Food-Eat Not, Talk Not

The title of this personal encounter may sound a bit transposed, but it is meant to reflect what is written between the lines. I want to pick up on a few thoughts about food and other related issues, I had whilst flying toBrusselslast week. I had the advantage of eaves dropping on a conversation.

Two elderly women sat in front of me were enjoying themselves, chatting about food. One of them was flying toPariswhere her daughter was still in a hospital after giving birth two days ago. It was a girl and her first granddaughter. She couldn’t wait to meet her for the first time inParis.

The other lady talked about her assumptions that her companion must have prepared all that is necessary for feeding a lactating mother. The discussion was getting more elaborate as it progressed, from choosing the right type of barley through to having it processed either into the form of porridge or soup. Each step was given some kind of elucidation by each of them, more for showing-off than any necessary dissipation.

The chat was rewound back a year to the wedding feast and the number of people invited then. Porridge and barley soup were out of discussion here.

In the Ethiopian context, food is not only something to be consumed on occasions. It is, rather, a major topic many people love to talk about. The two women were no exception. It is a pity that not much has been written about the different dishes.

One of them, who also happened to be a grandmother, was the one who was doing much of the talking about the wedding feast. She went into greater detail to describe the magnanimity of the party she threw.

I was carried away by the thought of why we, Ethiopians, regard food so much more than other things.

One would have thought that such women would have bragged about who came to the wedding ceremony, the music played by the band, the way members of the wedding party dressed themselves and how beautifully they danced. But no, she did not seem to be interested at all in such issues.

She talked at length about the food and the brew. The similes she used and the intonations with which she raised and lowered her voice to exaggerate the size, colour and value of the spread deserves some mention here too.

For instance, she had forgotten how many oxen were slaughtered, but one ox was as big “as a house” and its meat was as “white as cotton”. The tej brew was at least a year old and its colour was grass-green. The honey was bought from Gojam, while the brewer was a retired hand from theGrandPalace.

She also described how fatty the meat was. She was breathing out the words as if they were melting in her watery mouth and was looking far away as if watching what she was remembering a year ago. And, now she has come all the way from Addis Abeba toEuropeto nurse her daughter and babysit her child, bringing a vast amount of food and butter with her.

I closed my eyes and brought up major recollections of what food means in the Ethiopian socio-economic context, apart from its necessity as a basic need for life. The first thing that came to my mind was the sudden death of someone in my neighbourhood. No sooner had the dead body been brought from the hospital that some errand women and men were sent to buy some cereal and an ox to be slaughtered. This was accomplished even before the dead had been buried.

That same evening, a big mourning party was thrown in a tent where bottled beer was being drunk like water, not to speak of the narration of jokes cracked in turn as a means of consoling the bereaved. What was most funny of all was that one of the members of the mourning families got so drunk that they began to cry afresh, as if having just heard the sad news.

He was moving about like a frolicking kid, creating havoc. Some mourners were trying to go along with the drama, whilst others were unable to suppress their laughter. The whole scene was hilarious.

I tried to reason out why food plays such a vital role in the lives of Ethiopians and remembered the long history ofEthiopia’s frequented famine from a famous book by Mesfin Woldemariam (Prof.). Indeed, almost all Monday morning conversations in various offices involve people talking about how much food or drink they have been consuming the previous holiday.

Nobody seems to care about taking the children out for some activity. In fact, parents in some schools have stated worrying about what kind of biscuits they should give their kids, as they have started facing the adverse effects of obesity.

Food, of course, is recognised as a serious problem in poor countries and it has been rewarded with many names. Food security, food self sufficiency, malnutrition, food deficiency and so on. When shall we break free from this vicious circle?

Incidentally, as I was inBrussels,Belgium, I was listening to a Radio show being transmitted fromEthiopia. You know what I heard? I heard that some Ethiopians in the Diaspora had celebrated a special occasion to mark “Food Day”, where other communities were also invited.

Against the background ofEthiopia’s recent film – “The Hidden Hunger” – and its negative implications, I couldn’t imagine what the objective of creating a “Food Day” might be. Is it like rubbing salt into a wound?

Ethiopiais known to be the richest country inAfrica, in terms of livestock. But,Great Britainhas an average consumption of 80kg of meat a head, annually.

Can anyone make a guess about Ethiopian’s meat consumption per capita? Saying less than a kilo may not be a wild guess. We seem to talk so much about food, even if we actually eat very little of it.


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