An Essay On Pork Stew

Story By: Sydney Abugri

The company physician armed me with a medical referral letter the other day, and sent me on my way to meet a medic at the Port Medical Centre in Tema.

The medic I was told, would give me a check up: New company policy for employees above a certain age.

So off to the Tema physician your old buddy went.

Jomo my good lad, there comes a time when you do not need anyone to tell you age is catching up, and that like any old machine, you need some periodic checking and fixing up of worn parts.

You crawl out of bed in the morning, and the bones begin creaking and groaning and protesting like an old wooden staircase threatening to come apart.

Anyhow, I met the medic and boy, was the man thorough! Over the next couple of days, he literally turned my anatomy inside out, Jomo.

There were x-rays, blood and urine tests, multiple blood pressure recordings and an elaborate physical examination…the whole works.

At one stage, they took me up to an upper floor examination room and had me shed my garments right down to my birthday suit, and there was this pretty female nurse around and all that…

That was for the prostrate exam. In this exam, the medic shoves a gloved finger right up your wetincalit, and probes around for a swelling in the posterior region, that is supposed to signal the presence of the dreaded affliction of men my age…prostrate cancer!

For another exam, I was laid full out and nude to the waist on the medic’s couch. This time, they connect some equipment to a machine, stick numerous knobs extending from the machine to various parts of my body, and turn on this unfamiliar cutie of medical technology.

At one point during the physical examination, the medic suddenly fetches me a light punch just below the right side of the rib cage. Is this medic crazy or something, I begin to think to myself.

Sorry, he says and goes on with his probing. Ah, I think I know the score. Where he punched me is where the liver is.

If you let out a yell at the light punch, the medic gets to know your liver is in big trouble, see?

Later the medic goes over my report with me. I am reluctant to see x-ray pictures of what the organs inside me look like, but he shows them to me any way.

See this muscle here? It should have been a little more like this, but no need to be scared. After the age of xyz, we may expect some of these problems, he explains.

This other problem has more to do with lifestyle than age and the challenge there is to change your lifestyle.

The hospital dietician will fill you in with more precise information, but I have to tell you that from now on, you must not eat this and that and that other food. Cut drastically down on salt.

No booze, my friend. If giving up your daily drink will kill you, limit it to one glass of wine with a meal a day. No more…

Get a lot of physical exercise on a daily basis. The medic insists the matter of physical exercise is not negotiable when it comes to fitness and health. How do we convince everyone to go for a walk?

From what I gathered, many an apparently very healthy individual is sadly a dead man walking. No symptoms show and many suffering from acute hypertension and other life-threatening conditions only get to know when it is too late. “He died after a short illness.”

Many folks are happily and slowly killing themselves with tonnes of fatal dietary grease and muck: Sausages, butter, cheese, fatty meat, fried chicken, fried potato chips, fried this and fried that.

Do you remember the late Thomas Sankara’s national fitness programme for all civil servants in Burkina Faso?

It was probably one of the most curious attempts ever made to get people to undertake regular physical exercise. Sankara’s revolution made physical exercise compulsory three times a week for civil servants.

It was to rid the civil service of overweight and sloppy civil servants and cut down the national health bill in one swoop. Elderly fellows gathered at fitness centres for jogging and physical exercise with pot-bellied gallantry, yes sir.

That bit about the national health bill is very important. Get the population to undergo medical examination at the expense of the state, promote physical fitness, sit back and watch the national health bill drop dramatically. Use the savings to improve the quality of life of the people.

That is the idea. Do you see what I see? Our National Health Insurance Scheme needs to make provision for medical examination of all policy holders. That should cover a large section of the population and save lives. What is your opinion?

A footnote to this week’s letter is that we are gradually approaching the peak of the rainy season, and frightening images are playing about in my skull.

I won’t forget the day I resumed duty in July 1995, Jomo. That was the day horrified commuters, traders and other city residents saw a man floating down the Odaw river towards circle from upstream at Alajo seated on an armchair!

Call the spectacle macabre or spooky, Jomo. The man in the floating arm chair was very dead, swept from his sitting room during one of the most devastating floods ever to hit Accra.

It had rained for more than nine hours on July 3 and 4.

People were marooned on roof and tree tops, and for the first time ever, we saw rescue teams getting around the city in rubber boats rescuing people

Many people drowned. A friend told me how a relative of his had his car washed away by flood waters. It came to a stop near a police station.

He said his relative felt uncomfortable about being near a police station because the insurance cover on the car had expired.

He need not have bothered: The police station was all but water-borne, and there was not a single cop in sight.

Our drainage planning, city engineering and disaster management skills have remained suspect and unchanging throughout the seasons, but who knows, it may well be that this year, the disaster management people are well prepared with rescue teams, tents, food, medicines and other accoutrements and logistics to deal with any excessive flooding.

If we prepare for a disaster and none comes, we sing Alleluia. If it does, we wont be caught up the darned creek without a paddle, as has happened over and over again!