Weekly Blogger: Snow, snobbery, beef and veggies
By Samuel Chamboko – Jambo! Greetings to all. It’s been a while but glad to have made it. Hopefully the missives will be more regular this time round. New Year, new ideas, new objectives and for me new country and new city. I’m writing from a very cold London. We had our very first experience of snow yesterday and what a surreal experience it was for some within our household. We have had it quite bad this year, having had to experience two winters within a 12 month period. It was also quite an adjustment having to move slap-bang in the middle of the southern Africa’s famous summer to Europe’s despised winter, just in that regard, we gave up a great deal. Anyway glad to be here, new place new experiences. A famous African saying goes, your feet will take you to new things, well in my case a flying machine did, but who cares.
Been here almost a month now and I must say one of the things I enjoy very much is observing people. So I have been observing Londoners for the last few weeks and the following are a few random observations I have made. To me one of the most fascinating aspects about London is the public transport system that works efficiently and is very safe. In particular I find the underground trains, the tube, amazing. What I find intriguing is the engineering genius that was used to construct such a feature and the machines used to control the traffic in the underground. The one huge disadvantage is that while you may travel to places using the tube in London, the only place you will see is your destination, when you get out of the tube station. You miss out of the sight-seeing that London has to offer. As small price to pay for quick, reliable movement from A to B. For sight-seeing one can always take the bus, but that’s a story for another day. So yes back to that great phenomenon, the tube, major observation: people hardly talk on the tube. Everyone is supposedly minding their own business, in most cases earphones plugged in. People don’t greet each other or make the smallest attempt at small talk. A good number probably ride on the same train at the same times daily with what have become familiar faces but still no talking. The tube would make a great library, you don’t even need to put up a ‘no talking’ sign. For the African in me, I would have thought that with more than 10million people using the tube daily, it would be a nice place to meet people and network, professionally and socially, particularly socially. Where we are from, public transport is one hell of a meeting place. I know couples, now married, who met on a long distance bus (chicken bus, as it’s called) or in the famous intra city ‘kombis’. Very interesting conversations take place in those confined spaces. Phone numbers are exchanged, dates are arranged and rejections taken on the chin. I reckon if people spoke on the tube, online dating would go out of business.
Generally Londoners try to be very civil and polite. Probably the two words that are muttered most are ‘thanks’ and ‘sorry’. Then there is the fake smile! You should know this one. If by some chance you make eye contact with someone, instead of looking away there is a tendency to flash the ‘fakest’ of smiles, which immediately melts away the moment they turn away from you. To me this is the height of insincerity. If you don’t mean it, then why bother?
Language is the other thing. Most Londoners speak ‘funny’,’ yeah’ with that accent. Not the clear English I had been expecting, but words are cut mid-syllable. My favourite is ‘football’ which is pronounced ‘fooboe’ with a ‘may’ (mate) thrown in for good measure. Hardly anyone speaks the way I thought they would, well with a few exceptions on TV and of course Her Majesty, The Queen. No one speaks English like the Queen does anymore. Quite sad I think. It’s not particularly surprising though given that almost every second person in London is speaking in some foreign language. Yep, from Italian, Russian, Turkish, Romanian, Lingala, Tsonga and even Venda, everyone is here.
My one huge frustration with life in the UK has been the way football is regulated on television. Back home, weekends were a huge frustration for my wife because she could hardly get me to do anything, willingly, especially if there was a good game of football on TV. Back there we could watch English Premier League from midday to midnight on a good Saturday. Now coming to England there are no games on free-to-air TV, you need 2 or 3 cable packages to get a decent amount of games and worse still tickets for all the big games have been sold out up to 2020 (excuse the slight exaggeration, its exasperating for a footie junkie like me). We had one cable provider, well Africa has one decent one anyway, the rest are pirates, and they guaranteed all the EPL games, now Sky and ESPN, put together, can’t even do that, what the hell!!!!!!!!!!
Something has been bothering me all week. Did a veggie-run earlier in the week. Occasionally, my Michelin-Star-Chef-wife does these amazing recipes and I get to be the judge ( John Torode/Greg Wallace have nothing on me), never have anything negative to say though, that’s how good she is. So anyway when she does these Heston inspired recipes, only the best ingredients will do. So off I went to the local supermarket. Bought all the regular vegetables, and as an aspiring food producer, I always look for a product’s country of origin. The veg basket I ended up with was quite ‘cosmopolitan’, green beans from Kenya, butternut from Senegal, peppers from Spain, potatoes from Portugal etc. I will focus on the first two countries I mentioned, Kenya and Senegal for obvious reasons. I’m not a fan of veg, but these were some of the best veggies I have tasted in a long time. I began to compare with the taste of veg we got in South Africa, miles apart. No offence to South Africa, but the veggies were tasteless and for 7 years we struggled to get used to it. The previous week, I’d bought South African grapes and they were great! What am I getting at? As a continent we produce some of the best quality food, but unfortunately our own don’t get to eat it, it’s exported. I might look like I’m singling out South Africa, but they are not the only ones. I spent time in Zim late last year and hopefully this example can put things into perspective. The producer price for high end super grade beef is $4/kg, that’s the price the farmer sells to the abattoir, for argument’s sake the abattoir puts in a mark-up of $1,50/kg when selling to the retailer. The retailer then also puts on their $1,50/kg mark-up on the abattoir price, so the retail price for super grade beef is +$7/kg. How many households can afford to buy beef for +$7/kg? In reality, very few butcheries in Zim sell super grade beef. Most of it finds its way out of our borders and others get to enjoy the best of what we produce. At many levels I struggle to reconcile myself with this reality. Is this the best we can do?
