Just For Gags…

Africa is one beautiful,  enchanting and diverse continent. That’s a lot of colours in the various cultures and traditions; a lot of romp and pomp in our festivities and not to forget the carefully prepared, parotid-inducing, jaw-dropping delicacies prepared to graze our palates.
If you’ve ever been to a party before (and i mean our Nigerian parties), you’d notice the varieties of things people do. Right now, I’m not all about the invited. The cooks we hire, take some time to check them out. When they’re about to chow, they grab a stool, take some food (rice especially) and their fingers start working their ways between the grains of rice and their gob. Well maybe this is due to the fact that as Africans, we believe the hand is nature’s cutlery. I still don’t know how to eat rice with my fingers after successive attempts though. I wonder how I’d learn to use chopsticks then (I’m not giving up). Je suis Nigerienne, so why not? 

Recently, I was fortunate to have attended a conference and I couldn’t help but notice a few things especially how people devoured their meals,  relishing every bit of it. Their mouth movements and tongue actions provided a fantastic scenery for one with a purpose such as mine (God help me). You see, I’ve been looking to find an avenue to observe this but I almost always found my position too revealing. But here, my partially enclosed space was perfect. No one was there to question my antics so I was fine (freedom at last!).

Most of the time, except you grill your chicken/turkey at home or you get at eateries, if you’re being supplied food for an event, the topping is super fried and I mean super fried be it fish, beef or chicken. You know, super fried is cool if you want to eat one piece endlessly but to think that this is served at official functions, these people are impossible.  An average Nigerian would reveal his posh side when he’s at functions like that. On top of the extensively fried “animal”, they’d gift you fork and knife (instead of a bowl of water, in my opinion). 

Now back to our conference. These two elderly men were served, what was it again! , rice with our nicely fried chicken and every other condiment a person could possibly want. Beside their plates were carefully arranged cutleries. They grabbed their forks and knives and started munching. I was lazily tapping away on my phone, giving them absolutely minute attention until I heard two things; the sounds their mouths were making (don’t judge me) and the noisily insistent sounds their forks and knives were making with the delicate ceramic. I took 5 minutes to watch them battle with the “chicken” in question. They used some monstrous energy trying to cut this pieces that I sat in wonderment, mouth agape. “Why stress yourself this much when you can use your hands”, I thought to myself and to think that 65% of this would reside in the trash was disturbing. 

Eons later(exaggerated), they finished up, tidied themselves and left. The leftover chicken still on the plates. Life is a never ending series, you watch new episodes everyday. As for me though, after carefully noting the absence of people,  I tore at my chicken like a famished canivore. Wicked hunh, yeah😆.

PS: This was just to provide for a nice read and not to insult anyone in the process.

Another PS: It doesn’t necessarily have to be funny.