by
Obododimma Oha
In a world where technology comes in different shades and colours, it is possible to have a technology oriented to meat cookery. This essay is an introduction to such technology, as a compensation for those who are said to bring up the rear in technology. It is even part of the strangeness of the time and the fact that we have learnt bitterly that there are technologies and there are technologies.
If you call it "barbecue," you have erased something. It is suya technology. And the technology is not in turning a bowl into a holder of charcoal, upon which the meat is roasted. That is what production engineering would think. No, sir. It is rather in the selection of meat resources and their masterly slicing with COVID-free bare fingers. Then, appropriate flame is applied and reinforced.
Kilishi has a place here in the technology, but the name frightens one. The name "kilishi" sounds like "kill-she," and that is not funny at all. Imagine a criminal barging into your hut at night, raping your wife, while you are made to watch, and then shoots (kills) her later with AK-47. Is that not a terrible "Kill-she" that you would not forget?
So, suya technology brings up this imagination of a very terrible tragedy. That is why one is uncomfortable in talking about it.
Recently when a Minister in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, referred to "kilishi" as a technological contribution to the world in an address to the National Assembly, he was not joking. It was not also an evidence of struggling to find a relevance or scratching around to identify a contribution. He meant it. "Kilishi" is about consumption, about the stomach. Hobbesian State of Nature. It is also about eat and be eaten. Feed on that technology because you would be fed upon. "Kilishi", honestly, lives in the neighbourhood of "kill-she" as a tragic consumption and is typically Hobbesian.
One thing that suya technology teaches me painfully is that we are all suya. When the breath leaves finally, maybe because of COVID-19 or for some other health problem, what remains is meat. You may cremate that remnant or turn it to manure; the truth is that the breath is gone to the Maker for re-deployment and all the garagara and deprivation of allocation to some regions will be useless. Suya technology is a leveller and a teacher. But do humans learn?
Suya technology sharpens a curved knife and slices terribly. It works with great precision. That technology is transferable but the learner must have a heart and not think too much as to liken things to things.
These days that a country needs to be economically independent, suya technology has come to the rescue. One does not have to search extensively before one finds. One also does not have to wait for China to fabricate the charcoal holder before venturing in as a suya technologist. One only has to get some hot pepper, groundnut oil, some blended groundnut, trained beef, and some crude charcoal holder and dig in at a road junction. Those, and one is ready. The great smell and the smoke will welcome the flies.
Does one still need to enrol in a university or college of technology and wait for a long while to be given a piece of paper to answer "technologist"? Western education could be a waste of time. Thank God, there is something like COVID-19. All schools are now closed in honour of COVID-19. Yes, any educational institution that teaches another kind of technology is not acceptable and is a target for Boko Haram.
Suya technology does not require a very long training. In fact, the only training needed is the slaughtering of sources of meat and training of the meat before use. Training is only important for one to understand how roasted things travel down to the stomach. Training should not be rigorous and no piece of paper is needed at the end. One's traditional ruler also does not need to be present!
Seriously, food technology needs serious attention, even though such attention does not have to be prehistoric or ancient. We need to look into how food is prepared in some countries, what constitutes "food," whether it is snakes and frogs and whether strange crawlers are getting extinct. It is also necessary to go beyond the risks to discover food, made by ancestors, and whether we can go beyond what they did, whether food can sometimes be our medicine (and vice versa), and whether humans can stay for longer time without "food," say for years, and what can be done about it. You see, suya technology is just a rudimentary beginning. It should not just be about making the human intestine glad with "food" from meat, and you call this "technology"!
Suya technology is an indirect confession about relevance. It shows that we are now thinking about relevance. If technology is our need and we have to start from food, let it not ring as a laughable thing heard in 2020 in a National Assembly presentation.
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