The Art Of Begging And Food Parkinson

Some years ago, a family friend invited my sisters and I to a Sunday service where the sermon  preached was on greed. The pastor equated greed to the Parkinson’s disease and he kept referring to greed as Parkinson. That was one service my sisters and I will not forget in a very long time. I guess those who have seen the movie “ Love And Other Drugs” starring Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal, understand what the Parkinson’s disease is about. For others who do not know what Parkinson is, the word Parkinson isn’t a synonym for greed neither is it related to the word greed. It is simply a medical condition which occurs as a result of a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system. Therefore the symptoms of Parkinson include involuntary shaking of the body among others. So in my house, whenever a person is “shaking” for food or being greedy with food, we refer to such a person as having the food Parkinson disease.

Note that this article does not focus on the Parkinson’s disease but on food Parkinson which in my own words means a person’s strong desire for more than his/her own share of food. One of my sisters narrated her experience at a two-week workshop she attended with some of her colleagues at work which was conducted by the organisation she used to work for at the time. During the course of the workshop, they were provided breakfast and lunch for the whole period. The funny part of the story is that this workshop had a budget for only 20 people which was the total number of people who participated in the workshop. It is pertinent to add that these people were all graduates and professionals in their various fields. Sadly when it was time for breakfast, some of her colleagues would hurriedly go ahead of their counterparts and take two sandwiches each with the knowledge that there were only 20 packs for 20 people and this meant that some wouldn’t get any sandwich for breakfast. At noon when they had a buffet served with 20 pieces of meat or fish, some took two pieces each. She further said that this barbaric attitude went on for a few days before a complaint was eventually sent to the organisers who then had to get staff of the organisation’s canteen to serve each individual according to their own share as budgeted by the organisers of the workshop.

My mum also gave an account of her own experience at an official function she attended where she shared a table with a certain permanent secretary of one of the ministries and a director of a government parastatal. She said both men ate very greedily and kept asking for things they could do without.

Both experiences reminded me of one of the law dinners I attended back in my university days, where law students had to struggle for food as if their lives depended on that particular meal. I didn’t join in the struggle and as a result all that was left of the fried rice, jollof rice, salad, fish, chicken etc when it was my turn to be served was beans (I wouldn’t eat beans even if it was the only food in the world).

When I was in primary school, I thought that the art of begging for food, snacks and stuff like that started and ended in nursery and primary school, then I got into secondary school and surprisingly it still persisted. I got into the university and boom…there it was as usual among adults. I haven’t started work yet in any organisation but from what I hear, begging is still in the big organisations. And from my mum’s story, it’s not lacking in positions of the high and mighty. I can understand it when students or young children beg, but even then it is not acceptable and must be discouraged. But for adults, In my opinion that is highly unacceptable.