BB rules at lunch time

Lunch is my best meal. I don’t know if there is any hour greater than   lunch when it comes to meals. I cherish the hour so much and I won’t allow anything or anyone to spoil that special moment. I actually defend my turf when going for the meal, making effort to select a nice, […]

Lunch is my best meal. I don’t know if there is any hour greater than   lunch when it comes to meals. I cherish the hour so much and I won’t allow anything or anyone to spoil that special moment. I actually defend my turf when going for the meal, making effort to select a nice, fairly new taxi, if I am not driving, putting myself in that ‘lunch mood’ and freeing my thoughts of all challenges. Then I look for a good quiet seat when I arrive the restaurant. It doesn’t have to be a very expensive place. But it should be neat .The meal should be well cooked and hot. The staff, fairly polite, and attentive. My own duty is to arrive with an appetite, and the money to pay. Eating places in Abuja include what is known as the Buka, which also takes on the form Bukataria. There is the MaMa Put, as well as Restaurants. There are hundreds of names given to restaurants. Some go by the suggestive reference ‘Food is ready’. There are some very expensive restaurants, while some attend to a more varied clientele.  I usually go to the ones normally advertised as restaurants, which are the main focus of this article.  It is observed that some have very good standards, but after a while decay begins to set in. Others from the start had low standards, and  they have retained the poor standard perfectly.
 Eyes right, ears left
Once I went for lunch at a place in Wuse. Everyday, the  securityman gives a little salute as you pass  through the doors.Twice  this year  the securityman, who was a Lady on the day in question, did something remarkable when I entered. I couldn’t believe my eyes. She used her left hand to hold a  BlackBerry  to her left ear which she was  energetically speaking into, and   with her right arm  she attempted a rather awkward salute, which no RSM will tolerate, trying to catch my eye as she did so.  She repeated the same feat on a later visit. The BB against the left ear, right hand raised in salute.You cannot do two things at once. One thing at a time.The strange ability to do two or three things at once, explained her awkward salute at the door, which showed me that other things must be wrong at the restaurant.
Indian Hemp
The restaurant proved this point a few days later. I arrived to find one of the staff whose oblong head has always intrigued me, licking her left thumb as though it had suffered a cut while serving food. Her right hand was fiddling with a BlackBerry. We were all irritated. Clearly, the place had no First Aid box. So she started to lick the finger and to grimace . I left and went straight back to work. She’s an appetite killer. What about the other place which thinks it has done well in the food business .One day I went to buy lunch and what did I see on the notice board? A notice from management which exclaimed: ‘It has come to the attention of management that some male members of staff are fond of arriving  our restaurant  drunk, and smoking Indian Hemp while on duty. Henceforth any staff caught will be…’ I left immediately. There was no point remaining. Maybe that’s why whenever a quarrel breaks out in such places, it takes on a form of violence larger and greater than the original quarrel itself. A quarrel animated by Hemp. Indian Hemp?. When I went back to secretly take a picture of the memo to assist this story, I discovered that someone had removed the document.
Push, fight
Sometimes, your fellow customers are the problem. On some days you have to join a queue before you are attended to at any of the restaurants. Then you begin to notice so many things about your country men.There are a few who don’t like queues of any sort.They prefer to scramble, push, cajole and fight, along with their wives or lovers. Lunch can be a real riot. That’s order to them. When they arrive they glare at all of you, as though you  all fell  from outer space.Woe upon you if he or she has  just bought the latest BlackBerry.Then they make for the head of the queue, almost boxing you if you imply that there is a line which ought to be followed. The wife glares at all of us, men and women on the line. There  are pimples, scars and other  suggestive  marks on her  narrow face, like reminders of many a  loud domestic  incident. A man comes with his girls and they proceed to slow down the line with their repeated ‘darlings ’ to each other. The problem occurs when they have to select the meat or fish. She goes’ oh dear, the fish head looks old.Was it cooked last year? Darling, I can’t eat that dead looking Shaki. Why did you bring me here? Answer me?’ tugging at his shirt .The man is stunned.We don’t pity him. All this to our hearing. She too, is another appetite killer. People are blunt at restaurants. They don’t care about who is listening when they make their choices.They pour out everything. All of us on the line fell from a distant star, it seems. Somebody, once told a Lady serving the meal that she is ‘too old’, with old pronounced as ‘hold’. We raised an uproar. He shut up.
‘Cold stew, Cold rice’
One afternoon someone was on the line speaking into his BlackBerry, saying he is in Lagos, an obvious lie, as he spoke to the other person. We all looked at each other stunned for words, for we were in Abuja. He kept on speaking at the top of his voice, swearing ‘I am in Llagos ’giving the city a double L.We waited on the line, enduring this auditory torture. Another man smartly jumped ahead of the man, because when it was his turn  to make an order, he was still screaming into the BlackBerry.Very soon the two men began to quarrel.Sometimes, a woman will be at the head of the queue, and will soon quickly bring out a BlackBerry to tell another that so and so food item is not available, but  that ‘cold stew and almost cold rice and beans  is there ooo’. This always  froze movement on the line. Sometimes, those serving use the BlackBerry too, or their minds are far away, very far away. Their dull vacant eyes capture this physical and mental distance. They glare at us, as if we are reason for the Nigerian crisis. This poor attitude happens every day, everywhere in every office, not just the restaurants. The adoration of the BlackBerry by all sexes is doing terrible things to our economy, and, of course, the restaurants.
Flashback & choices
 I  have  powerful , vivid memories of good restaurants, like the one in the Medina, a section of  the Tunisian  capital, where musicians play  soft, hauntingly beautiful music, as you eat a rich  pepper soup and choice bits of fish fresh from the Mediterranean , which has been served in a deep bowl.The soup never seemed to finish. But  then it did, and the next course was brought. About 20 of us sat round a table all on a Media Fellowship to Tunisia in 2005, talking a bit, trying not to choke over the peppery meal, and cracking jokes. And the musicians kept on playing sweet ancient music inside that equally ancient restaurant. Today, any time I think of Tunisia, it is to recall an image of hot fish soup and the delightful melodies produced by the happy musicians, who were surprisingly slim, despite having played around such nice food for many years. Tunisia is a puzzle as well as a pleasure.This was long before the Arab spring, and years before the BB bounced upon the scene.  I am not implying that I want musicians to come around and play as I enjoy my lunch in Abuja. Certainly not, but anyone who starts it and does it well, will succeed. I also like a mix of nutritious items that combine to make up the meal. It’s nice if there is some soft music playing nearby. If there isn’t, then maybe the TV is on. Hopefully, there is a good crowd around you, who chew quietly, rather than loudly. Not nice when a human being begins to chew like a horse. No.  Not good at all. It shouldn’t be done. I thought someone was neighing the other day.  In some restaurants you make to cover your ears when you encounter the human being engaged in the ancient art of chewing. You can hear his efforts even with all the noise around.  Lunch became great when years ago I divorced breakfast from my priorities and this caused a little stir among my friends who wondered what else journalism would change in me, which already includes long moments of absence
Nothing is sacred
There are times when you have to leave the restaurant absolutely fed up. On other occasions you wish to stay. Its a place of great paradoxes. Then there are those well built fellows who arrive, and announce their entrance by yelling into their phones. On the line they harass you with very private information, which shouldn’t be aired publicly. Nothing is sacred to these men. If you sit between two of such BlackBerry men, then you are finished. They will shout around you, and you may sink into a depression while eating your best meal. Late one afternoon I noticed one of these BlackBerry men  and a friend of his, who was already yelling into another phone,  heading to the seat next to mine, I quickly changed seat. The others on that table suffered that day. I sat in a corner and could afford a quiet giggle, when I examined from a distance what I had just escaped from. 
The bride
One day a Lady burst into a restaurant in a wedding gown together with a party behind her. She went to the counter, and turned away after a few seconds.The whole place froze. Some women eyed her .The Lady serving the meal immediately suspended all activity and stared at the Lady. The Lady now began a quiet conversation with her team, and soon she left, just as swiftly as she had arrived.Then the room came back to life, with a loud impossible hiss released by the lady on duty at the counter. Her words ‘see me, see trouble o. I  juss  dey surprised as she com  enter like dat.’ Up till now I wonder whether I imagined the whole thing. But colleagues recall that I mentioned such  episode early this year. In some of the restaurants you quickly notice a scarcity of words such as ‘please’ or ‘thank you’. Both customer and staff are guilty of this. Everybody orders the other around. It can be painful just listening to people, or to note the very loud body language of individuals. There is this horrible poverty of style all over the place. People compete to betray a total lack of culture. Men do not extend courtesy to the Lady. The woman begins to quarrel all of a sudden, almost boxing a man. Then her husband saves the day by appealing to her, almost kneeling. When you arrive the restaurant a staff draws close to you and blurts out ‘What do you want? ‘as though you are an enemy of the establishment. This  is an  appalling lack of finesse. This lack of refinement can be understood when you consider the fact that some graduates working at a few restaurants in Abuja, are paid a salary of  5,000 Naira every month. One of such graduates recently gave Weekly Trust this information. 
The young graduate wishes to get married but wonders how N5000 monthly salary can help him realise his dream. We star at each other.