On the Indecisive Man and Menus
Moses Ebe Ochonu
Harrow, Kenneth
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2023 9:52 AM
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Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - On the Indecisive Man and Menus
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Edward Kissi
You are not alone, Moses. I still struggle with choosing what to eat at a North American restaurant despite the length of time I have lived here. I rarely go to restaurants, because of that “phobia”, and whenever I do, I prefer to bravely enter that intimidating culinary space with my American-born daughter who is a mistress of the menu chart. I don’t have that trepidation with beer---easy choice.
My tale of discomfort with the menu chart began at graduate school in Canada (1989) where I had a terrible experience trying to appear daring and cosmopolitan in my handling of the discourse of the North American restaurant. I had gone to Toronto with a couple of graduate students and the professor of one of our graduate seminars at Wilfrid Laurier University. I was a few months old in Ontario, Canada, and that was my first experience in Canada choosing something to eat at a restaurant.
I had heard about the menu discomforts in comic sketches on Osofo Dadzie, a popular soap opera on Ghana TV, in the early 1980s. I assumed they were humorous exaggerations for television. But on that fateful day in Toronto I confronted the reality. My fellow Canadian students had quickly made their food choices; the professor (the late George Urbaniak) too had made his. Here I was, an African child with a decision to make, and one that out of intellectual and racial pride I thought I needed to make quickly to justify to my fellow graduate (Canadian) students, and a European professor, that the university had not admitted a nincompoop incapable of deciding what to eat at a restaurant.
With some courage rooted in uncertainty, and misplaced self-confidence, I blurted out one menu on the chart as my preference. I had no clue the constituents of my choice but I thought I had to make one, and quickly too in order not to feel out of place. The waitress was even shocked, and so were the students and the professor from their facial expressions. They had ordered simple meals, but I had actually ordered a huge duck with a bunch of misbegotten carrots and strange beans. And the cost? Huge!
I also realized very quickly that in North America no one invites you to a restaurant and pays for you; you pay for your own meals. I was lucky that I had cashed my student stipend and had some Canadian dollars on me. I paid a huge price for the food and an unforgettable price for self-confidence and racial pride at a restaurant in my early months in Canada.
Edward Kissi
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of Moses Ebe Ochonu
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Harrow, Kenneth
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2023 1:17 PM
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Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - On the Indecisive Man and Menus
Cornelius Hamelberg
Professor Ochonu, “random, scattered, almost stream-of-consciousness reflection “ or unity of person in your stream-of-consciousness aside, you have touched a sensitive nerve, one that I think affects men more than it affects women, and this is on the presumption that “ The way to a man's heart is through his stomach”( one of the reasons why some women are dangerous), whereas although most of the great chefs are men, the converse, that “The way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach” does not hold as much water, not romantically or statistically speaking, if you leave out what’s sometimes the resultant shotgun marriage - the result of piercing the wench’s heart with cupid's arrow, a churning urn of burning funk, shot through her stomach. You know how it was in those days: Hot! Hot!! Hot !!! - take no prisoners! Shoot first and ask questions later. After closing hours, when it’s dark, under the library, who loves to lay with me…
I must congratulate you. I identified with you as I read through your reflection, but without salivating, not even once! ( BTW, I also go for illustrated menus to have an idea ( like harmless paper pornography. In my mind’s ear, I can hear a very distressed Baba Kadiri thundering ( like Sango), “Pornography is never harmless!!!!
I like African food and pepper. I made a fundamental mistake. You see, we have to train our wives, from the very beginning. In my case, on our very first date, I took her out to dinner at a Lebanese restaurant, Kadra, standard fare, and there was nothing academic about the menu, at least it didn’t look like an encyclopaedia (and BTW when it comes to cuisine, unlike my dear friend Dan Strehl I am myself, far from being a cornucopia
I don’t know what the situation is nowadays, but among the old-time Creoles in Sierra Leone, the male child too (doctor, lawyer, engineer, carpenter, clergyman, school teacher) stayed at home with their parents, as part of the family until he got married - and in my case, I had not - ever - stepped into the kitchen until I got married ( in Sierra Leone in 1969) and then - it happened so suddenly: On day one I was waiting for dinner to be served and it was then that I realised that dinner - my sort of dinner (with a Saro menu of delicious Cassava Leaf/ Jollof Rice/ Bitter Leaf/ Greens/ Egusi Soup/ Krain-kray/ “Eat-broke plate” / Groundnut Soup / sho-ko-tor-yoh-kotor/what they call “A little bit of everything” in Yaounde and the varieties that we call “ One Pot” in Sierra Leone, pure nostalgia, Nigeria frequent expeditions with my buddies to restaurants to start the night with our obligatory pepper soup, and my most recent favourite moin-moin ) would have to be made by yours truly, after all.
Most Sierra Leone men, especially the chronic bachelors are supposed to be good cooks. As a grass widower in Ghana, in early 1970 before my Better Half joined me from Sweden, I was a habitue at “ Don’t Mind Your Wife Chop Bar” and after she arrived we mostly had lunch at the Workers Canteen, at Legon, and there, for both of us, lunch cost a cedi ( One cedi) tremendous servings of Kenkey and various sauces on the menu, enough to make you drowsy on those afternoons
I recognise the dilemma you presented as your days of Johnny Just Come, and of course, it’s neither racism nor discrimination - you’ve got to support your own, and you've got to support black businesses too, even if your boss is of another colour. So, you’re no longer perplexed because, in the land of Soul Food, there's always a variety of restaurants to choose from - African, Caribbean, Indian, North African, Iranian and Middle Eastern cuisine, without being terrified or feeling unnecessarily stressed or internally terrorised and of course resisting colonisation by some formidably thick menus - when you are the one paying and giving the tips.
Ditto about nightclubs, music and dance places, nobody is forcing anyone to go to Elvis Presley places.
Of course in French and Italian restaurants if you're not the sort of polyglot that is at home in nineteen languages, deciphering the menu, not to mention the wine lists can be quite a problem unless of course, you have a Better half like mine who is completely at home with French and especially Italian. Anyway, the cost of the wine items greatly influences one’s choice of what to sip. About Kosher and halal the problem disappears when one sticks to vegetables.
What’s badly missing in Stockholm ( but not London) is African and Caribbean Restaurants, selling fresh palm wine
Sometime in the early 1970s, I once went to a Chinese Restaurant in Stockholm, with some diplomats from Sierra Leone. They laughed at me because I couldn’t wield chopsticks like them (experienced men of the world, they thought)
And then the same guys loved playing with themselves, believing themselves to be in sexually liberal Sweden, or indeed in Sweden, a Sex Paradise to my embarrassment, one of them was asking the gorgeous waitress for a fork, please, thought that he was in whorehouse next to the police station, (sex-starved and thinking that he was being funny. He must have thought that she was on the menu too, pronouncing fork, suggestively in a way that the Buckingham Palace Professor of English and Baba Kadiri too, would have disapproved of - like what Graham Greene saw in church in Freetown: FENELLA LACK GOOD POKE
Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net
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Toyin Falola
Gloria:
Is this not a misreading? The politics of food and invitations is not universal.
Remember the “affection theory” in Economics that argues that cultures that display excessive affection—including the extension of generosity—do not develop. Contrast this with capitalist ethos, as they contradict the communal.
TF
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Toyin Falola
Kissi, Ken, Moses, Gloria, Cornelius:
From the onset, the conversation has slighted the most important issue. It is not about food, as this is mediated between Moses and the Chef, and not Moses and the Table, with the fear of being labeled as “primitive” that Kissi introduced. I can eat my rice with my fingers, so what?
My host asked: “What do dogs eat in your country?” a question posed as I was enjoying the best part of beef, which is the bone and the marrow.
TF: Ice cream! (I returned the insult!)
The real issue, I can argue, is not the choice of food but the choice of conversation.
I hardly accept dinner invitations. Even when I am invited to lectures, I ask them to cancel all receptions. You can hardly see me as I write poems and short stories in my hotel room.
Conversations ruined the meals for me and denied me sleep. I even once offended Gloria in The Gambia when I thought I was praising her energy and strength.
Conversations in Western settings are usually about pathologies. I cannot put my life on the defensive. I cannot rubbish my continent. My personality is excessively positive. And you cannot get me to talk badly about anyone.
The negatives, in most meals, constitute the core, sometimes providing statements that are so bizarre.
TF
From: 'Emeagwali, Gloria (History)' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, January 19, 2023 at 7:31 AM
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Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2023 9:33 AM
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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - On the Indecisive Man and Menus
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Edward Kissi
But, the Great Chief, Methink Gloria has it right! I interpret her point as a quest for a universal moral value in the politics of food and invitations.
The economists may have a different notion of “development”. Customary generosities of the type Gloria inferred or interpreted from my point are the types of human values that can have reciprocal significance in human affairs. One good turn, they say, deserves another. Tomorrow, it will be my turn to invite you, perhaps at a time when you have no cowries in your pocket, and I will pick the bill. It is reciprocity of the kind that makes for good social development or what I would call “affective moral chains.”
The Amhara have a saying in their reciprocal and communal politics of food: bichawin yebela, bichawin yimotal (he who eats alone dies alone). Inviting people (a large number) to your house, or restaurant to feed them, or pick the bill to fill their stomachs is the Amhara affective moral chain. A good Amhara does not only pay to fill your stomach, he or she puts a chunk of injera in your mouth “to feed you”. They call it “gursha”. My Amhara in-laws see that as Ethiopia’s concept of social and cultural development. Would the world not be better if all of us walked the Ethiopian path?
Edward Kissi
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Cornelius Hamelberg
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Highly to be recommended:
The Speeches and Table-Talk of the Prophet Muhammad, salallahu alaihi wa salaam
In mind: this part line, “ seismic with laughter,” from
To My Mother - a poem by George Barker
Restaurants! In connection with this theme in which the main narrators are recounting experiences suffered in North America,
(1) Dick Gregory comes to mind along with the blurb on his bestseller autobiography :
“Last time I was down South, I walked into this restaurant. This white waitress came up to me and said, 'We don't serve colored people here.' I said, 'That's all right, I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken.' About that time, these three cousins came in. You know the ones I mean, Ku, Klux and Klan. They said, 'Boy, we're givin' you fair warnin. Anything you do to that chicken, we're gonna do to you.'"So I put down my knife and fork, picked up that chicken, and kissed it.”(2) A story featuring Sammy Davis Jr: He’s out dining with his friends, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford and some other members of The Rat Pack, and suddenly, from nowhere, some members of the Ku, Klux Klan appear and say, “ There’s a nigger in here!” - Sammy Davis Jr jumps up and asks, “ Where?”
Fast forward :
“My host asked: “What do dogs eat in your country?” a question posed as I was enjoying the best part of beef, which is the bone and the marrow.
TF: Ice cream! (I returned the insult!)” ( Ojogbon Falola)
Ojogbon Falola’s brave confession is emphatically reminiscent of Baba Kadiri’s equally forthright input, in a similar vein quoted below :
“I will never pretend that there is no racism and that is why I always react wherever it comes up. About thirty years ago, I was at a restaurant with my wife. Since we knew in advance that chicken was going to be part of the menu, my wife pleaded with me not to crack the bone of the chicken with my tooth as I used to do at home. I told her that the bone marrow was more delicious to me than the flesh on the leg of the chicken, and as such I told her I was not going to abide by her counsel. We were served and I rapidly gnawed at the flesh of the chicken and set the bone between my tooth and crushed it. A Caucasian sitting nearby that I have never known rose from his seat to stand in my front. He had the effrontery to ask me what dogs eat in Africa (as if Africa is a country) because I cracked asunder chicken bone with my tooth. I rose up from my seat and my wife thought I was going to wipe his face but I disappointed her. I opened my mouth wide and shouted CH-EE-SE, that is what dogs eat in Africa. Silently, he walked back to his seat without turning back. I regarded the man's query to me as racist but my wife thought it might be out of jealousy since it was likely that the man was plastic-toothed. Whatever might have been the cause of the Caucasian query to me, I saw racism and reacted against it.”
My only regret is that I had not been present at the Ojogbon’s table, in which case, hopefully, I would have disciplined his interlocutor in a manner that would have been very unorthodox and very unpleasant. As we say in Krio, “ Ah bin for dock am slap” and told him, “You should thank God that you are still alive and nota bene : For the rest of your miserable life no matter how many screws in your head happen to be hanging loose, you make sure that you never talk to Ojogbon Falola like that again, you miserable son of Beelzebub !”
But the Ojogbon took care of business - exchanging insults as pleasantries in a gentlemanly fashion - which means that Ojogbon did not really teach the miscreant a lesson that he would never forget….
At this point, one has to be careful, but even if discretion is the greater part of valour I’ll go ahead and take issue with what the Ojogbon said, here :
“I hardly accept dinner invitations. Even when I am invited to lectures, I ask them to cancel all receptions. You can hardly see me as I write poems and short stories in my hotel room.”
Not as bad after all; I had read the posting on the train on the way back home and was musing for quite some time on what I seem to remember the Ojogbon had said: “ I never accept dinner invitations “ - and then my musing started with this instantaneous reaction: Well, should Ojogbon be awarded the Nobel Prize for whatever, I’m sure that he wouldn't snub the Swedish Academy by refusing to attend The Nobel Banquet?
Surely, where others would be in their foursquare tuxedos Ojogbon would be beaming tajalli, resplendent in the finest agbada that members of the Nobel Committee and all the other honoured guests had ever seen - and as to the dinner conversation at the banquet, of course, it should mainly depend on the seating arrangements - one could be seated next to Her Majesty the Queen of Sweden or the Crown Princess, or next to that year´s laureate in economics or medicine…
But Ojogbon never said “never”, he had said “ hardly”, quite a different story, so the rest of my musing along that trajectory is irrelevant, here.
Admittedly on a personal scale labels and diagnoses (Oedipus etc) aren't appropriate and in this day of globalism, do not apply, but how can a full-blooded extrovert and cosmopolitan like Ojogbon be forced into what after all is a retreat/ voluntary exile to his hotel room? When he rises to the challenge posed by obnoxious people, through dialogue/ conversation, he can straighten them out! How can he practise that kind of avoidance therapy or is it a preference that he would like to recommend to others? I suppose that avoiding useless talk is how Ojogbon gets much of his prolific output accomplished.