EVEN PRESIDENTS FIT
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NO one is exempt. Disease comes to all. Even republican presidents fit. The only qualification for falling sick is to be alive. No one is really special, no one is incorruptible.
This fact alone ought to make each one of us humble. We are all the same, flesh and bone, each one carrying a borrowed spirit. Disposable vessels is all we are.
Collectively, we must fight ignorance, we must fight for a more perfect existence, draw closer to God. Let us collaborate in occasioning good for all instead of fighting each other.
Only petty beings fight people. Loftier spirits fight for the full restoration of fallen man.
Do you know that the republican president fits from time to time? The question came out nowhere. Without saying a word, I just stared at him, taken aback. When I finally found my voice, all I could say was, does he? Yes, he convulses. He intermittently passes out. He has epilepsy, he said. My eyes widened like saucers.
Quietly, I nodded. It explained a lot of things, I quietly mused. For years on end, I had noticed signs and symptoms of a behavioural disorder in the president. Things finally seemed to add up. He wasn’t normal after all.
A wave of empathy coursed through my body. Out of respect for his humanity, I said nothing more. I remained pensive, reflecting on the ramifications of such a phenomenon. The fallibility of man.
How he started fitting, developed epilepsy, not even the president himself knew. Nonetheless, dear reader, for every phenomenon or event there is a cause.
Successful interventions hinge on knowledge of causes. Awareness of the origin of things empowers us and is vital for human survival and wellbeing.
In nature, nothing happens by chance. All events follow a pattern.
All human beings need food. Without food, no human being can survive.
Food is that which the cells need for them to perform their intended purpose. This food occurs in various forms – spirit, gaseous, liquid and/or solid.
Food is fuel for life. Food is a human right, a community good. All people should have access to food.
All food that people need and take ought to be safe. Food must be without contaminants. This is where governments and authorities come in.
Zambia’s Food Safety Act of 2019 states as follows: ‘An Act to provide for the protection of the public against health hazards and fraud in the manufacture, sale and use of food; provide for a streamlined process for regulatory clearances for regulatory health requirements for food
premises; establish the Food Safety Coordinating Committee and provide for its functions and powers; provide for health inspection reports and report notices; establish the National Food Laboratory; repeal the Food and Drugs Act, 1972 and sections 79 and 83 of the Public Health Act, 1930; and provide for matters connected with, or incidental to, the foregoing.’ That the law is on the side of the citizen is clear.
Perhaps to illustrate that the mere existence of legislation is not enough, it is against this backdrop that one of the worst food poisoning scandals in living memory occurred in Zambia. Barely a year ago, aflatoxins, biological contaminants, were found in an array of maize meal brands that citizens bought from various retail outlets. Maize meal is the leading staple food in Zambia, and perhaps in much of Africa.
What is more diabolical and a gross indictment of the Zambian government’s sinfulness is that, despite being in possession of convincing evidence of this food contamination, no one was brought to book for this atrocity. It seems that in a country that teems with cover-ups, as far as cover-ups go, this one is on top of the pile.
Aflatoxins kill. They cause liver damage.
Hundreds of pets, dogs and cats, died from this genocidal food contamination.
Dear reader, note that there is nothing wrong with vending, either on the street or in other types of markets. Vending generates income and ends poverty. Vending is entrepreneurship. It should be encouraged.
Nonetheless, all vending must be regulated. All vendors must be registered and be certified to engage in the vending. This is more so when it is food that is sold. To ensure food safety, all persons or institutions that sell food to members of the public must be licensed and should have food handlers’ certificates.
Even more important is the strict but fair and judicious enforcement of food safety statutes.
Food is that which is required for cellular function. However, food can be a vehicle for disease.
The man that later became president was raised in a village. And the thing with villages is that, though it shouldn’t be the case, they tend to be devoid of amenities or fixtures that are required for a human being to thrive.
In many villages you will not find licensed abattoirs nor will you find public health or meat inspectors.
Such was the environment under which the man was raised. It wasn’t conducive to human wellbeing and excellence.
The president was only a victim of circumstance. It turns out his epilepsy originated from the way he had been raised as a child.
The president had Cysticercosis.
Cysticercosis is a disease caused by the eggs of the tapeworm called Taenia solium. It affects the brain. These worms are found in pork.
Now you see that it is indeed true that the demons were cast into pigs. But then, dear reader, pork is safe to eat if you conduct the required exorcism before you consume it.
What I am saying, dear reader, is that couple your faith with deeds. Do not just pray, dance in the nude and burn incense whilst reciting incantations for the food before you eat it, examine it first and ensure that it is safe.
Do you catch my drift, dear reader. To exorcise is to cleanse, to purify, to get rid of impurities. See? First remove the evil energy/spirit from the food, get an expert to do that for you if you must.
The disease which was causing the president to fit is also called Taeniasis. He got it because in his childhood, in the village, he had eaten meat which was unclean. To cast it differently, he ate meat which had demons, bad spirits. Epilepsy is one of its complications.
The other symptoms of the president’s illness included headaches, seizures, personality changes and mental derangement.
Scratching my head, I now remembered seeing some of these signs in the man.
Taeniasis is a common occurrence in Zambia because many citizens especially in compounds and villager do not buy meat from licensed and designated sites called butcheries. As a consequence, they consume meat, which to the naked eye looks fine, but is heavily infested with demons/germs.
Do you know that the president is losing it? Again I just stared at him. As if in a reverie, I said, which president? You don’t seem to be paying attention. He sounded upset with me.
Dear reader, note that the stigmatisation of animals is a flawed human tendency. Pigs are dirty, snakes are evil, and so on and so forth, people say. And as if a kindergarten fable, they even lie that the first woman was deceived by a snake. Snakes themselves are even surprised.
All animals are beautiful and innocent. There is nothing on earth, no living thing that is innately evil. It is only our utility of things, our wrong usage of them which gives birth to evil. No energy is evil.
Before man acts, evil doesn’t exist. Evil is only brought into being by man’s own thoughts, his misapplication of energy.
Everywhere you look, dear reader, there is food. Eat all you want. But then here is the catch. Whatever it is that you choose to eat should be without impurities or contaminants.
Your food should never be unclean. Besides, you indeed are what you eat.
Food can heal. And food can kill. Note that the duality of being is in all things. Utility then is key.
As a consequence of unclean food, every year Zambia records thousands of morbidities and mortalities from foul play, cholera, dysentery and typhoid.
Zambia is today said to be one of the top ten countries in the world with the hungriest citizens. Yes, hunger may be biblical but it is only a creation of man. God is a God of abundance. He didn’t make man in order that he starves.
There is no shortage of food in nature. But with modern economics founded on scarcity now you understand why shortages are profitable, are artificially caused and make good business sense.
By enforcing food safety and its laws, the government will not only instil confidence in citizens about the food that they purchase, but this will also ensure that the health of members of the public is secured. Dereliction of duty by the government creates disease, and maims and kills citizens. Zambia is guilty as charged.
So what I am saying then is that leave the muchopo dealers alone. Register them, give them TPINs, give them food handlers’ certificates, and let them pay K5 everyday via Airtel, Zoona or Zamtel to ZRA as tax.
This way we will then all enjoy soup ya mbuzi and chew the muchopo without worrying about demons, worms and epilepsy. And the government, through the tax collected, will then build more markets, and schools for the kids of the same muchopo dealers and the rest of us.
And this being a win-win strategy, in the end, everyone will generate income, be healthy, development will come and, perhaps, we just might see the backside of poverty.
Further, the villages might then have licensed abattoirs, the required public health inspectors, and the next village child growing up there, the one who one day may become president, might just be spared from epilepsy and mental derangement arising from unclean food. And by extension, a nation could then be spared from much bedlam and unwarranted drama as sometimes occurs.
Dear reader, though disease comes to all, that is not an excuse for not preventing it. Disease can be kept at bay.
Prevention, founded on knowledge and awareness, not only saves lives but also contributes to the required quality of life and its length. Forewarned is forearmed.
Godspeed!
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