Two occasions that found me in restaurants these past few days; both times for a bite or two with friends back home for a few weeks’ vacations from a country where the politicians have recently been acting like third world political thugs out to mug their own people. Just for the sake of it, doesn’t the talk about democracy losing ground in places where it was fully embraced for decades scare you! I mean, we’re trying to get hold of it and others are letting it go! Bizarre!
Anyways, forget the talk with my visiting friends; I won’t get into that. (What is it with you Diaspora guys that make you so negative about everything back here? Yes, we’re in really trying times; yes, many of us are acting as if we are trying to sell the country to the highest bidder; yes, the wolves are sniffing all around us waiting for to pounce on us when the final fall comes, something which, of course, is never going to happen. But we’re not that deep into hell! Life, with all its very rough edges, still goes on. Had it been as bad as some of you guys paint it to be your plane ticket would have been to another destination; you wouldn’t have been making the all-night rounds of ‘Chichnya’ and all those nightlife spots! Giving credit where due isn’t that difficult, is it?)
In the first dining place, the waitress who took our orders was smiling. Hers was that smile that appears to stretch for miles on end. But, her eyes told a different story! She wasn’t as happy a lady as her child-like smile suggested. But as smiles go with the territory it was not about choice, it was about customer handling. But zeroed in on some other part of the young lady, her legs!
We went there to relish in their specialty dishes and this guy can’t move any higher than the legs of a waitress! What is he, a shoe salesman! (Of course, none of us said that to his face: the monetary story is thirty- something Birr to the dollar! If you think we were going to throw that opportunity out the window, you’d be over-moralizing, if there is anything like that. Ha! What the hell am I saying! I wish, I knew.
“Look at her! Some Michael Angelo must have been busy on her…”
“What about the food? That’s what we came for!
“How does the stake taste?”
“The last time I saw those types of legs, they were carrying Halley Berry or someone…”
“Hey, I’m asking you, how does the stake taste?”
“With those legs, who cares about stake or anything?”
I mean. To err is only human! Hmm…
The second dining place we went to was a world of its own. It is the ideal place if you’re talking about the interior design and all the trouble they went through to make it customer-friendly. However, by some coincidence or whatever, everybody seems to know everybody else; and I’m talking about many scores of people! It is as if we barged into some private event where you aren’t only dressed up, but make every effort to get noticed, too. We were the odd guys out!
And that’s not a particularly pleasing feeling. And if we needed proof that we indeed were the guys out, our seats were almost warm before someone came to our table. And while the waiter, in the wee hours of his youth years, was talking our orders a lady was calling out to him from across the room. The haste in her voice and the tone of finality meant she was probably the owner. She was hovering over a table where a new group of boisterous men and women just arrived. She probably wanted them to be served first while we have been waiting for close to ten minutes.
We sympathized with the waiter who found it hard to leave us in mid-sentence and the barely concealed fear of his boss’s anger. One of the diaspora guys had enough. He thanked the waiter and we rose. You can’t believe the speed at which the lady, who seemed to have dropped out of some “My Fat Greek Wedding’ set or something to that tune.
Of course, there are those of us who, offered with such a smile, think the love bug has bitten her! (As a concerned citizen my advice is to you is to go, take a hike; your mind needs it.) That’s not what she thinks.
Believe me, there are many of us who are mesmerized not by the food but the smile of the waitresses.
“You know that place downtown.”
“Of course, I do.”
“How I enjoy the smile of that waitress.”
What about the food! The stake they served me was a jaw-breaker and you’re talking about smiles! Of stake and smiles, Vive le difference!
The Ethiopian Herald Friday 14 February 2020
