Eating grass for luncheon

Ordinarily, I don’t like eating rice or similar food, especially for launch time. I prefer pounded yam, amala or Semovita, but I was constraint to eat leaves and grasses when I was in Canada and I did not find it very funny. I really starved. A team of us were drafted from different offices to […]

Ordinarily, I don’t like eating rice or similar food, especially for launch time. I prefer pounded yam, amala or Semovita, but I was constraint to eat leaves and grasses when I was in Canada and I did not find it very funny. I really starved.

A team of us were drafted from different offices to that country for a course and we nearly got starved for days until we discovered an African restaurant about 25 kilometers from where we stayed, two days to our departure.

Sandman is a 17-storey hotel, built close to the road and very close to a river. It is also very close to a metro-line that connects you to downturn Montreal.

When we checked into the hotel on October 10, it was launch time and we are ushered into the hotel’s restaurant for our launch. Expecting to have launch and get filled, because we were all very hungry, it turned out to be one of our greatest surprises in Canada. There were many surprises to tell!

At the restaurant’s desk were laid different species of leave or vegetables as they would prefer to call it.

Expectedly, we all looked at each other, thinking that the best was reserved until we are told that what was laid before us was the launch itself and the only food for us. It was as good we did not eat that day, because I for one, only drank orange and retired to my room. I was afraid of taking something that would upset my stomach later. Many of us later confessed the next day that they went on a “compulsory fasting” that night.

That was day one!

On the second day, we were told by our course tutor to come out at 9am, Canadian time (There is a five-hour difference between Nigerian and Canadian time), to start the course and we must take our breakfast before going into the lecture hall.

We entered the hotel’s restaurant with the expectation to get a complimentary breakfast, considering the cost of accommodation of the hotel (I paid $147 per night, equivalent of over N24, 000), but we were all taken by another surprise when the hotel attendant, a middle age lady gave us individual bill. She explained later that there was no complimentary breakfast. The breakfast cost about $19.90.

Aside the money, I could not eat their food again that morning, because when I looked at the menu, the first thing I sighted was Pork meat and my religion forbids the meat. I was very careful. I then settled for bread and tea.

For the first three days of our stay in Canada, how to get good food to eat was our major pre-occupation, until we visited Revenue Quebec, the revenue collection office of the Quebec Province in Canada. Quebec is over three hours of driving from Longueuil Montreal where we lodged. The three hour-drive was quite a distance but the good road made the journey unstressful, not like the Abuja-Lokoja-Okene road that is home to numerous pot holes and intermittently armed robbers’ operational base.

At the Revenue Quebec, we were shown round different offices and what each does to ensure that every taxable entity pay their taxes or got punished if they fail to remit appropriate taxation.

There, we discovered that nearly everything is taxable in Canada; no wonder the cost of living there is very high. A visit to a shop would reveal this because you are given receipt for whatever you buy and the appropriate tax is specified on the receipt.

As I said earlier, it was after the visit to Revenue Quebec that we got a place in Quebec to eat what can pass for a decent meal. We ate Chicken and Potato chips and also the leaves. Those people can’t serve you without vegetable.

I was later to discover that the  trick for eating healthy is eating colorful foods! They believe that the more colors in your diet, the likelier it is that you’re getting all the nutrients you need. That is naturally colorful foods. That is why they eat so much leaves or vegetables.

It was the day we finished our course that we discovered an African restaurant. At the restaurant where we went for a dinner, I ordered for a pounded yam and pomo (Animal skin) and Shaki (Abdomen) to go with. Some of us ordered for amala, while some went for eba.

Palm wine was also at hand and trust Nigerians, we felt very much at home. A plate of food at the African restaurant goes for 4,000 naira ($25 as at 3/11/2011 exchange rate). You dare not spend that amount at a sitting just to take a meal in Nigeria as pedestrian, but we were  happy and the next day. So, we asked the owner of the restaurant to prepare some food for us and she brought them to our hotel.

In Canada, everything is in order and their laws work. There are many sky-rising buildings and their road network is superb. Every house is open and cars are parked outside and I can’t remember seeing many houses fenced as we do here in Nigeria.

Motorists obey traffic regulations and commercial drivers respect their passengers. Drivers hardly use their horns on the road. In one of our outings, a cab driver, who is a native of Haiti, refused to beat traffic light even though he was the only one on the road.

“If I break the traffic light I would get ticket and my driver’s license would be seized,” he said. In Canada, drivers maintain their lane, they don’t cross lanes like Nigerian drivers do with reckless abandon.

Apart from obeying laws, every Canadian is a law enforcement agent. In Canada, it looks like you become wiser when you are afraid of a policeman.

The most striking thing about Canada is the tax system. It is very high and but people are willing to pay, because they can feel the impact of what their money is used for.

“Please don’t miss your way in Canada because you may be taxed for it,” our course moderator, Marc Kamel, jokingly said.

The trip to Canada was sponsored by the Joint Tax Board