For God's sake, give me a chance to swallow this thing.

I cook, I swallow swords, I mend my own socks, I never eat garlic or onions.

This oil will smother the poison, until I can come back here, and swallow this emetic.

I never took those pills, I never loved you we never even met.

Not so long ago the Zambian people were fed on a lie that the Barotseland Freedom Movement in Kaoma was recruiting retired military personnel.

Or that I've spent all this time crying over you and carrying on and swallowing things like that girl in Venice.

I tried, by contracting my throat, to take in as little water as possible and to resist suffocation by keeping air in my lungs for as long as I could.