Some greasy-haired redneck from Indianapolis (Indiana, USA) arrives in Accra, sets up a hotdog joint in Osu, and instantly becomes the talk of the town. Grown-men riding in the posh-seats of Toyota Land Cruisers meet at the new joint. Ministers of state who are chauffeured around the country by real human beings, parliamentarians with bodyguards, and doctors with four times the salaries of their nurses, meet their dates at this new joint; they meet their girlfriends, wives, and mistresses, at this new hotdog joint. What are they eating? Hotdogs!
“What is that?” Asked my grandmother.
America’s Hot Dog & Sausage Council (NHDSC) states that hotdogs are made from animal “trimmings.” “What are trimmings?” My grandmother is curious. The whole idea of animal trimmings at a butcher-store begins to capture a nauseating picture in the mind’s-eye of the old lady. She wants to know what “trimmings” entail.
Americans like vague words when it comes to food; words like “trimmings.” It means nothing, yet means everything. Here there’s room to commit dietary crimes of untold proportions. So “trimmings” is a purposely-vague word. Imagine a goat hotdog for instance: Mix the saliva, tongue, blood, intestines (plus the containing excrement), hooves, horns, hair and some parts of the meat together in a meat grinder. Add some salt and other unnoticeable chemicals to taste. Roll up the paste into a thin plastic “dildo” and boil it. Or fire it away in a smoky flame—or yet, heat it up on a hot plate. “That’s a goat hotdog for you grandma!”
“Who comes up with these silly ideas? Are they starving?” To which I answer, “No they are not. The West wastes over fifty percent of the world’s butchered meat. They literally throw away fifty percent of real meat stored in their never quenching freezers! Yet they eat hotdogs. No, a hotdog is not just a silly idea. It is a real thing. People eat hotdogs for lunch,” I informed my grandmother. She sighed, “Okay, that’s enough!” She stops me. “No grandma,” I insisted, “that’s what the big men in Accra eat nowadays.” She gawked. My grandmother could not swallow her own saliva for a minute. “I said that’s enough, Narmer!”
When grandmother says, “That’s enough,” that is enough!
But it’s true. Some greasy-haired redneck from Indianapolis (Indiana, USA) arrives in Accra, sets up a hotdog joint, and instantly becomes the talk of the town. The More Educated Than His Ancestors, the Metha, who now occupies the seats of government deep down in Accra eats anything with an American or European label. He introduces his loved ones to the dirt as well; he introduces people to the poisons of his indulgence. Nothing without a label is safe for his own consumption. He will not eat Kenkey and fried fish from the roadside unless it is wrapped up in a plastic bag and parceled in a Styrofoam bowl. He will not eat Waatse served in a leaf. He will not eat Banku and Okro Stew from Daavi for fear of Vodun.
The Metha is an African man with European appetites. Deep down he wants to be European; he wants to be Caucasian. Except, he cannot. Never. And for that matter he suffers from diseases like diabetes and high cholesterol. He suffers from diseases of European appetites. And he infests his loved ones with the disease with what he calls his “Mission-School” education. Take diabetes for instance. My grandmother calls it the “Sugar Disease.” It is for those who cannot eat Hausa Koko and Kose without sugar; without three spoons of sugar per cup. When Europeans discovered how to make sugar from Sugar Cane, the Viking sitting deep within their bosoms erupted. They killed and enslaved so many Africans for sugar production so much so that a tiny English chief grew into an actual emperor.
The nauseating appetite for sugar is skin-deep among the Metha. Even when a cure for diabetes is presented to him by old fashioned traditionalists from Ntoaboma, Volta, for his own consideration, the Metha runs away. Into the open arms of his European doctors, who kill him instantly with Big-Pharma drugs. The Metha is of course not aware of this: That the hotdog is directly linked first to his death at the hands of his beloved redneck, and second to his cultural demise.
Worse, it is not the hotdog that the More Educated Than His Ancestor, the Metha, loves. Far from it. The Metha wants to become the redneck. For this reason he is unaware of the plans of the redneck to kill him and remove him from the land. The Metha is blind. Totally blind. His inability to see infects all others around him because the Metha is European-mission educated, and he wields a formidable tool in Africa called USAFRICOM. The Metha is the Trojan Horse in Africa. Deep-seated within his belly are many diseases, ready to be unleashed on the African soul.
The Metha is the African who left his brain behind long ago in Timbuktu.
Sad!
I see whole families going to “enjoy” KFC in Accra. What is the use of education if it doesn’t show you how to live a long healthy life? The desire to pattern our lives after European lifestyles is what is killing the Black man. He would rather pay thousands of dollars to holiday next to Europeans or Dubai than to travel to Kenya or Namibia. It’s a disease that unfortunately can’t be detected under a microscope otherwise we would have been diagnosing it and prescribing the right medicine.
The “new” problem today is the African who after living his whole life on African soil goes to college in the West and comes back a liberal. He carries the baggage of every social movement except the one that matters: the rise of Africa. He fights for LGBTQ and feminist rights and denies that Blacks too are discriminated against. When he does join a pro-African movement he ensures that it’s one that allows Europeans to join. He is a threat to himself and Africa but he is unaware of it
Absolutely True! ? %! Summed up beautifully! It’s a nightmare!
Bro. Atiga, you ask, “What is the use of education if it doesn’t show you how to live a long healthy life?” I juxtapose this to earlier questions of yours regarding Vodun for instance. “What is the use of Vodun if it doesn’t help you advance scientifically and economically?”
Let me combine the two questions above to illustrate a point: What is the use of education if it doesn’t help you advance scientifically and economically? What is the use of an education/vodun if it doesn’t help you offer the world a new, better way?
My point is that it seems to me, after long study, that the problem with the Metha is not that he cannot use his education for better, or is the problem of the traditionalist the fact that his Vodun does not help him. The Metha, like the traditionalist, suffer from a common disease: The ability to think and to analyze in their own languages. The Metha writes, but he does not think in his own language. The traditionalist thinks in his own language but he does not write (does not perform analyses) in his own language.
One can say the traditionalist is closer to analytical thinking than the Metha is. The traditionalist thinks, at least. The Metha does not. He repeats. The Metha will repeat what the redneck has taught him: Eat hotdogs. The traditionalist will not. Yet the traditionalist cannot stop the redneck from buying his land to build the Hotdog joint. You see?
Our problem lies there in Oral Culture. It is stupid. And it must be eradicated!
The missionary imperialists were not dissuaded in their conquest by oral tradition far from it they translated their bible into native tongues and used the very tongues to implant and impose their ideas that gradually supplanted ancestor worship with a non-existent Jesus!
Ironically the “Christians” borrowed the core concept of the Trinity from the ancient Egyptian philosophy which was depicted in writings such as Hermes Treguemistus…
“I Thy God am the Light and the Mind which were before substance was divided from spirit and darkness from Light. And the Word which appeared as a pillar of flame out of the darkness is the Son of God, born of the mystery of the Mind. The name of that Word is Reason. Reason is the offspring of Thought and Reason shall divide the Light from the darkness and establish Truth in the midst of the waters. Understand, O Hermes, and meditate deeply upon the mystery…”
The (oral) word is born of the mind as the prevailing culture is the offspring of the dominant ideas… hence oral tradition alone cannot save the natives from destructive ideas forcefully imposed by foreigners on the contrary they must not shirk from the responsibility of countering these foreign ideas with their own practical ideas; a powerful idea can only give way to a more powerful one… otherwise we remain ground in the TINA (there is no alternative) to Western culture environment…
*Typo: Hermes Trismegistus…
Thanks for sharing Mkuki. I appreciate the reference!
I salute you, Atiga.
Disgustingly sad. Anything foreign is better in the African’s head so they die of foreign diseases.
People who lost sense of self and humanity but are too proud to admit. People suffering from PTSD, yet felt they are very healthy. The problem of cognitive dissonance is real
This Post holds so much sad truth, It Just makes me want to weep Hot Tears of Frustration and disgust! These types of junk food are being cautioned against by Doctors, documentaries and food activists here in Europe. The Most Group of people likely to hold These Things in their hands are the “Poor, white trash” living on social benefits and lazy parents Who hardly take care of their children. But Everything that comes from Europe or America for that matter is Status endorsed, right?! God help us! All those carcinogenes and toxic stuff in These products!
Thank you, Amenuti. I couldn’t pen the “hot dog” better.
In Kenya, you’d get the METHA making fun of a college girl who prefers a warm bowl of millet porridge, boiled cassava and perch, all costing a paltry half a dollar to a $20 platta of pizza.
They think she’s still naïve, unschooled and out of place. They call her “mshamba”!
The ridiculousness of the Metha is unbounded. Their limitless greed and obsession for European culture, European this, European that, is set without reservation. Yes, they laugh at a girl who eats real food. They are upset she will not join them in their quest to become the redneck who eats pizza. The Metha are angry when others seem to have carried their brains with them from Timbuktu. The Metha are angry because they left their brains behind in Timbuktu and they wonder how others, who look like them, managed to have retained theirs. The Metha are both angry and jealous. Their disease will exacerbate. It will become cancerous. They will die because of it. Hopefully, they do not infect all of us. Hopefully, girls like those who eat millet porridge, boiled cassava and perch for breakfast remain ever so resolute in their traditions, to preserve and conserve what is left of it. Hopefully, these girls will outlast the Metha. What is certain is that the Metha will die. A terrible death!
It’s too late… Monsanto has inserted its poisonus GMO tentacles into the local food chains through the USAID backdoor…
Most Africans want to be anything but Africa. It will kill them fast as it has been.
Aku Kromanti & Nubi Yebua, what say you?
Ayodele Sosu I was angry when I saw that stand but my friend didn’t understand what I was angry about.
Nubi Yebua sometime back in November I was upset the same way when I last visited Osu fortunately I was with a sister who had same view as mine.
Ayodele Sosu I guess the best thing to do is raise awareness of the dangers of ALL processed foods and if some European is there selling processed meats such as hot dogs, there needs to be some form of resistance from the people. Another way to deal with this is to simply NOT BUY IT or subsidize their own demise through the efforts of their political and historical enemies. No one should pay to die or become unhealthy making others rich doing it. It starts with not allowing your enemy to become your deity.
Ayodele Sosu protest and get them out. The voice of the people can move them. They were put there by men and they can be removed by men as well. Anyone selling hotdogs there are not in the best interests of african people and Africans must begin to realize this.