Why strange liquids should be labelled - Once upon a time at the village

This story occured back in the day when villages where real villages, not these psuedo villages of the modern day with water taps in the homestead, nicely painted concrete buildings and the modern day manifestation of witchcraft that is electricity. back then wood had to be collected from the forbidden forest to provide fuel to cook food and warm cold bodies during cruel winters, water was to be fetched with 25 litre containers from a common water point that was so far it seemed as though it was in another country. Back in those days you owned only one pair of shoes and they were only worn on Sundays to church, those were indeed medieval times.

I went to visit my mom during school holidays; I had to reconnect with my roots. Our homestead was right next to my grandparents homestead, after my father passed away my mom moved back to a mahangu field neighboring the village headman's field. The village headman was none other than grandpa, Paulus haMumbala. My earliest memories of grandpa make me nostalgic, his grey beard, how he shaved his head bald and the smell of tobacco on him when he caught me running around his hut like a witch was chasing me. I remember that there was a pond in the Western corner of the field from which we harvested frogs in the rainy season, I’m pretty sure I just heard someone fall of the chair reading this. For your information frogs are edible, the French consider it a delicacy, and here it’s called the poor man’s chicken.

At that time I was no taller than a tree stump; as far as morphology goes I was a matchstick little boy, skinny as a needle. but what I lacked in size I made up for in mischief. I don't know if they thought I had an innocent face (My siblings) or they just were not the sharpest knives in the box, they often left me at home with my little brother. I mean seriously, how do you leave two little boys alone in the homestead and not expect us to attempt to cook porridge with cold water and no fire. When fate was kind, I'd just drag my little brother Japhet across the field to grandma's, she would watch over us (The woman had eyes in the back of her head) and beat some good behavior into us. Nothing like a smacking from grandma to remind you how precious life really is, but at least we had an endless supply of oshikundu. Oshikundu or Ontaku is a traditional drink made from from a paste of millet porridge and soghurm dissolved in water, brewed with the same precision as beer and consumed before it ferments and forms alcohol. Oshikundu has such a high nutrient content that it’s like the natural version of anabolic steroids.

One day it got really hot in the village, it was as if Oshikuku was next to a volcano. I told Japhet that the only hope we had was a quick dash to grandma’s. When it gets hot in the north the ground radiates so much heat that you can see flames coming out of the ground (over exaggeration), so walking barefoot is tantamount to walking on hot coals. I being the stronger and more stupid decided to give Japhet a piggy back ride, my feet were swollen tissue by the time we made it to grandma’s (I had blisters like a mother fucker), it did not help that little brother was getting fat. To make it worse Grandma was not home, right there and then I contemplated leaving Natangwe to fend for himself, but I knew I would get beaten to within an inch of my life.

Being a good big brother, I carried my little brother across the long footpath back home. As we neared the homestead I spotted weirdly shaped shoe prints that I knew belonged to my Big Sister Tresia, so I ran and just made it inside before my feet melted. I dropped Japhet, who complained that I dropped him too hard (I almost smacked the saliva out of his mouth). I called out my sister’s name but no answer; it was like she had evaporated in the blazing heat, I started to think maybe the heat was driving me to hallucinate (maybe my brain got fried). The water was usually stored in a ceramic pot, but it was empty and I was thirsty as a mother fucker, carrying sibling’s leaves you dehydrated.

Then out of nowhere I spotted it, a strange transparent almost clear liquid that was put away in the roof of the hut (I’m sure there was a reason it was put out of children’s reach, but I was thirsty!). So I climbed up, got the container down and it looked like those 2 litre juice containers (The big one’s that Wamboes call guava’s, all fruit juices are guava’s to wamboes ). I opened the container and gulped down that mother like a man possessed, after a few gulps I knew that this clearly was not water but the thirst had me possessed. But after another few I just couldn’t get the stuff past my throat.

 I walked out to find my brother and I suspected that what I had just drunk was poison, so I thought if I was gona die, let me die next to little bro. Halfway there Tresia came running in (her timing was always off), she grabbed the container out of my hand and she screamed! She screamed louder than a shebeen at month end (I was deaf in one ear afterwards). She was hysterical and tears were rolling down her face, I then knew that the liquid I had just gulped down earlier was poisonous and she was crying because she had just lost a brother and a great man before his time. I went quiet and hardly said a word, I just watched as she cried herself silly (it was quite amusing, she could give Nigerian movie actresses a run for their money).

After an hour I was still alive and a little confused as to why my sister cried like a liverpool FC fan earlier, when my brothers got home the shit really hit the fan. My big brother Andreas didn’t even say “hello”, he just started shaking me and shouting (couldn’t hear shit since I was still deaf from my sister’s screaming). But from what I gathered I had just swallowed almost half a litre of paraffin (yes almost 500 ml of paraffin, I was that thirsty), just when he said that I suddenly felt sick, started crying and was convinced that I was dying. But I was fine when I was oblivious as to what I had drunk. My brother grabbed me; my sister grabbed my health passport and handed it to him. My big brother took me to hospital on a bicycle (bicycles were the Golf GTI’s back then), needless to say that a bicycle ride on bumpy gravel did more damage, I felt like my intestines were being crushed by a truck, I was sweating, I felt weak, I saw the light, I knew it was the end and at that moment the world went black like the NBC on strike.

Fortunately for me it was not the end, it was just the bright lights in the hospital. My brother says that I cried like a girl all the way to the hospital but I suspect he added spice to the story. I passed out on arrival at Oshikuku hospital, according to the nurse who told me the story (Woman was laughing like a hood rat at a Kat Williams show), I went out like a dead light bulb. So they did unspeakable things to my stomach, according to the nurse I took 4 IV fluid tubes that day (A drip is what they normally call it). But luckily for me I lived to tell the tale, needless to say I am a big supporter of labeling strange fluids (Just in case someone is stupid enough to drink it). This story would have more detail but like I said I went out like a dead light bulb, so I wasn’t exactly conscious during the most important part of the event. For those still going “aint now way this story is true, aint no way he swallowed paraffin”, it is 100% true because I have brothers and sisters who won’t ever let me forget it. Several years later Japhet almost killed me when a piece of corrugated iron sliced 8 cm across the side of my head, but just like the time we went fishing without bait that is a story for another time.