I have witnessed many domestic disputes related to food since my childhood. Whenever dad came home at night and failed to eat the food reserved for him, my mum would get angry and make snide remarks that would ignite bitter quarrels.
Later, it was my turn as a husband. While I have always asserted my freedom not to eat at home if I don’t feel like it, it is not always taken kindly by Jane.
There is a story of a man who attended dinner meetings for three consecutive days after which he couldn’t eat at home. On the fourth day, he passed by his local pub and met friends who tempted him into some tasty bitings from which he went home full, again.
He went straight to the bedroom upstairs from where he was served ugali. By then he was heavily weighed by the guilt of not eating dinner at home and couldn’t tell the wife he was full. As soon as the wife left, he threw the ugali through the window.
The wife was about to go back and check on the man’s progress with dinner when somebody knocked on the door. It was the watchman, pleading to know who has hit him with a ball of ugali and why.
Embarrassed, the man owned up. Yes, he threw the ugali away; he was too full but had no courage to turn down food yet again.
I have been an advocate of domestic freedom, where no one is made to eat as a duty. This democracy sounds so good until you are the one cooking.
After cooking for the children for a while, I have realised it’s easier said than done.
Most of the time, we would be at loggerheads with Muthoni’s stringent taste and disdain for African foods.
“Mimi niko sawa (I am okay),” Muthoni is fond of saying whenever she notices what you are cooking does not please her. Many times, it would snowball into a serious dispute necessitating mediation from her mum in the US.
But why does it hurt when children turn down the food I have prepared? It is beyond the fact that you don’t want them to be hungry.
Trust me, there is an emotional angle to it. Rejection of your food triggers a feeling of disapproval and personal rejection.
Muthoni got a state of her own medicine recently. She is learning to cook and made some githeri in my absence which nobody in the house ate. She narrated this to me several weeks after it happened and she was still bitter and emotionally wounded.
Poetic justice it was; the leading boycotter of food in the house was now confessing to the pain she felt when her food was not eaten.
In our community, “a man does not eat at home” is a metaphor for emotional estrangement, signifying a lack of intimacy.
It is not surprising that food and sex have a convergence of language. They are both served from the heart and touch the human soul. Hence the rejection of food could be an indirect rejection of the person who cooked it.
Even in a commercial setting, good businesses get concerned if you don’t eat your food – even if you have paid for it. A chef, however well paid, derives greater fulfilment when customers wipe their plates clean.
Cooking is an expression of feelings for others. That is why we all complain about how boring it is to cook our own food.
Still, I ask the question: should people eat at home as a duty? I would like to hear your opinion
