LIFE BY LOUIS: A meat-free diet

Just when I was about to lose hope during these hard economic times, an investigative journalist came to my aid.

The journalist based his investigations around the processing and storage of meat in some of the common outlets that we get our delicacy from. He came to my rescue by concluding that meat is not good for your health and can cause some incurable conditions.

The revelation came just when I needed it most. I have been looking for ways of cutting the ballooning domestic debt and all the cost cutting measures I have implemented are not yielding fruits.

BRILLIANT REVELATION

Recently I was going through the archives and a brilliant idea came to my mind. Why can’t I cut meat from the domestic diet now that I have documented evidence to back up my actions?

After this brilliant revelation, I landed at my local butchery with a beaming face ready to execute my domestic austerity measures.

I cancelled all the standing orders for my weekly quarter meat deliveries and demanded a full refund for the goodwill deposit that I had paid. Man Njoro in his business acumen had convinced me to place a standing order which he used to deliver to my house every Friday.

Being the clever rabbit that he is, he used to deliver the meat at around 11am when he was sure that it was only the Domestic Secretary who was at home.

Needless to say, he would make himself comfortable in my humble abode and get served hot tea and choice confectioneries that have also disappeared from my menu.

When I announced the cancellation, he protested vigorously and swore that all his cows are grown organically and they are not killed violently during slaughter.

He even produced some pieces of entrails and revealed some pieces of grass inside the intestines as evidence that the former cow only ate grass and other vegetables when it was alive.

Considering the savings I intended to make by removing meat from the domestic budget, I was not about to get convinced by his antics. He even tried to restructure the meat financing program by allowing me 60 days credit and a one week grace period after pay day.

ULTERIOR MOTIVES

He also convinced me that he could transfer the debt to a less expensive product called ‘matumbo’ that goes for half the price of meat. That way, the money I spent in one month could take me for a full two months with the option of increasing the portion to half a kilo at the same price.

A person who gives you such offers is either having ulterior motives or he is getting his meat supplies from other animals apart from the regular domestic herbivores.

Much as he tried, he could not convince me to change my mind. I had already allocated the projected savings to other ventures and there was no looking back.

I later passed by Mama Mboga and placed an order of three ‘sukuma wiki’, three spinach and two cabbage batches per week. Her batch measures are in some small polythene papers which are carefully stashed with as little contents as possible and the rest if filled with air so as to maximize on profits.

I found a fairly large queue of vegetable buyers awaiting for their rations to be cut, and there were all signs that vegetables business is doing good. In these hard economic times, we have to build bridges between the meat and vegetable sellers.

The other person who is celebrating the health warning on meat is Jamo the university student who lives in a bed sitter in our Leafy Suburb. Every time he takes his girlfriend out, she doesn’t even wait to be served her usual expensive adult beverage that comes in small cans.

As soon as she settles down, she summons the guy hawking the tiny meat bitings around and orders sausages, samosas and hotdogs. Before Jamo knows, he has incurred a bill of several thousand shillings with the bitings vendor.

After the health warning, she is now very careful with what she eats because she does not want to die young from eating unhealthy meat and leave Jamo in the hands of her second year female competitors. So she will  soon be summoning the bitings guy and asking him “Hey, do you have hotdogs made of cabbages and onions?”

The bitings guy will probably get a heart attack.