The saying “sharing is caring” has always been very real and close to us as Africans. Even going as far back as when I was growing up and used to spend a lot of time in my home village, it was taboo for one to eat while sitting in a crowd and not offer to share.
That is a culture that we have held dear as a people for generations.
Even today when we have visitors in our houses we let them know when they are about to leave, either that we were just about to start cooking or that we are about to dish. The really rooted African even crafts the offer in such a way that the visitor is sweet talked into staying longer so that they increase the number of eaters, emphasises being put on how terrible it would be to travel on an empty stomach.
We have memories with my peers of those Sunday lunches when we had to share a piece of chicken with an unannounced visitor. The agony! And mind you, in retrospect, chicken was a very rare occurrence on most of our plates.
It was in the Sunday lunch plate only and without fail. We would start celebrating Sunday the night before, knowing that we would bath first thing in the morning and wait patiently for lunch time.
And there would often be threats like “whoever gets their clothes dirty is not having chicken later” from parents, and trust me that is the one day of the week that we would be on our best behaviour. The worst feeling for me back in those days would be the arrival of a guest because the inevitable would soon happen; I would eat half of what I would have eaten had they not turned up!
But that thought of suffering as a result of having generous parents would only be in the narrow mind of an eight year old.
It amazes me how our mindsets evolve as we get older. Most of the things that used to matter like the relevance of eating for the sake of busting hunger do not matter anymore.
As an adult, one of the hardest challenges I ever have to endure has to be eating alone for days on end maybe as a result of living alone.
Sometimes because of work commitments we end up leaving our loved ones behind and going to live alone for months at a time. My personal experience on that is not the most pleasant. Just the thought of leaving work to go back to an empty house makes me lose appetite. By the time I get home, the television seems more appealing than the kitchen and obviously the call of nature is such that I get hungry and something must go into my stomach.
I find it feels so much better to open a packet of crisps and eat it alone than to cook and have it dawn on me when I take one plate, one knife and one fork out of my cupboards that I am alone.
I have personally observed that perhaps as human beings we were not created to eat alone.
I have never gone into any restaurant and found a real table for one. Even when the waiter says “table for one” as I walk through the door, I find he really is just asking, “Are you eating alone?” probably the best way he’s been trained how.
Because when I get to the table he actually removes the other chair or chairs while I wait to be seated.
I am also yet to come across a single chaired dining room table, the smallest I have ever seen sits two people. They just do not make them that way and I doubt they ever did or will.
I also like having conversations with people that I interact with everyday on the subject of eating alone. My favourite question is to ask whether or not they enjoy going out and ordering a meal to sit and eat alone.
Most of the time the answer I get is that the only time they would do that is if they are eating something as casual as “hot wings” very quickly at lunch time, and probably only have ten minutes to spare. Everyone that I have spoken to says when they are alone the thought of eating a very decent meal, be it home cooked or dining out decently, is pushed right to the back of their mind because the food does not go down the same as when it is shared.
Nowhere in Botswana will you find a social gathering of Batswana where there is no food. When people come back from weddings and parties, the question on the quality of the food that was served always forms a big part in rating the event; some may claim that the food was not good but you will never see a plate go back untouched at these gatherings.
Yes maybe truthfully the food just was not much to write home about, but because there were so many people gathered together to eat, the appetite shoots the roof and food simply gets eaten. People in this country seem to enjoy their food the most when they share it.
A lot of my friends aspire to getting married because fair enough they do not want to face the loneliness. But if you think about it, loneliness does not just go as far as sitting alone on a couch while talking to a bird for the rest of your days, it is about the joy that you are going to miss when you eat had you had a conversation over dinner and best yet had you had your hand held through the meal.
I can not compare the beauty of cooking together as friends or as family, doing it with utmost love knowing that it is also about to be shared with the same feeling, to anything.
