My husband Nik was a tug-boat captain, and as a result spent the majority of his time at sea. His visits to Bequia were rare during the early days of our marriage, and I therefore went out of my way to make him happy. Those trips home, so eagerly anticipated, usually ended with Nik writhing with pain under the bedcovers – he always, ALWAYS got sick, and we didn’t have a clue WHY.
Nik ate his usual favourites while home on Bequia, food he had enjoyed in the past without any problem, so we assumed the cause of the cramps wasn’t food-related. Was our water supply tainted in some way? I didn’t think so because the girls and I were fine, but made a point of boiling any water used in the house, even for the brushing of teeth, just in case.
The abdominal cramps continued to happen each time Nik came home. He’d be fine for a couple of days and then WHAM, he’d be moaning in agony for three days and three sleepless nights. I felt pretty helpless; it seemed that nothing could ease the excruciating pain in Nik’s gut, and getting sick every time he came home to visit the wife was bound to make the man rue the day he ever got married!
The mystery ended when Nik hosted a business dinner at the Pizzeria. I had taken a platter of conch fritters to the table, and when one of the guests began to describe what happened to him whenever he ate conch, we immediately recognized the symptoms! Nik loved conch but never ate it while at sea, it wasn’t something they cooked in the tug-boat’s small galley. He made up for it by eating plenty of conch whenever he came home, aided and abetted of course by his loving wife! Conch fritters, conch souse, conch seviche, cracked conch, curried conch – I made them all just to make my sea-faring husband happy!
Nik had eaten plenty of conch over the years and his body simply said, “no more”. He stopped eating conch immediately, and his visits home to spend time with de wife improved dramatically!
