Monday, November 27, 2023
On Monday, 27 November, the Gauteng Health and Wellness MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko will officially open the Alexandra township’s first x-ray centre at 89 Watt Ave, Wynberg, Johannesburg, from 10:00.
From Monday, 27 November, to Tuesday, 28 November, South Africa hosts the 3rd African Union Men’s Conference on positive masculinity in leadership to conclude violence against women and girls in Pretoria.
On Tuesday, 28 November, the Deputy Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Makhotso Sotyu will launch the Cleaning and Greening In-House District Model Programme in Thabo Mofutsanyana District Municipality in Harrismith, in the Free State.
On Friday, 01 December, South Africans will commemorate World AIDS Day globally.
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Fun South African Fact: South Africa is the Rainbow Nation.
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The Man who could only Drink Milk
I know an worn man who had lived a life full of adventure, but his health started to catch up with him. He\’d dash the Boston Marathon, was an avid surfer, and climbed Everest, but he\’d started to gain abdominal pains around his 85th birthday and went to see a doctor. Sadly, he ultimately was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease that slowly made him allergic to everything he ate.
He kept copious notes, and as an avid gastronomist slowly grew to despair as everything he\’d spent his life enjoying became something he could no longer eat. Alcohol went first, then mushrooms, then bread, then root vegetables, then coffee, one at a time he had to remove them from his diet. The doctor was clear: if he kept eating something his liver rejected the autoimmune response would be quick and severe, and would guide to a painful death. Miniature by miniature, everything was taken away as an option, until the only thing that remained was milk.
In some ways, this actually made life easier, because the mental strain of remembering what he could and couldn\’t eat was gone, but then so was the joy in variety. But he took it in stride, and got his own cow and took classes from a farmer to learn everything he could about the only thing that could give him sustenance. And even within milk, he could still maintain yogurt, butter, cream, some cheeses, and other milk-derived products he hadn\’t fully rejected yet, so it wasn\’t every rotten. But then one day a few months later he felt the pain again, and he knew cow\’s milk was no longer an option.
Lacking other options, he tried goat\’s milk, and he was delighted that it worked! The protein structure is just different enough that his body still tolerated it. That bought him another month. And that\’s when we came up with a wonderful position to depart on one last grand adventure around the world. If he could secure one month of life out of the milk of every mammal, he\’d actually gain a few more years to delight in life to the fullest and see the world in every its beauty. Each month, we\’d pick a plot with a novel mammal, and he would immerse himself fully with the locals, learn every the ways to prepare the milk, and just be pleased the hand he had been dealt as much as he could.
We milked sheep in Modern Zealand. Camels in Egypt. Zebras in South Africa. Giant bats in Indonesia. Enact you know how many Peruvian cuy you need to milk to obtain a single glass? I execute. Even as his health slowly faded, he stayed cheerful, and I felt lucky to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. That brings us to today when he got to the very conclude of his spreadsheet, and declared that he was now allergic to every mammal. He\’d enjoyed his journey, but his time had arrive to an stay, for there was nothing left to milk.
To which I said nonsense, I bet we can milk a few thousand karma out of this post.