Did I tell you about this guy who tipped a waitress with tip already left on the table by the previous customer! And the fellow was dressed to kill as they would put it. I can tell you the way he carried himself you’d think he’s some kind of royal something demanding his ‘throne’ which would put him on the top of the world. If you’re the kind of guy who tells it as it comes you’d have called him an imposter, which he was. To tell you the truth what’s more it wasn’t much of a tip. The young lady most probably could have nothing more than a cup of coffee with the miserable tip. But this guy was being smart where smartness is the last thing anyone needs. I mean giving someone’s tip as one’s own has nothing to do with smartness. It is crooked! That is what many of us miss these days; we try to substitute the crooked for smartness.
Years back there was this young lady who’d force you to turn your head for a second look, if you know what I mean. She was one real work of nature. The way she carried herself you’d run out of adjectives trying to describe her. One thing about her was that she went to restaurants and dining places by herself. The kinds of things being rare in those days it made her the center of attention more times than would have been comfortable. One thing that stood out about this young lady was she never put her bare hands on food. She always used knife and fork as if she was under some omen that the wrong spirits would come knocking if she laid her bare hands on any food item. She also handled the knife and fork so meticulously one might suspect she was actually practiced such things behind closed doors.
Frankly there’s nothing wrong with what she was doing at the dining table. I mean she didn’t’ throw morsels at someone’s table interfere in any way. Why am I telling you about her? Well, behind doors in her house no knives and forks within a mile! The knife and fork thing is not about table manners….but something she did for public display. The lady, for all the nice things about her, was not being herself. She’s playacting outdoors and being her natural self behind doors. I can tell you every other man, woman and child of us playact in public! That heavily dents confidence and what we miss to notice is that it is people watch! Yes they do watch!
I had this friend who now is deceased, may his soul rest in peace, and he never tries to hide behind actions which don’t describe him at all. He completed his high school studies in a small town hundreds of kilometers from Addis and he came to Addis for college and stayed here. You can take him to any high class restaurant and he enjoys being himself; meaning he doesn’t waste precious minutes dealing with knives and forks with which he isn’t familiar. He uses his bare hands as tens of millions use. His job took him to embassy receptions and even in those places he doesn’t care for what people say. He uses his hands; yes, at the end of the meal his hands might look unfinished abstract artwork by a painter who himself is abstract material. Ha!
A long time ago so long that it appeared to be another lifetime some twenty something of us media fellows had to go to a couple of then communist countries for journalism workshop. (I think I wrote a paragraph or two about it sometime back.) I have to admit that our communist hosts gave us tons of material on ‘agrarian journalism’ and I never found out how you write about those things. Now being those the times they were and we being from this part of Africa we looked different and the natives were watched our every action.
Now there were these lunch events thrown in our name (or was it in our ‘honor!’) and quite a number of other people attended the events. I think it was on the second or third day of our arrival and lunch was roast chicken, and almost half of it. (Our hosts must have thought “since they all look so hungry give them half the chicken and it would take them through the whole month!) Now the ferengis were busy with their knives and forks using them with the precision surgeons or other such professionals. Well, we had no way of being that meticulous. Most of us weren’t that familiar with the knife and fork toys, at least not on our dinner table. Frankly some of us never even used them except good old fork in the case of the not so-frequent spaghetti dish. We were torn between going for bare hands and settling for the veggies flanking the chicken option.
Finally, deliverance came in the most unlikely way. Way opposite us at a corner of one dining table a ferengi for some reason had this chicken breast clutched in his ten fingers and was tearing away on it with what look like vengeance against that chicken species. We needed no more convincing and we went for the kill with forty-plus hands coming into play. I wouldn’t mislead you saying it was a prefect photo-op moment. But one thing was that we were troubled because we tried to look for ways on how to playact. When we finally returned to being ourselves and what a sumptuous roast chicken it turned out to be.
Well you wouldn’t need nerves of steel to put up that “I really don’t mean it!” ‘diplomatic’ smile. If ever those nerves of steel are needed it’d be when you try to sustain that happy face despite all the …you’re witnessing.
Too many of us try to be what we’re not and the mess we create spills over and offends others. Be it in politics or other socio-economic issues we try to playact while suppressing our genuine feelings for the sake of joining the crowd. Believe me, ‘joining the crowd’ is the one thing forcing us to be suspicious of each other preventing us from coming to all-inclusive understanding to hundred and one things.
How is it possible to act so irresponsible when they know it would not be a happy ending? That guy giving someone else’s tip who probably thought himself as sharing the Einstein and whatever ‘super’ genes might be the sorriest of dudes in our Milky Way. But of course no one blames him for not showing people that he is as stupid as harshly ‘stupid’ is defined in the dictionaries. Imagine a guy saying, “After all I’m not as foolish as people think me to be!” At least he admits people think of him as foolish! That is good for starters.
Take those guys being interviewed why they started one thing or another. “My question is how did you come up with this idea of establishing a traditional restaurant?”
“You know I’m one of those who always feel sad seeing traditional food and drinks going out of the picture. I want to restore that tradition. You know, it’s not about the money.” No, dear sir, it’s about the money! Everything you and your likes do is about the money. Thumbs up for establishing a traditional restaurant with all the tej, the raw meat, the ‘gored, gored’ and all that. But, come on now, you don’t need to overplay the nice-guy card! Especially, when you’re charging us three hundred-plus birr vat not included for an unimpressive simple ‘shiro’ dish!
To use bare hands or not to use bare hands; that’s the challenge… the challenge of choosing between being oneself on one side and ‘joining the crowd’ on the other.
Ephrem Endale
Contributer
The Ethiopian Herald 11 December 2022