Want to strike it rich? Start an all-white waiting service

I have been doing Nairobi dining all wrong. In the last decade of eating out in our nation’s capital, a white waiter has served me precisely zero times.

I came to this jolting realisation last week, when the New York Times triumphantly declared to the world that the latest novelty on the Nairobi restaurant scene was the white waiter.

My first instinct was how I could profit from this latest fad. As one who has been afflicted by lifelong blackness, obviously I didn’t qualify as the nouveau cool accessory for any Nairobi eatery worth its salt.

Next, I wondered what would be a fair price to pay my white friends to hire them out as waiters around the city.

I could start an agency, I reasoned, hiring out “quality” mzungus at reasonable rates. I would do booming business, because my mzungus would come from the top of the Caucasian pile – Americans and Britons, with a few Danes and Germans thrown in for extra spice.

Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times Nairobi Bureau Chief Geoffrey Gettleman’s piece was centered on Caramel, a stylish and outlandishly priced restaurant.

I am a man of relatively modest means and have not yet had occasion to dine at the said location.

WHITE WAITERS
But the carrier pigeons online claim I would need to sell my herd of 14 goats and at least three fingers to afford a meal there. For a shot of brandy to wash it down, I would need to throw in my liver, and maybe a kidney, and quote above market rates.

So you can imagine my dismay to learn that the now world famous “melanin-challenged” waiters were mostly Macedonian (Gasp!) and just as English-challenged.

Basically, the NYT is trying to convince the world that Kenyans are falling over themselves to be served by waiters of questionable whiteness. I mean, I can’t even locate Macedonia on a map and I’ve been in and out of five continents this year alone!

Quoth Gettleman: “Nothing, though, may signify that Kenya has arrived more than the sight of a white man with a bead of sweat trickling down his temple, hustling trays of drinks and sweeping up steak scraps with the edge of his hand.”

This just in: white men work! Gettleman sounds like he has just come to the profound realisation that Caucasians like himself actually work, and some even go into the great big jungle of Africa.

MOST COLOURFUL
He described Nairobi most colourfully, noting how it was “often difficult to meet Western consistency standards in a place where the power goes out regularly and machete-wielding mobs occasionally barricade highways, interrupting the supply of fresh beef”.

I took a break at that point to sip some tea at my hotel (not served by a white man, alas), grateful that my waiter hadn’t been blocked by “machete-wielding mobs”.

“Gettleman’s article made me realise that I’m probably, in all likelihood, black,” concluded notably white columnist Andrea Bohnstedt on Facebook. “Otherwise those years of waitressing and cleaning and newspaper rounds and babysitting would have never happened. Let’s see how my parents take this news.”

LIFE'S AMBITION
It has always been my life’s ambition to be served by white waiters in Kenya. I deeply regret that I have utterly and shamefacedly failed in this admirable mission.

I truly envy all those rich and trendy types who happily nibble on criminally overpriced steaks for the privilege of having the table cleared by a destitute white man.

This is obviously the future in the restaurant business and I’m just glad that Caramel, with it’s self-stated “a taste of Dubai in Nairobi”, has brought it here. Go watch the future before it becomes the future.

We are honoured that the Caramel and Light Groups chose us to be their first location outside Dubai.

I am also eternally grateful to international correspondents for their tireless work reporting on “Africa Rising” and the obligatory mentions of malls as the ultimate symbols of middle-class spending.

They paint with broad brushstrokes, these modern-day Picassos, generalising with admirable abandon and dropping fallacious conclusions in their reportage.
I hope Gettleman will cast an equally favourable gaze on my mzungu waiters service.