I got food poisoning!

I hope your 2025 is off to a good start. What are your new year's resolutions, or better yet goals?

Every year, just like many of you reading this newsletter, I sit back and take stock of the year that was and set goals for the new year. Some goals are a retake of the things I didn't manage to achieve, others are discarded after reflection, while others are a whole new set of aspirations.

I was getting some rest at a nice picturesque location in this magical Kenya on one evening, with coconut trees and a white sandy beach as my backdrop as I reflected on the year that was and was fired up for 2025.

However, my vacation vibes were cut short that night by stabbing pain in my abdomen, along with a terrible headache and fever followed by what seemed like a night-long sojourn in the loo!

I had gotten food poisoning after eating a meal at the five-star hotel I was staying at. The operative word here is five star.

The next day, feeling ill, I made my way to the kitchen and enquired whether anyone else had complained about a stomach upset.

Thinking back - was I really expecting them to own up to food poisoning cases.

The chef tried to distance himself from my ordeal, asking if I ate out. I insisted I had only eaten food from the hotel. The manager came in and joined the blame game tactics and said that perhaps it was the goat meat to blame and that it was not food poisoning, but rather that "the goats in the area are fed on something different from those in Nairobi, and if you are not used to this kind of meat, it can cause a stomach upset."

I told her I didn't have the goat meat, but she was hellbent on insisting that the food was ok.

I decided to leave the matter and thought maybe something random was just happening with my stomach.

Gaslighting much?

I went about my day, but stayed in my room because of the pain, but when I left the room, I ran into a couple that had become my gym buddies and they asked me if I had made it to the gym in the morning, adding that they had a stomach bug and didn't make it.

Aha, so it wasn't just me! I didn't make it to the gym either because of the pain from the food poisoning.

A little while later, I went to the beach and found a friendly gentleman who told me he was on vacation with his family from Toronto and that his wife had been bedridden with stomach pain.

What!

This was very serious.

It was not in your head. There was food poisoning.

The confirmation gave me the confidence to go back and raise the matter with someone else, this time the head waiter, who had been nice to me throughout my stay. He revealed in confidence that they had received at least six complaints of food poisoning and that he had escalated the matter and action would be taken.

The manager didn't get back to any of us and left it at the bizzare goat meat story. She only sent a waiter to give affected guests coconut water "to balance electrolytes".

The whole fiasco got me thinking about how we sometimes doubt ourselves when people try to invalidate our experiences or even abilities.

My call to you this year is to speak up and speak out, stand by your words and not be cowed by contrary feedback. As long as you have conviction about what you are saying or doing, stand by it.

I'm glad to report that I'm much better now, but what a bummer to the vacation.