…Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food – Hippocrates

This should be the only way to curb an ever-ballooning health budget by promoting good nutrition as a preventative method (preventative medicine).

However, before we start, I once asked this question: What is the most important part or organ of the body? Two, which vegetable has the highest nutritional content?

To digress a bit, I’ll forever be thankful to the RFP for preventing Mathibeli Mokhothu from being the Prime Minister of Lesotho. Hee u re thusitse Ntate Matekane. Ka nnete, re kabe re oetse ka moholokohlong.

Why do I say this? I took a jog to Moshoeshoe One International Airport last Saturday and was just stunned on how beautiful and clean the place looks after it was painted. I mean, this only took about a week or so but the place looks new.

As I was walking around the airport to admire the new coat of paint, I kept asking myself, “But what really prevented Ntate Moeketsi Majoro and Ntate Mokhothu from doing this? They were in power for two full years and surely used the airport on numerous occasions. Didn’t they ever see the need for the airport to be painted?” More-so for Mokhothu because he’s a relatively young person.

Surely, Mokhothu should’ve spotted that the airport needed some cosmetic attention. I guess the same sentiments could be extended to the CEO’s of LHDA and LNDC. Both organisations are headed by relatively young people. But look at the state in which their buildings are in. Look at the grime on the Bank Tower building. Aikh’ona guys!

All in all, the new RFP government must be congratulated for a job well done to beautify the city by planting new palm trees and shrubs. The only criticism I have is that the palm trees have been planted too close to the road boundary. Those trees grow big and within no time, their trunks will grow larger in diameter.

My fear is that when the trunk matures it will be too close to oncoming traffic and may cause road accidents. Moreover, they may cause damage to the road surface. But that can easily be corrected by planting the trees on the centre-line of the road island. Good work though!

Let’s talk nutrition. But before we do that, have you ever wondered why Lesotho has 100 million insurance companies and not even one agriculture or food company that exports produce to the world? Why is this? Does it mean we eat insurance?

I mean, anywhere you walk along Kingsway Road, you are sure to see an insurance company. Talking about insurance companies, there’s an irritating advert on Lesotho Television of a teacher that laughs out loud and says, Ke ja lance kwikiwkwi….. Jesus Christ! I don’t even know what the advert is all about because I always change the channel every time the teacher starts laughing, Kwikwikwi! Please spare us the misery and change that advert before I smash my TV set.

Now, back to nutrition. This is possibly the biggest challenge that Lesotho has at the moment. Even bigger than corruption and way bigger than crime. The challenge with poor nutrition is that it may not scream as loud as corruption and crime but its underlying effects are prolonged and may be seen in generations to come. An example being stunting and a nation that is not so smart. An inability to solve easy challenges.

But poor nutrition is influenced by our diet. I’ve always wondered why our national breakfast changed from leshele-shele to bohobe ka tee (bread and tea). But a challenge with all those meals is that people pour excessive amounts of sugar in them to enhance the flavour.

In my view, sugar is satan that is a catalyst to the spread of cancer and should be banned as a matter of urgency. What happens when you have your bread and tea with sugar in the morning?

The sugar causes an energy spike and soon afterwards, the energy levels drop so low that you feel as if your intestines are being sucked by a vacuum cleaner. Have you ever felt that? At around 10:00am in the morning?

Then the tendency is to fight the emptiness with makoenya ka tee (fatcakes and tea). Then pour three to four tea-spoons of sugar in the tea cup. What happens after that? The sugar is absorbed in the body causing spikes in insulin yet again and drops to the lowest level at round 12:30.

In the meantime, people may snack here and there with biscuits and tea. But the body was not designed to carry so much refined sugar. I don’t even think God engineered the body to carry any refined sugar.

Then what happens around lunch-time? People will go and have a heavy meal which consists of papa (maize-meal). Now, the stomach is full of another devil called papa. Now, papa turns into glucose and spikes the sugar levels as well. In fact, papa wasn’t meant for human consumption.

At around 16:00pm, the sugar levels drop to their lowest level. This is why government employees (civil-servants) are usually tired, moody and grumpy at four in the afternoon. “Ntate ke kopa o tle hosasa hoba nna kea chaisa.”

After a prolonged period of eating like this, this is where Type-2 diabetes creeps in. The current surge in cancer cases is also caused by our poor diet and nutrition. I need to run a workshop to explain how this works.

I say this because I live with a doctor and hear all sorts of horror stories in the evening. I tell you, I need counselling. But seven out of 10 (70%) emergencies are cases related to poor diet and nutrition.

Yes, there may be cases here and there where you get woken up for an emergency because some ‘smart pants’ decided to ride a bike on a rainy night, drunk as hell and flying at the speed of 200 km/h. Then when he hits a puddle of water and skids on the highway, some of us are called at 2am to drive doctors to the hospital for an emergency. Motho a ne a taoa re le siko.
But guys, this alcohol issue is a national problem. Unfortunately, our African governments are too afraid to confront multi-national brewing companies because they are desperate for jobs and tax revenue.

The biggest problem that we have now is that with the scourge of unemployment, most people resort to drinking beer throughout the day (likh’otho).

Now, after a prolonged period, the alcohol then affects the most important organ in the body called the gut (the passage between the mouth and the back-side (well, what other word can I use?)

Now, when beer is consumed without food the gut looses its ability to absorb nutrients to the body. That’s why you find most young men so thin, they become invisible when you look at them from the side (boketa bo otlang pelo).

These young and unemployed men and women of late, will drink beer and when they feel hungry, they resort to makoenya. Maybe two or three fat cakes and continue drinking.

This is why the agriculture sector can never work productively in Lesotho. Mostly because of malnutrition. Young men and women don’t have the strength to carry labour intensive work for hours in agricultural fields.

That’s why most of them resort to driving 4+1 taxis. Have you seen how malnutrioned most of these 4+1 taxi drivers are? It’s because they drink all day in those taxis. And when they have a meal, it mostly consists of papa ka nama (a thin slice of pork) or at the very least, it’s fat-cakes. How do you then have a productive nation with such a poor diet?

Now, on the flip side, there is a devil called obesity that we need to deal with. Le’a tseba re na le mathata. Modern day food is killing us. Let’s look at an average meal that most people have. Chips ka makoenya le russian (processed meat). What are the contents of these so-called russians (how do you even spell it?)

This is a problem. I’ve seen russians as cheap as two maloti (ponto) at the bus stop and these russians are mostly consumed by school kids. From what I’ve learnt, russians are made of blended meat that should be disposed off.

Instead of throwing them away, they are reused/repurposed and recycled into an edible plastic and named russian. Now, there is another devil called ‘kota’ that is consumed in South African townships and slowly making its way to Lesotho. I tell you, this is another pandemic and approaching like a tsunami.

This is a dag-wood type of meal that consists of bread (1/4 loaf bread), margarine, reshene, palone, eggs, chips, cheese, atchar and tamati soso (sauce). Then, this meal will be consumed with fizzy drinks or beer. Every day of the week. Staple diet!

The end result will be high blood pressure because of the salt from the bread. Another problem is the bread we buy from shops. It should be banned as well. People must cook bread from home if they crave bread.

In fact, the food-stuff that should be banned if our leaders are serious about good nutrition consist of sugar, beer, bread, papa, frozen chicken and processed meats.

Now, I’ve stopped eating frozen chicken (braai-pack) after learning that it is full of chemicals especially on the wings. Eating frozen chicken (braai pack) is eating cancer. The same goes processed milk. It is full of hormones. That’s why modern men now have breasts and big buttocks and girls mature way before their age.

I tell you, if our African governments are too afraid to confront multi-national food and beverage companies and allow their citizens to consume poison (sugar + papa + alcohol + frozen-chicken), the health budget will forever increase and spiral out of control because people will continue to fall sick because of high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, diabetes and cancer.

Yes, of course, the brewery companies are very smart and very cunning and will claim to create jobs and contribute millions in tax revenue but at what cost to the economy? At the cost of people living with chronic diseases and eventually dying. Will Minister Selibe Mochoboroane act on this emergency? Only time will tell.

‘Mako Bohloa