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Meals at public ceremonies can be one of two things.
It could be the thing that literally saves one’s life — especially if they’re a university student who depends on monthly stipends from loved ones. What that usually means is that whenever they find themselves out of money and food, their desperation rationalizes the idea of visiting occasions in groups, all dressed, despite not knowing the organizers, if only to secure a meal.
Having lived in a public university hostel, I saw this too often. Students show up to inaugural meetings, weddings, and even burials involving departments and people they do not know at all for the sole purpose of securing meals. They return to large groups in the hostel who hail and appreciate them as they walk to their room, plates of food in a bag they are holding, with those singing their praises only doing so because they hope to participate in their bounty.
An incident comes to mind here. A roommate we will call O. O. was once ridiculed because he kept attending matriculation ceremonies even after his first year because he repeatedly carried over a course. Carrying over a course is the result of failing, which condemns the student to retaking that course at a higher level.
O. O., who was impeccable with his studies, had suspiciously been looking forward to the ceremony with more tremendous glee than the first-year students who had a reason to celebrate. On the days leading to my matriculation, he continuously asked me what plans my parents, and I had for the day and said I couldn’t possibly be serious when I told him I wasn’t excited. He didn’t care about me. He cared about the meal. This is the first group.
A second group shows up for ceremonies because they know the organizers. For this group, the meal could be a way to stop hunger, but it could also mean something else. Something more significant or even troubling. This tends to be the situation:
Ushers move about with food in hand, deciding who is worthy. You’re sitting down, having left the comfort of your home to be there. Ushers keep bypassing you to give food to others. Now you’re thinking:
“My life doesn’t depend on the meal, but why not me?”
“Why them?”
“Why am I being bypassed?”
“Am I not dressed well enough?”
“Am I not loved?”
We look at those at the high tables on these occasions and wish we were them. They have their meals spread out on the large table before them in a style reminiscent of the image painted in the Lord’s Prayer. Here, they are our enemies because not once do they stop and wonder whether we, who weren’t on the high table with them, have been provided something to eat.
In this group, when we show up to these gatherings, we don’t show up because we are hungry and lack food. When we hope to be noticed and given food, we don’t do that because that occasion is our only shot at a meal for that day. We do so because, after our decision to show up to the occasion and probably providing the organizers with a gift of sorts, the souvenirs and the meals are the only ways the organizers can show us appreciation. Not being appreciated never feels great.
It doesn’t matter how rich you are. When you agree to grace a wedding, you become entitled to the food — especially when the marrying parties are people you share a sort of familial bond with.
I’m at this wedding, sitting on a roundtable while watching the stewards waltz past me with food trays — over and over again. I’m getting impatient because I’m here for the food, as you may have already figured out. I look over to the other end of the hall, and there’s my dad, sitting at a table with more significant family members, and there’s an entire banquet laid before them. I figure that my surest chance of getting food is to make him notice that I’m starving so he can at least invite me to his table.
I try to get his attention by vigorously waving at him whenever he looks in my direction. At some point, our eyes meet, and then he quickly looks away. Someone leans into him and asks a question, to which my father replies, shaking his head. Leaning into my childhood trauma, I deduced that the person asked him, “Isn’t that your son, Victor?”
To which he responded, “I’ve never met that person in my life.”
I wasn’t even hungry. It’s just that there’s a psychological angle to wedding meals. It’s not about the food itself but the significance of it. I’m taking time off from watching Succession to be here at your wedding, which I really don’t care about. The least you could do is give me food — an acknowledgement of my sacrifice. It’s also an acknowledgement of our relationship, our familial bond. Remember how close we used to be? Remember all those times we shared two halves of an orange? Or when I gave you a finger of tangerine? Now I have to hustle food at your wedding? Y u gonna do me like that, man?
Cake is to birthdays what rice is to wedding ceremonies. While we can’t all be given a seat at the high table, we’d all appreciate it if we could simply be respected enough to be appreciated for showing up.
Ok, I was hungry, too. I was probably adopted. I felt a dip in my self-esteem because not getting food while watching your other family members eat does that to you.
So you see, wedding food or meals from any ceremony don’t have much to do with the actual food but the gesture of acknowledgement for the role you played in the person’s life. After all, they serve semo and egusi at weddings. That’s hardly anything to look forward to. In my opinion, that’s more of a funeral meal.
So the next time you feel offended for not being offered food at a wedding. Here’s why.
