I have a cough. Not your ordinary run of the mill “cough cough sputter sputter sigh” variety. I’d like to think it’s the new breed of cough. It has me in bed for hours on end and feeling like the whole world is in some invisible cloak and sitting on me. And I do not mean that in a kinky way. It’s some painful stuff.

So I was chatting with Tandra, and she mentioned I should get something herbal. From previous experience, herbal usually means stuff some dude picked up from under his shoe, sniffed a bit and got so high he decided to bottle the stuff. Usually this concoction takes on the form of alcohol. However people have been really busy and they have since decided to include some roots and essence of plant leaf in the brew. They have also been very cautious and placed it in a brown bottle.

By default, anything in a brown casing is suspect. There are beers to use as an example, then a couple of dudes in parliament claiming to be representing our interests. I certainly don’t mean to offend anyone with that remark, and as such, I offer my hearty apology to beer drinkers.

So this stuff comes in a brown bottle and a red top. I don’t want to go on a tangent about how red tops and brown casings do not really work, so I’ll sum it up in one word; STRAKA. Ah hell, I’m generous, I’ll make it two words; STRAKA BABY!

I’m looking at the bottle and it seems to be perspiring, from the inside. That’s some scary shit. If the mixture is going to do this to a bottle, what the heck will it do once I take it in?

All of a sudden taking herbal stuff is not such a good idea, but I am in pain so I pay the lady at the pharmacy for it and head home… not before she cautions me, “When it gets here {its called the throat lady, but anyway, what would I know, you studied medicine, I’m not a perfect person} you gurgle a bit so you feel the effect”.

I’m thinking, huh? Feel THE EFFECT? Is this like the wine thing where you give it up to fifteen hundred hours before taking a sip lest you miss the desired effect ( yeah, I haven’t waited the full fifteen hundred hours either)?

I yank it out of the paper bag that was concealing it and wonder why I didn’t go with the old stuff that I’m used to. I cough and realise why. I take my first taste and its not that bad…up till the gurgle bit. That there is where the problem comes in. This liquid is terribly terribly viscous.

If I poured this stuff along the pavement and a snail was moving in the same direction, the snail would win…even if it too was burdened with the eerie feeling that the whole world has donned a cloak and is sitting on it.

Having gotten past the gag reflex, the stuff found its way down to wherever it is medicine goes when we send it on its way.

I’m not feeling better yet, but then again I’ve just taken the stuff…I’ve also just seen the label. Apparently its made by some Herbal Medicine Researchers…RESEARCHERS?! Isn’t that what we are before actually getting qualified? It’s a little unsettling.

I honestly feel that in the hierarchy of life, there’s the people that go out there and find out stuff, then they report back to the people that do stuff….then there’s people like me who reap from the fruit of their collective work. What I have just taken down seemingly cut out the middle man in the process.

In an attempt to downplay the whole situation, I am trying to imagine what the advert for this goop would sound like….

Got a cough? Got Measles? Got the Flu? Got Milk?

Try the all-new KABUUTI HERBAL COUGH SYRUP

From ______ Herbal Medicine Researchers

Got a house that needs Painting? Use Kabuuti!

Are your shoes falling apart? Get them a fresh start with KABUUTI!

Kabuuti!! The Oh-So Awesome Stuff that will cure you before we are done with our research!

Alternatively, it may just go like most ads on local radio;

KABUUTI! KABUUTI! KABUUTI !