Funny Nigerian Mentality

Nigeria has always been a country that believes in extraterrestrial powers and activities, so we believe strongly in the existence of voodoo and witchcraft. We believe in it so much that there's this belief that one could get poisoned with witchcraft and end up flying at night and going for meetings with witches and wizards.

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That was the one popular amongst the kids and parents would always use that to scare their kids in order to avoid them taking foods, sweets or anything edible from strangers or even friends, because the moment you do, you could end up flying at night and becoming a witch. And it doesn't matter if the owner of the food takes a bite out of the food first in a bid to assure you that there's nothing in the food, because unlike regular poison that kills anyone (including the person who added the poison to the food), witcraft works differently, or at least that was what we were told.

According to every parent in the country, nothing happens to a witch when he or she takes a bite out of their own witchcraft poisoned food and this is because they're already a witch, so what they do in order to gain your trust is that they eat the food right in front of you, in order to make you believe the food is clean and you're good to go. Unknown to them, all of our parents were graduates of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and already told us about this trick.. Lol

Why am I talking about witchcraft and people getting initiated through food you might want to ask, well it's because a huge part of my childhood believed all of that story (some part of me still do even till this day), and living with someone like my dad who is very particular of which person's food he eats, he would always ask us to throw away food given to us by neighbours, friends and so on.

You might ask yourself why collect the food in the first place when you know you're just going to throw it away, I used to ask those exact questions myself, until I went to school and began saying "no, thank you" to people rather than take their food and throw it away.

Being the kinda guy that I am who always avoided getting into trouble and coming from my type of family, it was only normal that I ended up growing up to become the kind of dude who didn't like collecting food from people because that was how I was trained. Unfortunately for me, the university was a completely different place, a place where people liked to share with their friends and neighbours because it helps bring everyone together and also provides a plan B for you when you go broke and don't have any food at home.

So while staying at my hostel, people would bring me food, food that I always declined politely because I didn't want to throw it away. To me, I felt I was doing the right thing, until one day when a lady friend of mine had gotten upset with me because I had rejected her food.

It was a surprise to me because here I was trying to do her a favour by declining her offer because I didn't wanna waste it and so that she could have enough for herself, and yet she was upset? It was strange and funny but it didn't take long before I started to hear side talks of how I was acting like I was better than everyone and was refusing to eat their food.

The whole thing made me understand perfectly why it is way more easier and better to just take the food and throw it away, rather than decline it at the door because apparently, people don't like it when they give you food and you say no. You have to take it, but taking it doesn't mean you have to eat it.

And don't get me wrong, there are people here, my friends that I do take food from and eat but not everyone. I take from everyone, but I don't eat from everyone (like I said, the witchcraft thing hasn't left me entirely yet). I still find the whole getting annoyed thing strange but who am I to question the funny Nigerian Mentality.