Veganism Is A Privilege And You Know It
Come talk to Africa.
Growing up, my grandmother’s house in the village was my happy place. You wake up in the morning and there is just that smell in the air. I never could place that smell until after years of living in big cities — crisp, foggy, untarred smell. There was no generator smoke or factory smoke to tar the air. I miss that air. I miss that smell in the air. And I miss my grandmother.
She was hardworking. Had big barns for her yams as well as big barns for her goats.
When we visited, my grandma would tell us about which goats were pregnant or which had just given birth. As children, my siblings and I used to pick the goats that were ours.
“That one is mine!” One of us would drag with the other.
“I said it first — the white goat with the black rings on both eyes is mine. Pick another goat!” Another sibling would argue.
And on and on until all six of us had a favourite goat or two or three. We would make sure to get our favourite goats edible grasses they loved. Palm fronds are much loved by goats but we weren’t tall enough to cut them from their trees and the responsibility wasn’t ours so, we got the grasses we knew from knowledge and experience, that the goats loved. Some of us would leave over our food to serve the goat our leftovers. And depending on the fruits in season, we made sure to give our goats what we knew they would love — oranges, mangoes, or whatever we had.
We adored our goats. But even as children, we knew that no matter how much we loved and took care of our goats, their fate wasn’t in our hands. Sometimes, we were around when a buyer would come and point out a goat or goats and pay for it. You could only wish it wasn’t ‘yours’. Other times, before we woke up, the older relatives were gathered around a fire watching diligently to make sure that the goat they were grilling over the fire was coming on nicely.
If it was your goat on the fire, you did the same thing you did if it was yours that got sold — you pretended you were fine. How would you cry over a goat? It was just a goat. There was a certain flex when we acted like we didn’t care about the end of the goat we had chosen as ‘ours’. We acted like we didn’t care. But we did. We just knew to cry privately.
It was crazy to cry over goats. It broke our hearts when we lost ‘our goats’ and yet every holiday season, we put ourselves through the same pain.
My grandmother like my father is a meat connoisseur. As children, our palates relished a plethora of unique meats — deer, porcupine, squirrels, bush rats. There has been a shark, a crocodile (or maybe an alligator), and crabs (which I hated because my mother had no idea how to cook them right).
We love eating these animals as children and as adults, visiting home will make my dad be on the lookout for the animal meat to serve us. Many hunters have my father on speed dial. There are few joys in the world like (in our Nigerian lingo for enjoyment) washing down bush rat meat with a fresh morning cup of palm wine.
So, what in the world is all this noise about veganism?
Veganism — Meaning: the practice of eating only food not derived from animals and typically of avoiding the use of other animal products.
What? Not eating meat? LOL. This won’t fly in Africa. I wish it would. So many heartbreaks over goats would have been avoided and that is just one reason.
Now now, don’t call me a hypocrite whether you are vegan or not. If you are a vegan who wishes to call me a hypocrite, I can argue that I did not know better. If you are not vegan and wish to call me a hypocrite, I can also argue that I wish I knew I could have had a choice to eat meat or not. Except for the latter to be true, this would have meant that my parents, their parents, and their parents before them, and so on, would have known about meat or no choices.
Also, I have a one billion dollar claim for you — no matter where you stand on veganism, the African child whose parents are not vegan, cannot be vegan. Read that again while I elaborate.
I am an African female. What this means is that society expects me to cook the family meals from as early as ten years of age or sooner.
So many times, I have read where a Western teenager of 15 to 17, is asking if it isn’t parentification that their parent expects them to cook their own food.
What?! This is wrong! Parentification! Abuse!
What a laugh.
Sometimes, I have forwarded the outrage to a friend or ten and we laugh over it.
It is abuse that you at 17, have been tasked with cooking your meal — not the family meal, yours, now take a moment and think this —
Is there a possibility for the African who cooks family meals to be vegan?
Well, there is a possibility. It is also not something a hot slap from their father or mother, cannot fix.
“I am vegan,” Begins the Western or European child under 18, “I am contemplating reporting my parents for abuse because they will not buy me fresh cooking utensils for cooking my vegan meals as I cannot use theirs because of cross-contamination…”
What a laugh.
As an African, a vegan diet would be a privileged choice.
From my travels, discussions with my foreign friends, and online reading, I see a huge difference in how meat is eaten in the West, Europe, and Africa. The biggest difference is this — for the West and Europe, meat/steak can be the meal. In Africa, it is the side. Strike that, in Africa, meat is the privileged addition.
What do I mean? Two ways:
- Westerners or Europeans can choose to eat steak alone as a meal. This is a rarity in Africa. How can you eat meat alone as a meal? The mindset here is that you are showing off. You want to show people how (Number Two) — How rich you are! Because only rich people will just eat meat. Do you know the cost of cow leg or goat anus that you just buy it and eat it as a full course meal? No. In Africa, meat is added as a privileged add-on to soups, stew, rice, or whatever.
- Because meat is not the whole meal for many Africans, we have an established culture around meat. Watch many Africans, especially West Africans, meat is eaten at the end of the meal. Why you ask? Take a moment and watch any Coke commercial. Notice that joy those actors display after the kru kru kru sound of gulping down coke? That is the joy we experience after eating our meal and then getting onto our meat. Eating meat last is the icing on our cake, so to speak. It is seen as bad manners to eat meat first.
I can see how it may be easy for the Westerner or European to choose between not eating his steak meal and eating it. For the Africans, meat is a status symbol — wealth status. Where it is not, it is the icing on the cake.
Here is a bonus point —
3. Have you ever seen an African event without meat? Like how? The Africans there would not be homegrown (if ‘homegrown’ offends, I run to the defense — English is not my first language).
So whether it be the African father welcoming home his adult child, a wedding, a child naming ceremony, graduation, Christmas, or New Year — whatever the celebration, meat is involved. Africa does not have the individualistic lifestyle of the West or Europe. If you are calling people to come to your house to celebrate whatever with you, you better be cooking meat.
Is my piece an excuse or a defense of why Africa cannot go vegan? You decide.
What I do know is this — whatever path you choose, ask yourself this:
Am I speaking from my need to change the world one animal saved at a time or do I need to check my privilege?
Click here to download a free copy of my book — Where Do Broken Hearts Go? Readers tell me that the poems in it told the story of our collective brokenness. I would also appreciate a cup of coffee. Thank you.
