Due to the vast laziness of his breed, the expatriate occasionally finds himself at home late in the morning, eating a cooked breakfast that has been prepared for him by one of his army of maids.
On one occasion recently, this particular expatriate found himself eating breakfast while watching a documentary entitled, Hidden Killers of the Edwardian Home, or something similarly glorious. It was a programme studying those things (arsenic in wallpaper, asbestos in sinks, radium in socks) that killed people in England about a hundred years ago, and which the English didn’t know were killing them.
This started me wondering about those ‘Hidden Killers’ that exist in the average Kenyan home, and which the unwary expatriate, newly-arrived in the country, might need warning about, lest he expires before his lucrative NGO contract lapses!
Kenyan life expectancy is fifty-something years. Forget HIV/Aids and malaria, or even car crashes, political violence or flash floods: the greatest dangers to Kenyans are to be found in the home.
The humble gas cylinder is a prime example of something dangerous that can’t quite be done without. I’m not sure whether it’s dodgy dealers or careless users, but there’s no doubt that domestic gas cylinders are lethal things that kill or maim many of us. I wouldn’t be too worried about having my leg blown off, if only I was certain that the food I was cooking at the time wasn’t something not worth dying for, like ugali or kale. Sorry.
Or jikos. Charcoal burners. Whatever you want to call them. They pump a glorious amount of carbon monoxide into our airless kitchens or cold sitting rooms, and perform the same function that a hosepipe on the car exhaust performs for suicidal Yanks.
I suppose there’s the occasional snake, too. Expatriates always worry disproportionately about such things, convinced as they wrongly are that venomous snakes are everywhere in ‘Afrika’; in fact, this will happen so rarely as to not happen at all.
Tiled floors are another killer. In showers, in kitchens where spills have happened, on drunken evenings walking in socks down the hallway; in all these places, tiles will become slippery and you’ll tumble onto your back or head, breaking it in multiple places and, ultimately dying. Tiles, people. Be warned.
Or processed foods that list that obscure ingredient, ‘Permitted Colour’, ‘Permitted Flavouring’ or ‘Permitted Preservative’.
I’m not sure, but from my understanding of how other countries’ food safety systems work, such words are code for ‘terribly dangerous chemicals that might not kill you now, but which will give you various cancers, skin conditions, lung-rots and other maladies in the longer term’.
People, watch those ‘juices’, processed foods and, relatedly, lipsticks, eyeliners and the like that simply say, ‘Made in North Korea’. Fortunately, I’ve recently stopped wearing lipstick!
But the most prolific killer in the Kenyan home, if The Nairobian is to be believed, is ‘the wife’. At least, this is what paranoid bachelors and rubbish husbands believe.
spartington@yahoo.co.uk
