If You Drink Paraffin You Will Get Bad Advice

 
Two weeks I wasn’t feeling well, exhausted, emotional, wiped out, I felt for sure death was knocking on my door. I never thought to blame it on the heat or affairs at home. A part of my brain still believes in pending doom, that African part of me that I cannot wipe out.

I took Kombi rides and found myself sweaty and clammy. Not normally a sweater, I was horrified to see pit stains as I emerged. Much like those barbaric men I have for so long turned my nose up on. I held my arms against my body and hoped for my sake that my oh so hygienic reputation had not debilitated into a hot sticky wet mess.
I blamed it on the manufacturers of Shield.

Sydney won, but sleep took over. That’s when it hit me.

 The reason for my wet calamity was not because My Shield deodorant had stopped working, it was because I forgotten to use any.

Enclosed in my blanket cocoon I had initially caught a whiff of my armpits, it had started as a teasing stale whiff, and then it had grown into a full bodied assault on my sinuses all this I registered through the mists of sleep.
That smell of stale deodorant barely covering up the much headier scent of fresh summer sweat. I literally embarrassed myself to a state of full consciousness.

Blinking and wishing the smell away weren’t going to make the smell go away, and so I sat there debating why it was necessary for me to take a mid day shower.

20 minutes later.

I was standing in the kitchen glaring at the fridge for having failed to produce so much as a mug full of water.  Glaring wasn’t working so I dropped my pointless rage and stood there trying to think where I could get some water.

Before you ask, no, water doesn’t come from our taps anymore.

No. Don’t feel sorry for me, at any time if you walk into our house, we have at least 200ltrs of that precious liquid. Some of which is stored in a cupboard below the sink. It is to this cupboard that I turned, to appease my thirst.
What followed is a sequence of events that I choose not to recall precisely.

1.   I did not pour the water into a mug, I took a hearty swig.
It was paraffin, not water.
2.   It took me exactly 3 seconds to realise what I had drunk.

I stood there spluttering and gasping. My lips were on fire and my tummy was behaving like I had a bad case of IBS which I have had, and believe me it is bad. Not knowing what to do, I stood riveted to the spot until a little voice whispered,

“Facebook,”

And so I whipped out my phone, and asked my friends, “what is to become of me?”

Within minutes I had reached 20 comments, all of them except for the one or the two were just plain stupid.

“you will become more intelligent” Said Doug
“Yipee you are going to become Mai Bhobha” what Alex meant by this I wasn’t sure
Charles confirmed my suspicions of a runny stomach, midway through my posts it began.
Each bowl movement was punctuated by a status post“you will wake up drunk”“you are going to fly”“pregnancy finally!”“you will develop more antibodies and spit fire”

As I slid to home base I got this comment that cleared my bowls outright.

“oh shit here is wat u can do. Around th 7th hour from th time you drank it, make sure u get a free toilet that no one intends to use for the next 2 hours, and make sure you hv running water coz that paraffin will be coming out hot. So get comfortable in that toilet”

The guy who said this was our rugby captain, and school prefect. The very sight of him inspired fear and when he so much as glanced at you, you felt your life flash by.