Lenox Lizwi Mhlanga
It so happened that one sunny afternoon I was standing at a street corner with a friend. We had just had amawoso (braai/barberque) with the usual “salad” of onions, tomatoes and cucumber, koMpofu in Luveve 5.
Suddenly, a revolting smell wafted around us. I turned to him and asked, “Did you just let out some, eh, very bad air just now?” To which he bluntly responded, “Of course I did, you don’t think I smell like this all the time do you?”
I was stunned. The norm is that someone who is accused of ukuvus’ umvundla (waking up the rabbit) as we say in iSiNdebele vehemently denies having done so. Then it dawned on me that breaking wind can happen to anyone at any time and there is no cause for embarrassment.
For your own information, Jim Dawson actually wrote a book, Who Cut the Cheese, A Cultural History of the Fart. Imagine, someone sitting down to write all 200 pages, or more, about shooting gas?
The world and its crazy inhabitants never cease to amaze!
The term “to cut the cheese”, we are told, originated when someone sliced into a new wheel of cheese, but the most likely a brick of Limburger cheese, which stinks to high heaven despite it being fresh.
The average adult, writes a serious Dawson, breaks wind between six and 20 times a day. I might as well warn you and tell you that I break wind a lot more just because of my age.
A fart is a combination of gases like nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen, methane and hydrogen sulphide. Its not surprising the ozone layer is disappearing so fast.
The mind boggles when you imagine how all this data was collected. Did people actually volunteer for a study with samples being analysed in a lab? What a challenging vocation “sniffing out the facts” on flatulence must be.
What about the qualification, a degree in Fartology perhaps?
Talking of sniffing, have you ever noticed how the smell is inversely proportional to the noise? The silent ones are deadly enough to be classified under BWMD — Biological Weapons of Mass Destruction. These are known in our circles as SBDs — Silent But Deadlies. The loud ones are usually just a lot of hot air signifying nothing!
And ever notice that when you are tempted to let a silent one slip it usually breaks the sound barrier and how embarrassing that can be when the Miss Zimbabwe of your dreams is in the vicinity? Never trust the nether end for discipline at such critical moments.
It reminds one of an incident that occurred to this colleague of mine. After having bravely prevented “you know what” from making a loud and humiliating announcement in a bus for what seemed like hours, he arrived home to what he thought was an empty house.
He then eagerly unlocked the door and let it rip with a thunderous roar. Obviously relieved, he turned round to face his shocked in-laws who were by now gasping for breath!
They had made one of those unannounced visits to their obviously embarrassed daughter!
As far as bodily functions go, breaking wind is as common as sneezing, yawning, coughing and peeing. It often happens simultaneously with these.
How many times do people either sneeze and poof, or cough and poof, or pee and poof at the same time? It gets worse as one grows older.
When that happens in public, you just want to disappear into the bowels of the earth. It is my contention that the status of breaking wind should be elevated so that you don’t have to feel so embarrassed.
Since I don’t see that happening in the short term, may I offer some gilt-edged advice on how to save face should you happen to accidentally let off, pop off, cut the cheese, fluff, poof, and wake up the rabbit or whatever euphemism you use to describe it.
You can look around as if trying to figure out who the rotten it was who had sugar beans and hot peppers for dinner.
It could be anyone, including the guy in an expensive Armani suit for breaking wind breaks all social boundaries.
Or you could brazen it out; acting as if it never happened even though it’s still ricocheting around the room defying Graham’s Law of diffusion.
How about shocking everyone by laughing and saying, “Hell wasn’t that a loud one, my mum would be proud.” I am sure one or two will get the joke though I doubt it if your mother would.
When you accidentally let it loose inside the bed, fluff the sheets to disperse the smell. If you find your partner fluffing the sheets tonight, beat a hasty retreat, at least until the pong has dissipated.
For those SBDs, move quickly into the next aisle of the supermarket or library leaving a trail of pollution in your wake.
They are likely to lay the blame on something if not someone. In a lift, get out on the next floor leaving the other lift dwellers to suffer.
Dogs make very useful scapegoats. “Danger, suka lapha wena nja!”
If animals aren’t close at hand, babies are also great to lay the blame on. You can lovingly say, “Oh Themba, did you poo in your nappy again?” knowing fully well that Little Themba cannot point you out in a parade.
On a positive note, my grandmother (May her dear soul rest in peace) used to tell me that letting out wind was a sign that one was alive. It would assure those gathered around the death bed of an ailing relative.
If he went like, “Bhoooo!” you were sure to hear the older ones exclaim, “Uzaphila!” (He’ll live!).
If anyone tells you that they don’t fart, they are either lying or they’re aliens from Pluto or else they are dying.
A word of caution. Do not attempt to light a match to a fart, it’s highly flammable! By the way, it’s the hydrogen sulphide that produces the deadly funk, so watch out!