"I've got my pills and my problems man. You can keep your traditional medicine."

It was a Thursday evening and Hassan was snorting some local concoction of herbs. "It makes you sneeze!" I looked at the traditional medicine. It was a loose collection of pungent spices in a plastic bag.

Assuming that the main property of the medicine was its efficacy in the production of sneezing, I said, "No shit it's going to make you sneeze. Why buy this schlock? Just get a spoonful of beriberi and bump it."

He looked at me as if I had just stabbed his mother. Three roots were hanging from his loaded left nostril as he said, "No! This one ma--"

And he proceeded to sneeze with such violence that the adrenaline kissed my blood. He stood up and staggered around the hut, sneezing with the rapidity of a machine gun. He sneezed into the heavens, against the wall, on himself and sprayed a salad of roots and snot on the mirror.

A fine spray of mucus particles hung in the air. He crouched to the ground hanging his head between conjoined arms and legs. Slowly, he lifted his flushed face, looked me in the eye like a rival general and said,

"This one makes you sneeze."