e-mail from Sandra: Poison of Sᴐ-Dum Sᴐ-Dum
Lucas and his wife had offered me a lift. Yours truly was en route the Spintex Road via the Nungua Barrier. I had gone to one of the residences at the Nungua-Barrier on Saturday morning, to greet an in-law who had arrived from Sweden for a few weeks. She had come over to our abode to pay a visit but did not meet us.. As custom demanded, I had to ‘retaliate’ her visit.
I was so grateful to the young looking couple who I didn’t know from Adam, but who posed as angels sent to haul me up from the scorching effects of the Saturday morning sun. They were also heading for the Spintex Road. Wanting to shorten the route, they opted for a short-cut through a locality called Agblizaa.
The vehicle, whose registration number ended with the letter ‘T’, seemed ridden and hackneyed; it appears it had no shock absorbers or springs. Relatively short but bumpy and dusty was the route; the tossing and turning thereof? Very crude – fairly two kilometres of bone-shaking (being in that car which rocked liked a boat felt as though we were having a mechanized massage).
I had almost settled in the “owner’s corner” at the back seat when the woman asked what my name was, and what I was doing at the site they had picked me up from (I almost threw back snobbish answers at her because what else would I be doing there if it wasn’t for the objective of finding a vehicle to another destination?) In a matter of about five minutes, she had quizzed me on so many personal questions which I otherwise wouldn’t have given responses to; to a total stranger.
Her husband seemed like a jovial person, inferring from his, “I am Lucas, and this talkative here is my only wife.” They had showed me kindness and I had no option than to comply with the woman’s interrogation. She freely told me she worked with one of the Commercial Banks, had two children, attended one of the charismatic churches in the city, and owned a dog called Pussy.
She sounded rather loud but interesting. Indeed, unlike poles attract, otherwise how could a fairly quiet man as this chauffeur, have eternally pinned himself to a person as this? Not even her bitten tongue caused her silence. Oh yes, she bit her tongue whilst chewing her gum. Of course, she made a bit of noise about the pain, but continued to talk about herself and her children. I listened alertly.
About an eighth of the journey covered, the slim and slender woman, whose name I had gotten to know as Agyeiwaa, and who could pass for a 30 year old, had her cell phone ringing. Initially it looked as though the caller was flashing the line. It cut after two beeps. In what seemed like three minutes, Don Moen’s I am the Lord that healeth thee began to sound from Agyeiwaa’s phone. That was her ringtone.
Picking up the mobile device from underneath the vehicle’s hand brake where it lay, she took a look at who the caller ID was, turned to Lucas and asked, “ei, where did I sleep today?” “It’s Sister Dinah”, she added. Then she, having pressed the receive button, sounded an exciting “yeeeeeello?”
One could tell from her gestures this young lady was a sanguine. She had impulsively made Lucas stop to enable her buy about five balls of hot kenkey with freshly fried fish from a vendor by the side of the dusty road. In her words, “we don’t get such nice Ga kenkey in our area. Let us buy”.
Then she made him stop to buy phone credits from another vendor about five minutes apart. She halted the trip to get coconuts, two each for us, and suggested to her husband that they needed to pass by the washing bay to clean the car before arriving at home.
“Eiiii, Sister Dinah, where did I sleep today? You rarely call me except for when you’re looking for Difie,” she said with a grin. Then remaining silent for while, obviously to listen to Sister Dinah, “aaaan, did I not say it? You wouldn’t have called me. I knew it ... aha, aha, .... Oh, Sister, Difie has been through a lot in these past few weeks oo. I’m sure that must have accounted for her not switching on her phone ... oh I see ... I see. Oh, she wouldn’t deliberately do that. If I tell you what she has been through eh? ... No ... emmm, okay ... okay...”.
She adjusted herself properly in her seat, switched the phone from her left hand to the right for comfort and said, “Sister, Dinah and her entire family almost died last weekend ooo .... ei, it was no joke ... oh, I’m serious. They went out to eat in one of these restaurants in town. According to her they had fried rice with beef sauce. Ice cream was their dessert. Oh, you should have seen her husband on his hospital bed. The kids too ... oh, yes, she said they sensed that the sauce had gone off a bit, and later, the ice cream too. But they didn’t take that as anything.
“When they got home that night, their bellies began to ache one after the other. Then they started doing toilet rationing – her husband would visit the place for a short while, then the three children would, then Difie herself would. They were throwing up intermittently too, amidst serious tummy aches. When they couldn’t take the ordeal any longer, her husband managed to drive all of them to the nearest hospital, where they were told their experience was the cause of food poisoning “
It is believed that the restaurant, as a result of the “dum-sᴐ-dum-sᴐ”, possibly might have failed to preserve their edible resources at the right temperature. Lord have mercy! So my question now is, how should we preserve our food in the face of this “sᴐ-dum-sᴐ-dum-dum-sᴐ-dum-sᴐ” predicament? Stay tuned for the rest of the story.
