Daily Sun (January 24 2014) - LERATO Rampai doesn't like nyama, chicken, vegetables or any other real food. He complains it tastes like nothing.

Instead he prefers to eat things like the stalks of sugar cane and even sticks he picks up from the ground.

HE EVEN SHOWED DAILY SUN HOW HE ATE THE GRASS FROM A BROOM!

The 14-year-old boy from Chiawelo squatter camp in Khutsong, near Carletonville, Gauteng, told Daily Sun he doesn't enjoy eating normal food.

"But sticks have a sugary taste that I enjoy a lot," he said.

According to friends and family, Lerato even peeled the hard skin off sugar cane to eat and threw away the soft, juicy part in the middle.

Lerato wouldn't speak to the People's Paper about some of his other strange eating habits because he was embarrassed. But when the SunTeam visited, he broke off grass from a broom and started eating it! His gogo, Nthabiseng, said she was worried about the boy.

"Since he started doing it in grade 1 he has become very thin," she said, "It's a daily struggle to get him to eat normal food and his teachers have to watch him all the time to make sure he doesn't pick up sticks to eat."

She said it can become very difficult for him to go the toilet.

"Sometimes we even have to make him vomit," said the worried gogo.

His aunt, Mabotle, said: "Sometimes we have to use scissors to remove splinters from his throat and tongue."

The gogo said they had consulted doctors, traditional healers, clinics and social workers, but nothing helped.

A sangoma told her that Lerato was made to eat dog poo as a child and that was why he ate strange things.

Dietician Thabitha Hume said Lerato could develop serious stomach and growth problems. She said the condition he suffered from was probably pica, which causes people to eat unusual stuff.

"This type of problem usually has psychological roots. It may be cured with a psychologist and speech therapist working together," she said.

"This condition often affects pregnant women."

Speech therapist Laura Cramb said the first step would be for Lerato to see a neurologist, a doctor specialising in the brain, and then to go to a psychologist.

See the Daily Sun mobi site for more on this and other stories....

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