Health for Health

by

Obododimma Oha

That orange has been sold to Mama Precious who hawks fruits at the "go slow." The mango was sold last season, making it tough for school-children to invade to fill or to calm down their empty tummies after school. Please do not touch that pineapple! I will sell it in the market to be able to pay my contribution next month in the women's meeting. Also, that bunch of  banana will be cut down and forced to get ripe quickly. Eyes have been looking at it dangerously for too long! I will soon cut it down and hide it away. Mind you: it is not for your starter on your breakfast table or for your godforsaken dessert. Here we have learnt to desert your dessert for the soup-of-many-things and foo-foo is enough summary of the menu.

She would not eat the orange or mango or pineapple in her garden and would not go for a sound medical treatment in a good hospital. Her "doctor" is that illiterate vendor of drugs in the heart of the market. That fruit seller would rise when the sun is too hot, not minding that she has not taken any breakfast. She would walk across to the "doctor" and request: "Miksiere m ogwu" (Mix or combine some tablets for me).And the good "doctor" would, and advise: "Take this, twice daily. That one: three times daily after food. Avoid fried things and oil or fruits. Thank you." And she unwraps the money from the sale of the of the fruits and pay. After all, payment is payment: it is just about money leaving her hands, an exchange of health for health actually!

Last time that I was in our village, I did not try to touch the ripe and tempting avocado pear and pineapple. I knew what I would be told: "It has been sold." Who are you to ask why it has been sold?Are you the only new person in Jerusalem? Have you not heard about the miraculous resurrection? SOLD! They have been SOLD and the owner does not tolerate nonsense or allow any crazy kid to come playing near her shopping! To avoid trouble, avoid trouble.

Many of the homesteads are learning to sell things from the roots. It is called "ire n'osi" (roughly translated as "selling  a whole while it is still standing"). Very soon, somebody will come up with the innovative idea of selling it in the flowering stage or even selling the leaves. It is not poverty; it is the thinking; new practice, the new culture in cash cropping! Cash crops have to live up to the name and bring in cash, hard cash!

I have said it not just poverty; not even attributable to poverty, unless it is the poverty of the the mind. One has to be poor mentally to be able to exchange health for unreliable health. Health for health, I said. What more being able to hand over one's life to "doctors" in the heart of the market. Miksiere m ogwu! Somebody must gain from somebody's loss. And loss is loss, including the expensive loss of human life!

Don't remind me of the fact that it was our adventurous ancestors that discovered that the mango and the pineapple and the pear could be eaten and that in spite of our modernity and education, we are yet to discover new fruits and vegetable that could be eaten. We are even forgetting and abandoning some of the real medicinal ones they found and are dying in the hospitals in large numbers!

Our tables need to be tabled for a discussion, too. Has it always been one course meal? One swallows the ball dipped in what is called "soup" and soon it is over! No starter, no dessert. You can even swallow your tongue. Why are this crude? Why are you unwilling to change for the better? Why is your table half empty? Why are you in this practice of ire n'osi and have ignored the fact that you deserve a life?