The delectable fruit that gets stuck in the canal

| Friday March 4, 2011 00:00

FRANCISTOWN:  Since ripening a few weeks ago, wild berries are in so much demand on the pavements of Francistown's central business district that they rival sweets, cigarettes and biscuits.

They are such a hit with everyone that many steal a few minutes of their employers' time to nip down to 'Mma-Semausu' on the pavement to get the delectable goodies of the bush that rate a mere P1 for a drinking glassful.

But there is a downside to the brown berries with a hard kernel. After accumulating them in the stomach, they often refuse to be ejected with other waste. They have been known to resist expulsion to the point where a doctor's attention has been the only remedy.

The heck of it is that it is easy to swallow the kernels in the delectation of the berries when they should be separated from the juicy flesh during mastication and pat out.

It is high season of the berries known as mogwana in the countryside, and peasants from villages near Fransistown come lugging bagfuls of the stuff to tantalise the taste buds of the townies here. This is in addition to a cornucopia of sweet reeds, watermelons, maize on the cob and other crops from masimo.

A number of wild berry vendors in the mall laugh off the suggestion that they should always warn their customers about the potential danger lurking in the delicious mogwana. One actually says it is impossible for such endings nowadays.

'I remember it happened to us when we were kids,' she says laughing. 'We were given a pint of oil to drink, after which we pass stool without difficulty.' Another vendor also says it never occurs to her to warn her customers about the kernel in the berries because most of them, being adults, should know better than to swallow them. But the customers also find the suggestion that they could end up in hospital if they swallow the knotty kernels hilarious.

'O monate jang! Ke e ta ke palelwa ke go kgwa dithapo tse dingwe,' says a consumer of the berries next to Barclays Bank, tossing the berries she had fished from a transparent plastic bag into her mouth.

At Galo Shopping Centre, another customer says he is oblivious of the hard fact. Explaining that he has just eaten mogwana for the first time, he says he will 'try' to exercise some care. 'The thing is that these berries are nice and sweet,' the man pipes. 'It is tempting to swallow the whole lot.'

A nurse at Area W clinic, whom this writer takes aside to find out if she has attended to people who had difficulty ejecting the berries, wrecks her ribs with laughter before saying she is barred by her professional code of ethics from revealing anything about her patients, least of all regarding stubborn items stuck just inside the posterior orifice.

'So, whether there have been patients coming here or not, I cannot tell you,' the nurse says.

Though, we have been unable to get hold of public health specialists, especially Dr Paul Nashara at the civic centre, it is an established fact that mogwana can have dire and embarrassing consequences for its consumers who are hereby warned to exercise discrimination against the kernels in the eating of the delectable fruit.