The picture on the box was enough to make your eyes water and both Lucy (friend and fellow volunteer) and I were keen to open the box and sample a piece.
Well the cake did not disappoint, it tasted wonderful - how we didn’t eat the whole thing I just don’t know - BUT.... I'm glad that we didn’t.......
About half an hour after eating the cake I started to feel a strange tingling sensation just above my upper lip. The tingling became more and more intense and I felt certain that I was going to come out with some sort of rash in the shape of a moustache above my upper lip.
At first this sensation was strange but when Lucy started to describe the same tingling sensation just above her upper lip the two of us started to panic!
After about an hour the tingling became more like a burning sensation and though it was confined to the moustache area both of us became more and more concerned that we were having an allergic reaction of some sort to the cake.
But why would we both have exactly the same allergy? And why would it affect us in the same way? There was only one conclusion to be drawn - we had been poisoned and we were both going to 'suffer' death by chocolate cake!!!
As Lucy and I contemplated our fate all I could think about were my poor parents having to tell people that they lost their daughter in Africa. "What happened to her?" people would ask. "Was she savaged by a lion? Crushed by an elephant? Fatally wounded in a tribal conflict?" "Not quite" they would have to say, "she was, well, err, she died of chocolate gateau."
Needless to say we didn't actually die and we both lived to tell the tale. By morning both Lucy and I were no longer experiencing the burning sensation though neither of us have any idea what it could have been that caused us to react that way?
Has it put us off chocolate cake? I'm afraid not however we decided it best not to finish the rest of the cake!
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| Anyone for a piece of cake? |
My second near death experience in The Gambia!
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