Tough times go away, tough people remain!!

I received a call out of the blue recently. It was from a former school colleague (let's call him Tim) who I met while in Form 1 many years back. I had met him in the intervening 30 years at most twice in social functions. He had happened upon my business card that I had given to him at our last meeting and he wished to discuss personal business issues and accordingly set up an appointment for us to meet.

I had known that Tim had built up a substantial business empire that included real estate, trading and investment in a hotel and he was evidently doing well. As is won't to happen in such instances and after the usual pleasantaries were exchanged we tried to catch up with what had happened in the intervening time since I had last seen him and he told me a heart rending story with a lesson in it.

Ever since he could remember, Tim had suffered from sinus problems that meant frequent trips to the doctor during a particularly bad spell and exemption from certain activies in his formative years. He had learnt to live with the condition but over time and with the introduction of various remedies many touted as all natural mainly from the East, he was persuaded to test one of the products, a Chinese ointment to be applied twice a day all over the body, and see whether it would relieve the condition.

That was the start of his problems because within a period of four months, it would seem that his body developed a severe allergic reaction to the ointment and in Tim's words his skin started to peal of like that of a hot potato. Gradually the condition spread to other parts of his body including his mouth and alimentary canal causing him excrutiating pain and inability to ingest anything. The regimen of pain killers he was being given were inadequate to fight the pain without causing other side effects and so he was in a constant torturous and painful agony throughout the treatment over a two year period with admission on and off at a Nairobi Hospital.  

Worse still, the Kenyan dermatologist who was treating the condition had never encountered it before and had to keep consulting with expert doctors in another country where the condition is prevalent for solutions on how to manage it. To cut a long story short, he believes that it was his prayers and faith that kept him alive and also as I reminded him he had the resources needed to be attended by the best medical doctors available because had it been any ordinary person without the resources he would surely have gone to his maker!! This is because even his doctor often told him that he had done the best that he could and he should pray that he recovers.

Tim's story touched me in several ways.

Despite frequent expert advice to people not to experiment with unknown chemicals, be they all natural or otherwise, Kenyan's still flock to places and respond to advertisments offering remedies to insomnia, slimming, increase in size of breasts, hips, penises, skin allergies, skin lightening etc many of them from China. The advertisments purport to show before and after pictures of people who have undergone the full course of treatment (for lack of a better word) and glowing testimonials from satisfied customers and accreditations from one health body or another. These are mainly peddled by charlatans, quacks and conmen out to make a quick buck out of the desperation of the human being, unqualified even to dispense over-the-counter veterinary medicine to a cat.

Tim's was a story of an experiment gone horribly wrong and a valuable lesson to those who still believe in these often cheap remedies which could disfigure you for life or even kill you! His skin now looks like that of a person 20 years older though he turns 50 next year.

After his ordeal Tim told me that he takes a more reasoned approach to life because after all one could get killed just by stepping out of his house. He has also learnt to be more philosophical and laid back, appreciates his friends better and often surrounds himself with what he termed as people going through hard times because often all they may need is the company of someone successfull to reassure them that while "tough times go away, tough people remain to fight another day."

Tim showed me that despite all the personal problems we face there are others out there shouldering worse problems and stoically moving on oblivious to the issues and burdens that they carry. He still has to visit his dermatologist every two months as a follow up to see that the condition is not recurring and I can only hope and pray that he recovers fully even as he goes about his daily business of expanding his business empire.