As people prepared to come back for a recession battle in 2009, Prempe Ayew wrote to thank me for making his weekend stay in Dublin very exciting. Although we talked on many issues including the recent elections in Ghana, Prempe could not hide an important discovery he made on his maiden visit to Europe.
Prempe came to Dublin from London to see some good sights, as his company had provided for an all-expenses tour to the UK and Ireland. As a practising Christian, he deeply revered the Bible and reads portions with addiction. His faith was entrenched in the heart, as it is in many Africans, but the situation he encountered in the west raised reflections and concern to him. Apart from the evaporating values of Christendom, he made a fundamental observation about the western food menu.
He told me how he was served a small chunk of bread which was as hard as steel, and which made him lose his appetite for bread and anything related to it. However, a personal decision to enjoy every goody lined up for him during the tour drove his mouth to have a taste of it.
On his second day in London, Prempe could not fathom what was brought to him as lunch (sandwiches), so much so that he decided to avoid the meal. As a matter of courtesy, he kept his cool by deciding not to complain to his hosts. Four days into his visit, Prempe went on a strike from eating any loaf of bread attached to his meals.
His hosts presented another variety of bread meal in the form of a baguette stuffed with ham, egg mayonnaise and lettuce. The sight of the baguette tightened Prempe’s intestines so much that he feigned a lack of hunger. Bagels, garlic bread, toasted and sliced bread stuffed with sweetcorn, bacon, smoked chicken, omelette with tomato relish and chicken fillets were prepared in the nicest way, but they failed to entice Prempe’s appetite.
“Oh boy! I was even surprised that most places I visited offered bread as part of the meal,” he stressed on the phone. His visits to restaurants, cafes, shops and grocery outlets proved the indispensability of bread in Europe.
This discovery by Prempe made him solve an age-long riddle in his thoughts and perhaps in others too: that the Bible was written for Africa because bread is not our staple food. After all, the good book says that ‘Man shall not live by bread alone’ (Matthew 4:4).
Ukachukwu Okorie is originally from Nigeria. He has recently completed an MA in Globalisation at Dublin City University, and writes a weekly column for Metro Éireann
olumoukachukwu@yahoo.com
