AUG 2026 (4)
The restaurant that took my life
Did Someone Order Dookie Soup?
Does Montezuma’s Revenge apply in Ghana?
Alex Hoffman
At the end of the day, it felt inevitable. Five weeks of dodging fresh vegetables and ice as much as one can when they eat out almost every day. The first four weeks were smooth sailing. Not even a scary fart or lower tummy rumble emerged. That changed in an instant.
This is a recount of two days of food poisoning in Ghana’s capital. There are two main culprits for my ailment. First suspect was a sneaky little green pepper sauce that I generously covered my jollof with. I swallowed a few tablespoons of the spicy, potentially uncooked concoction. The other theory was that I washed my retainer with soap and tap water. This is an unlikely cause to me for two reasons: one, I didn’t ingest the water and two, I refuse to admit that this was my fault in any way.
Both potential exposures took place on a Sunday night. Searing pain woke me up from a deep sleep and would not cease. I was convinced that the weeks of spicy food had taken a toll. If only that was the truth.
I tossed and turned for hours. Every rotation made the pain worse. Eventually it reduced enough to fall back asleep. While I dozed, the disease crept from my stomach to my ass.
In the morning I filled the toilet with a poop smoothie not once, not twice, but three times in the two hours before leaving for work. After each visit to the bathroom I deluded myself into thinking the horror was over. I had no idea what the next two days had in store for me.
The office bathroom was the worst place to have farty, wet diarrhea. A thin door separated the shitter from the absolutely silent room that my colleagues worked in. To save myself the embarrassment, I popped an Imodium before we left for the day. Thanks to the miracle drug I was able to make it eight hours without filling the toilet or my boxer briefs with crap. This saved face, but created a day-long backup of shit that was only leaving my body in one way. Nausea and fear prevented me from eating anything besides a handful of cashews and plantain chips. I took ant-sized bites and chewed with extreme skepticism, conscious that any little disturbance could bring back The Beast.
That night was constant repetition of the same steps — stomach pain, shit, relax, stomach pain, shit, relax. It was monotonous yet anxiety inducing because every pang of stomach pain represented a quickly ticking clock. By the time I was alerted to the emergency, the hour glass was on its final beads of sand. Just once was I caught truly off guard. Commando in my lululemon shorts, I accidentally let an unassuming fart slip — as I am known to do — and paid the ultimate price. My brain was as full of shame as my short shorts were of shit. I took extreme pity on myself for the next 24 hours. Nobody has ever had it as hard as I did, and they never will.
After two days of the same cycle, I yielded to modern medicine and took an antibiotic before bed. One dose accomplished what 20+ trips to the bathroom never could — it flushed the demon from my body. I woke up the next morning and felt like a new man. I devoured breakfast with renewed vigor and took the same zeal to my dinner that night. Life was worth living again. I was no longer the same man who was a single cough away from shitting his pants. The world was stable and mine for the taking.
Yours truly with a Mother Hen coffin
An Outside Look at Ghanaian Funerals
Celebrating our lost ones the way they want to be celebrated
Alex Hoffman
Ghanaians believe death is something worth celebrating. Funerals dominate the calendar of weekend social events. For many older people, a Saturday funeral is the place to see and be seen. Well dressed guests flow in off the street in monochrome bright red (worn by family to show deep loss), black (worn by more distant mourners), or white (when the deceased is over 70 so their passing is not a surprise). They are multi-day affairs with food, dancing, and an open door policy. This policy is so generous that everyone I met insisted I go to a funeral. I asked whose funeral I would possibly go to, “anyone’s” was their answer. It turns out that a foreigner wandering in is socially acceptable, as long as they dress for the occasion.
I later learned that strangers are critical infrastructure at funerals. In fact, some are paid to be there as professional mourners. Families pay these actors to show off how dearly loved the deceased was. Their fees vary based on the level of their devastation. A few bucks gets you a downtrodden look and half-hearted sniffles. Loosening the purse strings will buy you convincing wails and racking sobs. Shelling out a small fortune gets you an attendee so destroyed by loss that they jump into the grave with the casket, screaming that they would rather be buried alongside them than live another day without them. I can’t imagine how confusing this package would be to any family members who were not included in the hiring decision. In the middle of a beautiful sermon, someone they have never seen in their life is begging to be buried alive with Grandpa.
Word spreads about funerals in two main ways: word of mouth and funeral posters. Funeral posters cover telephone poles and billboards across the country. They all feature a picture of the deceased in their Sunday best, their age, the agenda for the funeral, and a catchy title. The title varies based on age. An early death in one’s 20’s or 30’s is marked as “Painful Exit”, a middle aged passing might declare “Call to Glory”, and an elderly person kicking the bucket is denoted as “Celebration of Life”. For the older crowd the picture is often airbrushed to look much much younger, like Bradley Cooper post face lift. The ages are not always trustworthy either. One poster announced the passing of a 120 year old woman. Either she was flying under the radar as the oldest person alive, or the record keeping in 1900’s Ghana was suspect.
For the month I was there, much of the talk centered around funeral stories. Some of them were so absurd that I would never believe them if I was not being told by a direct witness. One coworker went to a funeral where the deceased’s cold body was seated upright at the dinner table. Mourners ate their food while their late loved one was stiff as a board in the seat next to them, growing bluer and bluer by the minute. At another funeral, the family got a little too carried away with the planning process. They spent so much time arguing and ideating that two years passed between the death and the celebration. Despite the embalming, that time took a toll on the body. During the viewing, mourners were shocked to see a shriveled version of the person they once knew. Admittedly, it had been a while since anyone had seen them, but the difference was obvious. I’m sure that is how the deceased wanted to be remembered.
The most impressive part of funeral culture is the fantasy coffins. These are coffins built in a shape that celebrate one’s life’s work. At the coffin workshop we visited, they had a giant syringe coffin for a doctor, a stack of money for a banker, and a chicken for a mother who was adored by her children (a play on mother hen). Works in progress included a tuna for a fisherman and a cleat for a soccer player. Once the shell is made, a hole is cut into the top for the body to be fed inside. After the ceremony the beautiful creation is buried, never to be seen again.
The more I heard about Ghanaian funerals the more I wanted to go to one. The funeral talk crescendoed as my departure date neared. Unfortunately, due to a myriad of excuses that can be summed up as me not putting in any effort to go to one, funeral crashing was not in the stars for my trip. If I ever return to Ghana, an all black outfit will be in my suitcase. I’d be more than happy to provide a donation to secure a mourner-for-hire.
