“Global village”

As might be expected, our extended conversation resulting from Taiwo’s report from his travels in America prolonged our lunch by the lagoon—always a leisurely mid-week break but nevertheless conscious of the residual duties of the business day to be returned to. Today was unusual, however. The house had fallen silent as Taiwo, Ogbuagu and I went on and on about who was fat and who was thin in America and why. Meanwhile the place emptied out leaving but a scaggle of slow and late diners.

Then one gentleman walked up to our table. “May I join you gentlemen for a minute?”

“By all means, please.” He took a seat.

“I listened to everything you said,” he began. “It makes a lot of sense: limiting family to one or two children so as to be able to feed and clothe them decently and give them a good education; guiding them into areas of knowledge in current demand and equipping them with skills to make them more employable; eating healthy and staying trim, with plenty of vegetables and fruits and reduction in starch, especially eba and all the ‘swallows’. This is all well and good, and I think a campaign should be mounted to socialize our people in these new ideas and practices. . . .”

“Thank you very much,” said Taiwo. “I’m so glad someone was listening.”

“Yes,” our new friend continued. “But there’s only one thing I observed. Mr. Taiwo, you seem to put all the blame in America on the food and beverage corporations. What is the role of the ordinary people in all this? Don’t they, the ‘consumers’, have an equal responsibility to resist temptation and develop healthy eating and breeding habits?”

“Of course,” replied Taiwo. “But the people can only eat the food that is produced and available for purchase. Very few can grow and process their own food—with natural manure, little or no insecticides, etc. And few can set up restaurant chains to serve millions with lean meat instead of fatty meat, broiled, baked or braised instead of deep-fried in animal fat, plus fresh-squeezed fruit juices instead of carbonated sugar-drinks. Such healthy eating is predictably rare in the huge mass-marketplace.”

Taiwo took a deep breath and continued. “By the same token, the people will view only the violent movies made available to them. Few can boycott them altogether, or save their children (their nation’s future) from them. Nor can they save them from the even more violent video games which have been the rage for decades. Since their country is saturated with guns, every community trembles in fear that they might be next to be visited by the now yearly devastation of gun massacres.”

Taiwo was sweating; but he was not done. “That is the point: that the heaviest burden of responsibility is on the lawmakers and decision makers. They see the people’s suffering, and pronounce pious words whenever the matter is discussed; but they repeatedly vote for the status quo because they are lobbied (bribed) to do so and because many of them are owners or shareholders in the offending food and beverage companies, the film and video games companies, and the gun manufacturing companies.”

“I hear you,” said our friend plaintively. “So you consider the majority of the people to be victims only?”

“They are more victims than victors,” said Taiwo. “They really have little say in how America is governed—even though it is said to be the world’s leading democracy and a far cry from the medieval tyrannies from which it evolved. Soon the people get used to what is given, unfortunately, and they find proposed alterations in their way of life mostly irksome and unpalatable.”

“Well, you do have a point, Mr. Taiwo. But how about this: we’ve all got to die of something. Even the healthiest food and safest environment will kill us all in the end. There’s only one exit for all.” And on that somber note he got up, bowed, and walked out.

“The man is right,” said Ogbuagu. “What’s worse, the world is a global village, pardon the cliché. What goes around comes around.”

“That’s right,” I said. “It used to be that over-processed food saturated with sugar, fat and carcinogens was oyibo palaver and didn’t concern us . . .”

“Same with their gun madness . . .”

“But now, with DVD players and CNN and the internet spreading the message of doom, no corner of the globe is safe.”

“Yeah, HIV/AIDS may have begun in America, but within a decade it was everywhere. And now, no travel restrictions can keep ebola from going global . . . .”

“Americans used to think terrorists are only in some foreign land. However, with their open door immigration policy that takes pride in welcoming the wretched of the earth . . .”

“Ah!” shouted Taiwo, jumping up. “The famous poem by Emma Lazarus that is mounted on the Statue of Liberty in New York says it best:

‘Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore…’ ”

“Noble words indeed, but now twisted and inverted as home-grown terrorists spring from immigrants or children of refugees from the global theatres of ‘wars without end’ . . . .”

Onwuchekwa Jemie