When Reality Does Not Meet Expectation

I was food poisoned by a neighbour, four years ago. When I flew into Johannesburg from Harare, two days later, in a deathly state, the cheerfully reassuring and professional young Xhosa doctor, who attended to me at Sandton Mediclinic, told me that if I had stayed another 10 hours in Harare, the underground ants and maggots would have been guaranteed a meal to last them several weeks.

My neighborhood in Harare, supports a police post we helped found. Without wanting to sound like I do more than others, which I do not believe is the case, every time I am in Harare, I sometimes give them food to cook for lunch and in some cases where they are lacking in cash, bus fare. These acts are nothing significant, but mere simple acts of appreciation for their service over the years.

The worst thing to happen to any citizen, anywhere in the world, is to have compromised law enforcement officers, who are hungry and marginalized, whilst being of service to you, with your overfed belly. It is the same thing as being on the school run every week day, to drop off your children at school, in a deteriorated economy, oblivious to the fact that, the teachers you expect your children to learn from, are in a worse off position than yourself, as they, for example, are not coping with fuel shortages. So, it is conceivable to drop off your children at school, for a teacher who might not arrive at all or arrive on time. It is insane for anyone to be driving around in their sports utility vehicles, to drop off their kids to be taught by teachers who are hungry, tired and worried about fuel availability amongst many other bread and butter issues. When we do that, we are as twisted as the macro set of economic circumstances we have no control over.

So, on this particular day, a lady constable from the police post asked me for help. Their bosses from headquarters (HQ) were doing the rounds and it was their responsibility to host them for lunch. As the police post was not geared for that kind of thing, she enquired whether I could mobilize the neighborhood to do something to assist them.

I advised her that, as it was short notice to notify the neighbourhood on the whatsapp group, I was certain that my neighbor would certainly be able to do something to assist. Over the years, we had become good friends with my neighbour. We dined at their house and they dined at ours. We gave each other Christmas gifts. When their family visited from Ireland, we would visit for drinks and they would come to ours with them for a barbecue. When either of us travelled, we checked on each other’s properties. At one time, our husbands patrolled the neighborhood together. We both watched our kids grow to be young adults and we often made time to enjoy the neighborhood gossip over wine. I first got to know about Barry Lungu, the renowned Zimbabwean fine artist some 13 years ago from my neighbours’ home. Their home is adorned with Barry’s earlier and captivating works. I believe we had developed a history together. In our household we considered them as good as family. So, a random call from me asking for favours for the police would not come as a surprise to her.

As I do not ordinarily keep white mealie meal in the house (we prefer small grains), she offered to bring some including bottled water, fizzy canned drinks and cooked mince-meat. We decided to work with what we already have. So, I cooked rice, three road runner chickens from our compound, some t-borne steak and fried some kale vegetables. 

The constable and I eventually decided that their HQ police bosses and local staff totalling eleven people would use my dining room for lunch as it would be a logistical nightmare to transport the food to the ill-furnished and no-catering-facilities police post.

When the food and drinks donated by my neighbour was delivered, I doubted that my neighbour had cooked the mince-meat. As a person who had wined and dined innumerable times in my neighbours’ home, I knew her culinary skills and standard. The cooked mince-meat quality was not her standard, I thought to myself. The mine-meat was watery and had a stench so familiar, yet I could not place it at the time.

I was immediately engulfed with a sense of discomfort and disbelief. I then defaulted to my African way of thinking. The mince-meat had to be served because it was donated for the policemen to eat. I was not going to give it to the dogs and waste food. But because it was being served in my house, I was going to tweak it and get rid of the foul smell.

I put the mince-meat back on the stove and added dried parsley, thyme and 6 cut up cloves of garlic. I tasted the mince and there was still something offish about it. In a separate pan I fried onion, tomato, more garlic and rosemary. I added tomato paste and simmered it for a bit after which I added it to the mince in the pot. After mixing, I tasted it again. The stench was not subsiding and remained as pronounced as it was before. I then decided to add beef spice, sazon Goya and an additional range of Goya spices from Spanish America. The stubbornness of the foulness stayed put. As a last-ditch effort to save the mince, I added some kale to the mince, mixed and simmered.

Still there was no improvement.

My sense of smell has always been sharper than most. I then convinced myself that the stench in the mince was not so bad after all because it was my sense of smell in overdrive. I then made the decision to serve the kaled-up-mince with the rest of the feast.

What Sisi, the house help, and I noticed, was that all the policemen dished the mince onto their plates, but they did not touch it at all. If they ate it at all, they sampled a very little bit. The pyrex dish where we served the mince remained full whilst the other dishes were cleaned up. I felt a great sense of relief. At least I had done the right thing, served all their food and it was them that chose not to partake in the mince-meat consumption.

For supper I had fresh cassava and kale from the garden. The foul smell from the mince was still with me, in my mouth, and so I had told myself I was not going to eat meat for a while.

We normally feed our dogs at night, so when Sisi was cooking the dog food we buy in packets, in bulk from PnP Borrowdale, that stench from my neighbours’ mince-meat filled the scullery where the gas stove she was using is located. Sisi said, “Mum, the mince-meat was either mixed with dog meat or it was dog meat only.” I told Sisi that she was right and we both wondered why my neighbour would do that. We compared the cooked mince and kale and the dog mince that was cooling now, and they looked and smelled the same with the mince having a pinkish colour to it. We were stunned and agreed never to share the information with anyone.

The following day I woke up to a compromised wifi connection which was erratic as it connected and disconnected intermittently. I was on a writing dead-line, so I asked my sister in law who lived in Highlands at the time, if I could come over to her place and write from dining room whilst using her wifi. 

Before leaving my neighbourhood, I had passed through Ashley Birch's studio around the corner from us. Ashley has always made unique mirrors and paintings and a friend who had seen one of Ashley's mirrors in my Johannesburg quarters wanted one. So, I had gone there to check on the latest pricing so that I could advise her. As I marveled at the mirrors in the studio whilst taking in the picturesque views of faraway mountains in Shamva, Murehwa and beyond, from Ashley's wrap around patio, I started feeling dizzy. I told the studio assistant I would be back and quickly jumped into the car and sped off to Highlands drinking the water I had left in the car. I was not going to go back home because I was running out of time as my deadline was lea than 24 hours away.

In Highlands, Auntie Hilda had cooked lovely traditional food. I decided to finish my writings first before I ate anything. When I sat down in the dining room to write, it was 1pm. An hour later, I had written one small paragraph and started feeling hot and cold. As a person who has always had recurring chest pains, I always moved around with pain killers. I took two pain killers and decided to lie on the couch.

Steven, Auntie Hilda’s caretaker walked into the house after his lunch break and found out that I had not eaten. He came into the lounge and tried to wake me up. On seeing me, he gasped, “Ambuya, you are looking very ill, what are going to do?” I told him I wanted to continue sleeping and only be woken up when the driver, whom I had called before napping had arrived.

The driver was running errands, so he only got to Highlands at 5pm. He insisted that I needed to go to hospital as I could no longer walk properly. I insisted on going home. The driver literally carried me into my car (his car is a truck), called my Mum and drove me home. Mum came and without so much as a conversation, asked Sisi and her husband to carry me to the car and we went to see a Doctor, a neurologist who is family. After reluctantly inspecting me (he is much younger. In our culture he is my Dad and I am his daughter. I felt the awkwardness of him doing a thorough check on me), he prescribed some medication, which we bought and went home.

I was home alone with the helpers. The rest of my family was away. So, Mum refused to sleep anywhere but in my bedroom on the couch. The couch is not wide enough for her tall body and it is uncomfortable to sleep on the whole night. Mum has had arthritis for the longest and is in constant pain. I was now worried about her, the sickling, looking after me, the sick.

On realizing that I had not eaten the whole day, Mum cooked some butternut soup and force fed me. When had finished, I ran to the loo and it all came out. I did not sleep that night. I was in the loo 80% of the time. Every time I awoke, Mum was up too. As a retired nurse, she quickly made an oral rehydration solution which I started drinking to reduce dehydration and loss of water and nutrients from the body’s tissues.

In the morning I looked haggard and weather beaten. Mum insisted we go to hospital. I refused. I refused because I did not have medical aid in Zimbabwe and feared being ripped off by the private hospitals. I had medical aid in South Africa. I think I was now suffering from a mind fog of sorts because it did not register to me until 3am the following morning at which point I sent my Johannesburg travel agent an urgent message to organize me a ticket for Johannesburg without delay. She promptly replied after booking me on the 8.15am flight.

By that time, around 4 am in the morning, I had lost my sense of feeling in all the body parts that deal with ablutions. Soft stool was coming out of my body without even me realizing. It was a sorry sight to be that helpless and sad to see my Mum cleaning after me. The bladder, gone ages ago, was behaving somewhat as it was still able to signal its intention to be relived. With all that happening and Mum needing to bath me first before she bathes herself, we missed the plane. We still arrived at the airport and they could have allowed me in but when the civil aviation attendant who check in people for flights saw me, she remarked, “Ma’am where do you think you are going looking like that?” I said, “To Johannesburg.” She then said, no airline can accept people looking like you for flights. Go to SAA, reschedule your flight and let us see if you will look better for the 1.15pm flight.”

I rescheduled my flight and went to Mum’s house to sleep. Luckily, Mum lives near the airport, so it was not too much of a chore travelling to and from.

I was in the loo for most of the flight and when I landed at OR Tambo, no one was waiting for me. My family was late. When they had heard that I was ill, they did not believe me as they thought it was attention seeking behavior. When you have been ill for a while, with no diagnosis, people around you start thinking that you are a hypochondriac. I waited for 45 minutes moving between the seats by the arrival terminal and the loo in that area next to Vodacom.

When they finally arrived, they found me slumped on the bench with my luggage as a foot stool. I look frail and weak. They apologized profusely and as I was too weak to complain, I asked them to take me straight to Sandton Mediclinic. On arrival at the hospital they started testing for vital signs. One of the tests they did was called the ESR sedimentation rate test which the doctor said was elevated to 10 times higher which was dangerous and was enough justification for them to detain me.

I will not discuss the many tests they did during the week most of which tested negative. I was detained on Sunday night, stayed in hospital for 10 days and discharged on a Tuesday afternoon the following week. On the Friday, the tests came back with a definitive conclusion that the bacteria that was wreaking havoc in my body was clostridium perfringens and staphylococcus aureaus. From Sunday to Friday, this bacterium which they had not zeroed in on yet was antibiotic resistant. I was on a drip antibiotic which kept me alive but was unable to stop the diarrhea. When they changed the medication after the diagnosis that Friday, that is when I started feeling significant changes in my body, with the running tummy beginning to dry up.

Apparently, staphylococcus aureaus produces a toxin that can make people ill and is not killed even when the mince-meat is cooked properly. Also, store bought mince-meat contains a variety of bacteria that can make humans sick and is resistant to drugs used to treat it. That is why, it has been suggested that buyers of mince-meat may want to look at labels that read “no antibiotics,” “grass fed, “organic,” with “grass-fed, organic” being the best labels to go by.

When I was in hospital I sent my neighbor a whatsapp message that I was in hospital in Johannesburg. I also advised her about her about my ordeal with the mince-meat. She did not reply. Two weeks after I got out of hospital, I sent her another message and again she did not reply. To this day she has not addressed this issue.

I told another neighbor, a close friend of hers the story. We both agreed that she would never poison me consciously. So why the nonresponse? The other neighbourhood friend who I shall call Mary Jane, told me that she had spoken with my neighbor who claimed “she did not remember who had cooked the mince-meat. She does not remember if it was her or her helper. She probably thought it was her helper.”

So, did the helper take out the dog mince and replaced it with the real mince-meat which she kept for herself? Why would the helper do this? Did my neighbor not check the quality of the meat before it was delivered to my house? Was the neighbor there when the meat was cooked and delivered? I am not even sure now who delivered the food because I was busy in the kitchen. If my neighbour had done the delivery, she would have come inside the house to say hello. She has never come to my quarters to bring something without coming inside the house.

A couple of years later, I bumped into my neighbour at Sam Levy Shopping Centre. It was such an awkward encounter, I started dripping of sweat from head to toe and she said hello and I managed to mumble a greeting. I was getting ill. She said, “Gloria, you are unwell, try standing in the shade.” She left, unaware that she was the trigger and I stood for a while in the shade then went home.

I will never know what happened to the mince-meat. The truth will never be told. The truth that is hard for me to swallow is losing a friend at this time in my life. At my age, I strive to keep the friends that I have. I have been blessed with amazing friends who are loving, supportive and who show up every time I need them. I try to do the same for them. We had a nice thing going on around in our lane. We had neighbours who were almost like family. When your neighbours are friendly, life is good, when they are your friends, life is better and sweeter. The fact that I could pick up the phone at short notice and ask for assistance is testament to that.

Perhaps it is the expectation from my neighbour that has made this episode linger on longer in my mind. Maybe I should have understood that to err is human. It is the expectation that makes me feel disappointed to this day. This is a very long vent. Be that as it may, the vent has allowed me to look at the matter differently. I had high hopes and expectations and reality did not meet my expectations. It is okay. We often get disappointed not because of what people do (we certainly cannot control that), but because our expectations do not meet reality. When we alter our expectations, something we can control, we start viewing life with a different lens. A lens that says, we must remain in charge of how we react to the things people do to us, things we cannot control. That way, we can control the level of our disappointment. 

When a worker (if she is to blame at all) does misdemeanors that harm a neighbour, you either face the issue and deal with it head on, even if it means terminating her employment. But we get so much used to our workers, we start leaning on them for all things to do with our households. We never want that relationship interrupted. If you are not the one affected, it is easier to let the matter pass and with time, it will be forgotten. I did not forget the poisoning because I was the wounded one. I could have died.

The seriousness of this matter does not bother my neighbour at all. What matters is that, her status quo was not disrupted. My life is less important than maintaining the equilibrium in her household. To that extent, she supported and sanctioned my poisoning because the mince-meat came from her household. I lost what I thought was a great neighbour and friend, but if the truth be told, it is in situations like these, that you gauge the essence of a person. Her value system is crystal clear to me now.