LEAVE MY BUGS ALONE !          - 27/ 11/ 2006      <--Prev : Next-->

LEAVE MY BUGS ALONE !

We folk from the Third World are not in the least bit daunted by Gypo Gut.
We just take it for granted that our water is dodgy and take the necessary precautions, boiling, filtering , drinking wine instead of water etc. etc.
And when one does get a 24 hour bug, one succumbs graciously (?) and hopes that one might shed at least a kilo or two if one is going to suffer the indignities heretofor !!

However a recent trip to the Zambesi laid me lower than low, and I probably would still be dragging myself around mournfully had it not been that we were two weeks later, found visiting She Who Must Sing who lives in the First World.
HEEHOO was well brought up by his Three Girls, and over the years knows that when Mum and daughters needs the loo, it is something that requires immediate attention, (especially during Gypo Gut Time.)
Heehoo, as a matter of course, on entering any establishment, will do one of those three sixties he used to do during his time in the army, and case the joint immediately for the "Ladies Room" sign.

But BABY SHEEHOO has a most scary and imperious manner which she no doubt inherited from HEEHOO, and one look from her propelled me to visit a First World Family Medical Practice.
Now, not only was this beautiful child , a doctor, she was also young enough to be my daughter..... and as we well know, all of us Baby Boomers who are left in Bulawayo probably still have, as our MDs, the same doctors who delivered us!!!
Mature Men indeed, with many hundreds of years of medical experience, Doctors with extensive pedigrees like Bernie Tatz and Peter Pretorius are still going strong in Bulawayo !!

As I said earlier, Gypo Gut in Zimbabwe is just not taken to a doctor, what would he be able to do for goodness sake ? Except to throw one a free sample of Immodium and tell you to "get on with it !!"
And so when this Sweet Child tenderly prodded and pushed at my abdomen for the required length of time and then sent me off with a giant package of goodies, ordering me to produce four "samples" of whatever it was that was annoying me, I became understandably nervous !!
Imagine, just imagine, an innocent Texas laboratory technician coming across something that was "made in Zimbabwe" under his microsope !!
Horrors, there would be men in Hazmat Suits, and heavy radio active boots, just like those ones you see on Mars, crawling across the lawn outside SheeHoo"s apartment.
I can just see those smug men from Hazwoper (Hazardous Waste Operations) dragging me away, kicking and screaming to six weeks isolation in the Centre for Tropical Diseases.

The whole of Waco would be closed down and "Ebola" signs would be fastened everywhere !!
Oh no, I am keeping my germs to myself. I have spent years building up this amazing Immune System of mine.
I have consumed many many glasses of suspect water from Ncema Dam, partaken of many dodgy packets of sausages that have been frozen, thawed, frozen, thawed as the electricity has been turned off and on in the hapless shops !!
No one is going to have sight of anything that might be "Made in Zimbabwe" without my putting up a good fight first !!

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