I was not at all worried about the corona virus scare until health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize said South African hospitals were well prepared to deal with any outbreak.
This is the same guy who said a week earlier, in an attempt to allay fears about the much-criticised National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme, that all was well, it would be run to the same standards as the national road fund and other government SOE’s. That was truly frightening.
When Mkhize was running this province, he seemed to have his head screwed on straight.
Something must have happened since he was promoted to Luthuli House, that is to say, removed from reality.
It is quite possible he has been doing first-hand research into setting up a cannabis industry.
China built a 1000-bed hospital in 10 days (that is not a misprint – 10) days to house corona virus victims.
Stop and imagine for a moment what would happen if there were an outbreak here.
First off, the government would announce a commission of inquiry.
Tenders would be announced, but would take at least six months to fill while suitable “small to medium-sized enterprises” i.e. candidates with no previous experience and no staff but with all the right political connections, were found.
The hospital staff would go on strike demanding better pay and the EFF would somehow link the virus to White Monopoly Capital and/or apartheid.
Helen Zille would tweet something about the virus being found in Singapore and Twitter and the SABC would go mad.
Afriforum would want to build an Afrikaans-only hospital, while street mobs would attack nurses demanding vaccines and set the new hospitals on fire. Cyril Ramaphosa would be shocked. Nandos would advertise its chicken as being infectious(ly) delicious.
On quite another note, I laughed at my daughter when she arrived home from school one day and announced that henceforth, she would be in charge of feeding the dogs.
We had been feeding them all the wrong food, she said, and actually they would be better off on a raw diet.
So every day she mixed up a batch of raw pureed vegetables and mincemeat and fed this to the dogs.
The first time the poor animals looked at their bowls, looked at us and plainly asked “What are you thinking?”
But after a while, well, they got hungry and wolfed the mixture down.
Truth be told, the diet did not do them a slightest bit of harm.
In fact they thrived, lost weight to a healthy level and were full of bounce.
I tossed them a big bone once a week as well, so as not to be completely ridiculous.
A couple of years ago we took on a Labrador as a change from the numerous Dobermans we’d owned for 30 years or longer.
The Dobies are great dogs but are also a handful, so we thought a Lab would suit our advancing years better.
Labradors are lovely dogs with soft mouths, good with grandchildren and don’t try to eat every passing mutt, like our Dobies did.
But they’re also inclined to get fat, especially after the snip.
As a child, my family’s dogs were fed a diet of minced meat and a rough brown bread, plus bones and leftover porridge.
So I thought of trying a diet combining that with my daughter’s vegetarian idea.
Every week I roughly chop a big cabbage and thoroughly mix it with a loaf of brown bread and a kilo of minced meat, and Magic the Lab wolfs the lot down.
He’s looking very good on that diet, has lost the fat that was gathering around his hips, his coat is glossy and he’s full of bounce.
The cost is about R10 a helping, which compares well with the dry pellets.
Thinking back, I can still remember the taste of the bread my mother used to bake.
It was called kuhne bread, made from, I think, stone-ground whole wheat flour that she used to buy from McDonald’s in ‘Maritzburg – the same place we bought horse feed from.
It was thick and chewy and was simply delicious.
I have searched high and low for that flour with little luck, and it’s not the same as the “stoneground whole wheat flour” sold in the supermarkets.
There was a time it could be had from Reichnau Mission on the road to Underberg, but their mill is no longer grinding.
I did find a reference to a “Practical Cookery Book” by S van H Tulleken, dated 1951, which had this to say: “Kuhne Meal Porridge.
This is the best of all a wonderful help against constipation. Kuhne meal is crushed wheat.” I wonder if any reader knows if it is still made anywhere?
* * *
A woman came home, screeching her car into the driveway and ran into the house.
She slammed the door and shouted at the top of her lungs: “Honey, pack your bags, I won the lottery.”
The husband said: “Oh my God, what should I pack, beach stuff or mountain stuff?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said, “Just get out!”
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