Howzit? Well, impossible really.

When they - my siblings, all of four of them - followed the yellow brick road to that much-hated, no-good, smoulderingly-hot, abundantly peculiar Land of Oz, (seriously - have you actually looked at a kangaroo properly and watched it move?), smack-in-the-middle-of-nowhere, it seemed like just another country. 

It’s not. It’s bizarre. It’s the only place on the planet with things like trunk-nosed-hedgehog Echnidas and mammals that lay eggs and Cassowary birds that look like delusional dinosaurs that can kill you with a flick of their dagger-ended toes. Ethereal Box Jelly fish, morbidly lethal. Man eating crocodiles in the sea. Insanely huge bats, insanely huge spiders, insanely huge pythons. Cone Snails with venom so poisonous, one drop can kill twenty adults. There is no winter. Strange sounding people that actually stop at pedestrian crossings for pedestrians to cross the road without them having to throw themselves in the way of cars to stop the flow of traffic. Strange sounding people that stop at red lights, don’t drink and drive and follow the speed limit every single day, all day long. Where the majority of people call you “mate” and pay their taxes to the government (instead of a tiny, minuscule percentage that keep the rest of the population afloat), and paying taxes means one can go to any hospital without giving up an arm and a leg - literally - in monthly medical aid rates to afford private hospitals as government ones are so under resourced and badly managed here, that they are more hazardous to your health than the reason why you would be there in the first place. Where the news headlines of “Family Tortured and Murdered for Cell Phone” are replaced with “Croc chases golfer off course” and where the leader, the Go-To-Guy, The President . . . is not under scrutiny for seven hundred and eighty three criminal charges. Seven hundred and eighty three, and still in power, and still racking up the charges. Unhindered.

“You’re going to Oz? Cool!” with scenes of breathtaking beaches and exotic holiday destinations flashing through the head as part of visiting the newly emigrated. In the beginning, exciting catch up times on Skype with stories of new homes and exciting experiences and spider encounters and snake visitors. After a while, when the expense involved and the time needed in getting there sinks in, it’s all replaced with the realisation that Oz is very, very, VERY fucking far away, and not just in distance. There is no good time to get Oz on the other side of a conversation. Night or day.

Ten thousand kilometres away in Australia, my brothers and sisters are already waking to the daily morning frenzy of getting up and out for the day. Eight hours behind them, we are still shut-eyed and sleeping, blissfully hours away from that inevitably ensuing morning frenzy. One can understand when both parties are in opposite mindsets and on opposite sides of the planet, how impossible Skype conversations are. When I’m ready to have a catch up and “howzit”, they are concentrating on just keeping their heads above chaos while bathing and eating and home-working before the nightly shut-eye escape. When they’re ready to “howzit”, I’m donning armbands and wine to survive the flood of that evening chaos. Everyone knows that a decent, controlled conversation at that time of the day is impossible, never mind with the added interference of unstable internet connections. 

As well as competing with the time difference amid pixelated faces and every second word missing from descriptions of marble and coin collections and blowing kisses and pulling tongues, there are three other variables present in our house that make for unsatisfying conversations. The Pugs, The Big One and The Small One.

To save us from interruptions of lunatic flat noses frantically chasing the dustbin truck through (yes- through - although due to the laws of the planet solid masses cannot morph through other solid masses, so Pug meets steel at full speed when gate unceremoniously halts momentum) the gate while tearing each other to pieces in unadulterated pandemonium, or preventing the toddling Small One from falling head first into the toilet bowl while retrieving his bouncing ball - which is rather pivotal at this time in Gauteng due to massive water restrictions and being advised to only flush “when necessary”. It’s threatening The Big One within an inch of his life if he doesn’t stop carving his name on the dining room table instead of finishing his spelling within the next hour (as opposed to dragging it out to the usual two-and-a-half-hour-battle-to-the-death). All this while making supper. It’s like herding cats, beyond the bounds of possibility. All this adds pressure to the already close-to-exploding flood of self pity in having siblings over twenty-four-hours-on-a-plane away. Having siblings in Oz, is like not having siblings. They might as well have joined Elon Musk’s trek to Mars. A one way ticket to absent. 

Like the tick on a dog - sucking the life blood of it’s host until fat and bloated. An ominous, isolated rock lurking ten thousand kilometres away in the Indian Ocean, which has the pick of the crop. Unhappy South Africans, tired of the blatant, reverse discrimination of Black Empowerment, apartheid-style business rules and the unchallenged, insidious corruption of government officials and subsequent squandering of state resources and people’s indispensable taxes are easy pickings for the hungry parasite. Misdirected anger towards Oz is like hating a step-parent for taking the place of a parent - justifiable in the reality of realising step-parent trumps parent and not willing to welcome the replacement. Yet. It could probably be placated with a state of the art teleporter, or a nice, sparkly, red pair of shoes. Actually, both - teleporter for when there’s power, and shoes for back up during load shedding. 

The Tonsil.

It states in all the religious creeds and commandments that we are supposed to refrain from hurting others. No slapping, smacking, hitting, pinching, biting, bruising, strangling, stabbing, dismembering or killing our fellow humans. We’re not supposed to hurt each other. As an alternative we resort to hurling abuse in order air our contempt for them or their actions. It’s a lot harder to supply evidence of verbal atrocities than physical ones without visible bullet wounds or missing appendages.

Among the thousands of names available on the verbal abuse front, apparently, 

is Tonsil. Until now it wouldn’t have been first on my list of profanities. Until I had children and experienced first hand the power the tonsil commands over misery and pain and loathing. The word does lend itself to rolling off the tongue with vehemence which is strongly characteristic of most insulting adjectives. When you’re yelling out the car window in a blaze of fury, you need something short and hard sounding. Like Dickhead. Or Fucktard. Or Plonker. It’s the “k” that makes it blast forth with fury to recipients ears, but Tonsil does have a certain hardness in the T that could pass. 

Calling someone a Dickhead is to liken their facial features to a penis - not the prettiest thing to have on your shoulders- or being compared to a retarded or mentally deprived individual in the act of copulation as a Fucktard - being imagined as an uncoordinated couple banging uglies would be awkwardly unflattering - or even being referred to as something useless or inept as well as large and ungainly would be a successful slap to the ego with Plonker. But Tonsil? 

In our house, tonsils are not just useless lumps of lymphatic tissue but superhuman, vindictive little beings viciously clinging to my usually content and happy toddler’s unsullied little throat. They lie in wait for any passing smidgen of bacteria to foster and mutate into devastating proportions of fever and pain within a matter of hours. Their power to change the environment of our home from harmony to miserable discord akin to a war torn country’s battle for peace is unfathomable. They are evil to the core. A super hero villain equivalent of Darth Vader, Voldemort and Sauron all rolled into one. Just as attractive too. 

I’ll never forget the vision of horror as I peered down into my baby’s throat on the request of the doctor to share his amazement and wonder at the size of those lowly cretins oozing puss from their bulbous, veiny bodies of fleshy tissue- like some kind of alien life form from a horror movie dissimulating their presence as protective glands while colluding their next attack.

Tonsillitis (the physical eventuality of the evilness of The Tonsil) makes even the most benign of toddlers normally opposed to all reason obstreperously impossible to manage. With a fever always and undoubtedly over 39 degrees their aching little bodies and minds refuse every single item in the daily chain of events from not running up and down the dining room table for fear of concussion or not climbing into the toilet for fear of drowning or contracting a life threatening infection to eating dinner to wiping a food blasted face to a nappy change to getting into the bath to getting out of the bath to getting dressed to brushing teeth to getting into bed. Everything. Melted into pure, unadulterated chaos. 

To liken another being who is influencing my life negatively by either blatantly bumping me in a queue or stealing my parking or giving me the finger when they were clearly behaving abominably on the road behind me or driving at 120km an hour down our dog and cat and children infested suburban street without stopping at the stop street to a tonsil, would be apt. 

The tonsil who parks his car in the disabled parking at the gym door because he doesn’t want to walk too far, who makes a dash for it out of turn when an out of order robot turns an intersection into a four way stop during peak hour, who stuffs a cigarette butt into a pot plant, who parked over two parking bays on a Saturday morning so his car doesn’t get shopping-mall-dimples, who was your boss and who suddenly came up with an salary increase after you handed in your resignation.

The tonsil I met in the dentist waiting room who pulled her child out of a school because the teacher was gay, my neighbour who won’t spay their cat because it’s too expensive, the other neighbour who pruned my tree hanging over his wall to a stump while i was on holiday, who set off fireworks for an hour at new year and drove the neighbourhood animals to a state of terrified frenzy. That type that throws his bag of empty Macdonalds packaging out his car window. 

The absolute tonsil, who tells his people that a shower will rid them of aids, who advocates safe sex and then fathers twenty children, who blatantly steals taxpayers money to fund his own palace, who single handedly is destroying an entire nation for his own personal gain and who will stop at nothing to confirm his top seat as a stupid, uneducated thief too drunk on riches and power to realise the consequences of his presidential terms and the subsequent chaos. The absolute tonsil. The ugly, disgusting, puss oozing, chaos colluding motherfucking, tonsil.

It’s maybe not as good as a slow and un-anaesthetised dismemberment, but spitting it out through clenched teeth instead could save a whole lot of time and energy trying to stay out of jail which might sway it as a successful substitute.