.
You can play up on the koppie, but remember you’ll regret
it if you don’t stay away from the irrigation pump.
The Bilharzia will get you if you get yourself wet!”

     This is the life of the schistosome:
     In your secret inner spaces it makes itself at home.
     It’s a complex little animal as small as a cell
     that fucks all the time and breeds like hell.

     The little sharp eggs cut right through your veins.
     You get pink blood piss and deep dull pains
     and it’s in all the water so whatever you do
     the schistosome’s kids’ll lay their eggs in you.

Doc van Rooien looked grave behind his shiny microscope:
He said “The signs are that you have it, but we’ll catch it, I hope.”
A scientific act of infallible detection.
He said “Drop your pants and buk for your very first injection!”

Well I screamed and I struggled and I really let fly.
The doctor and my mother and the nurse held me down.
My mother was embarrassed and she whined “Honey, why?
You promised you’d be good when we were driving into town!”

     This is the life of the schistosome:
     In your soft inner tissues it sets up a home.
     It’s a complex little animal as small as a cell
     that fucks all the time and breeds like hell.

     Those little sharp eggs slice straight through your veins.
     You get sore pink piss and deep dull pains
     It’s in the dams and the rivers so whatever you do
     the schistosome’s kids’ll lay their eggs in you.

It makes you feel dof and exhausted and mean.
It likes the soft parts like the kidneys or spleen.
If they lay enough eggs in your lungs or your brain
you could die from coughing blood or go completely insane.

So if you’re in the Lowveldt breathing Witbank’s acid air
and where the orchards used to be there’s now tobacco everywhere
and the people walk so slowly and their eyes are slightly glazed
remember it’s the schistosome that has them all phased.

People shit near the dam or they go pissing in the river
and it gets into the snails and emerges fully grown
and soon its parking off in someone else’s lungs or liver
and they’re reaping the effects that their poverty has sown.

You know we can’t treat the water ’cause there’s not enough bucks
and we can’t cure the people ’cause the health budget sucks
and you can’t banish snails with ministerial decrees
so really everyone whose poor has this tropical disease.

     So you’re on a roll if you’re a little schistosome
     and you’re looking for a human host and setting up a home
     because the politics of poverty work overtime for you
     and the poor human beings haven’t got a bloody clue.