Ridiculous Reaction To Fear Of The Bug

I am seated at my favourite joint minding my own business as I savour my African Sausage aka mutura ya mbao.

A gentleman joins me at the table but makes sure there is social distance between us.

Punde si punde his mutura is brought on a kibao as usual, complete with a few pinches of salt and some kachumbari.

The gentleman rises on his feet and heads to the hand washing spot, where he does not only wash his hands with antiseptic soap and water, but scrubs them surgeon-style.

In the meantime, he has left his mutura on his table, which is also my table, where flies are having a field day, except for those few moments when my hands are free to ward them off.

He is distracted further by a friend who engages him for a while, but eventually comes back to join his lovely mutura.

On sitting, he summons the waiter and requests for a toothpick which he meticulously uses to prick the mutura and direct it to the mouth.

The look on his face is that of great satisfaction because he has succeeded in ensuring that he is consuming a completely sanitized meal.

My mind tells me that it is my duty to educate him that the sources of the bugs are numerous and not just his hands; it could be the towel that wiped the kibao, or the flies that continue to compete with him as he toothpicks the pieces of mutura, or the toothpick which could be harbouring a few bugs, or the water that was used to handwash which could have been sourced from a contaminated stream, or the waiter whose hands may have been unclean when he cut the mutura into chewable and toothpickable pieces.

But on looking at his face, which is gleaming most probably because of a combination of two things; first, the sumptuousness of the mutura and second, his accomplished feat against the bug, my mind cautions me to be thinned by my own affairs and commands my legs to soldier it away.

My mind however tells itself that the society requires a lot of sensitization when it comes to the war on germs.