When you get to a new country. You must take a pinch of its soil and put it into your mouth. Savour the taste of the earth, and she will accept you as her son and mate.
For when we are born in our motherland the umbilical cord is interred in mother earth. It is not the medical doctor alone who keeps your health in check; it is the spirits of those gone before, interred in the earth and living, ever living, close to the One who created all Human Kind.
A lot of us who flee the land forget this. Caught up in mire or admiration, customs that have been the mainstay of our livelihood are thrown out of the window. In the end, we suffer stomach pains, caughs, heat and cold pangs; we miss home.
I thought I was going to die. The wave of heat hit me square in the tummy and made me sweat and squirm. I could feel the veins in my head thumping, and I could not make out if what I was seeing were people or spirits.
I lay dead for some seconds. While i was dead, I thought of the many people who, throbbed by pain and suffering each day, just wish they would die, go to waste and be forgotten.
Sickness is a very bad thing.
I received an email from a friend before I died. It was meant to be a warning about the vices of being a he whore in a land not yours; AIDS kills.
Lying on a hospital bed was a sceletalwoman, naked and dead. At her feet were red flowers and a picture of her during her prime. The message in the chain email was; she did not listen to advice about restraint, now she is dead.
How callous can we be? In seeking restraint should we judge the sick and dying, and show no compassion for the ones in pain?
My dying seconds taught me the value of good health.
Send a prayer today to people who are sick in this world. Particularly those who take photos of naked women who have died of AIDS, and parade them as warning signs to the rest of the world.
