What’s the politically correct way to call the country’s premier public health institution, the University Teaching Hospital of Kigali (CHUK), in Nyarugenge District? I know that most people go by the shortened form –CHUK, but the real problem lies in the pronunciation. Anglophones, like me, tend to pronounce it “shook”, which sounds quite different from how the motor taxi chauffeur pronounced it to me. Every time I repeated to him I was going to “shook”, he retorted with a word that to me sounded like “flask.” He repeated it about six times before I eventually started to follow. Chauffeur was not saying “flask”, but rather, something close to “sheer-ask”, or sheer-sque. Wow! I was at this good, clean hospital to check on a sick friend and, aside from the ward-full of patients battling different ailments, and the obvious pain most of them exhibited in their faces, I was drawn to the attention of something else, that is, the huge piles of supermarket shopping that lay on my friend’s bed side table–biscuits, cakes, fruit concentrates, chocolates, canned sodas, cookies, bread, energy drinks …you name it. Now, who wants to dig into tough, crusty biscuits and cookies when their throats are crackling from dehydration and general lack of food intake? A closer look at these biscuits and chocolates brought by designer visitors revealed that most of them, although suspect on nutritive value, compensated this shortfall by being candy to the eye. That is, they came in such brightly colored tinfoil wrapping as to mislead you into thinking that biscuits cure sickness. Seriously, how do biscuits and sickness connect? No, no, no! When visiting the sick, it is important to remember the adage, “simplicity is genius”. So the next time that I am ill, you now know what to not bring. Give me pomme instead—the fruit or the juice –whatever. Give me roast peanuts …the kind sold for Rwf 500 at the local supermarket. Pass me that chilled Inyange Mango juice, which is my personal favorite because with its thickness and wholesomeness, I do not need to endure the painful ordeal of swallowing morsels of solid food when my throat is so dry. Because of the difficulty with swallowing solids when I’m not feeling well, I naturally prefer to drink a lot instead. This is why your next visit to me when I’m sick should begin with you preparing a huge bowl of beans, from which I will only need the soup, by the way. This soup must be as thick as the Inyange Mango nector we just talked about, such that after emptying about four of the one-litre packs, I won’t need to supplement it with biscuits. The other thing with my soup is that it should be served piping hot, while the only ingredients added to it should be salt and a sprinkling of finely chopped serere.
