Louisiana, yours truly

When we entered in to Louisiana today, I didn’t prepare myself for the assortment of smells that I encountered today, mostly though the mushy lands. There was dead specimens all over the routes, from eagles to some stuff that looked like parts of alligators. Above all, I also didn’t prepare myself for the food experience.

I am from eating. I always have issues with eating. I am not a very hungry person, normally. But nowadays, I am always unusually hungry and looking for something to eat. As so we enter the Springhill, Louisiana and go to find something to eat with the starving bikers. We hot the road down to Shane’s restaurant, down in Shreveport, Louisiana. Am not ignorant about sea food, but crawfish just happens not to be my favorite. So just for introduction, read through that menu and tell me if a basket of frog legs is funny or not. Out of no prejudice, Don told me it’s a French cuisine, and I believe him because he is a Christian. A part of this menu read, “Corn DOG” whatever that looks like…

(So we decide to have dinner. And we go to Shane’s. And as we place our orders, I look at this table near us. Someone in the team described me as this Japanese tourist who takes a foto of anything. So I ask Don, I really want a foto of what they are eating. He tells me they wouldn’t mind, I can go and tale a foto. I say I am afraid. So he says, I will go and take it for you. and he makes the 1st silly mistake. With the camera in his hands, he goes to the table of 3 overloaded persons and says “My friend from Kenya wants to take a foto of crawfish, can I do that for him?” the lady seated next to the two wobbly gentlemen was easy with Don taking the foto for me, but the men were hesitant. I didn’t know why they were hesitant, but may be they thought they were guilt of committing a sin? A sin of OVEREATING?

So, the lady taking our orders offered to bring us a tray of craw fish to us, so we could eat and take a foto too – at our liberty.) She brought us a quarter size of what the table next to us was shredding. As the lady (next table) staggered to go grab some desert, the young boy seated next to him (probably her son) was sucking life and juice out of the last skeleton of crawfish, and what remained littered over their table was this heap of shells that would fill an empty trash can to the three quarter mark. The boy sort of goofed at me when he was leaving; I guess that was meant to be a smile but his cheeks (shiny with craw fish juice) told otherwise. I swallowed my pork rib and started talking to Mindy. Meanwhile, they brought our bucket of craw fish for Matt and Van Boozie to enjoy.

Am not judging them, but am still breathless to understand why those three guys ate all that for main meal with no sides at all. I bet its only in this part of the country that they eat so much crawfish at one sitting. I requested the lady taking orders (we call her waiter back in Kenya, I ron kno what you call her back here) to allow me take a foto of the aftermath. She had 3 trays of this size of remnants, shells…I wonder if they have a recycling plant for crawfish shells here, because they were so many that they outnumbered the cans of diet coke drunk from this restaurant in the last 6 weeks. Am reserving the comment my mom would have for them, but I remebred a time she came to my house in Nairobi and I cooked her vegetable stew (egg plant, onions, courgets and parsley). While she was having the decent meal prepared by her loving son, she asked me – what are these purple stiff? I told her its egg plant. So she answered back “Even if I would find them in the market, I wouldn’t ask how much they cost”. She scooped the stew to the last drop, but still, she wouldn’t go looking for them at eh grocery store.

Back to the crawfish family. That dad might be spoiling the son or something, and the double size of the mom is already a testimony. I would be rather cautious to suck at those sea animals (they have a terrible wet and mushy gross smell) without worrying if there is more species left in the ocean. I would have told them, stop – those are countless animals you have in front of you, don’t eat them all, remain some for the ocean. These guys should probably be sued for endangering that particular species of crawfish. (Sorry, I don’t intend to infringe the personal freedoms and rights of the citizens of America, especillay on July 4th)

So I am now going to sleep, tomorrow I will drop you a blogg on what it means to be American. For tonight, I can only be dreaming with crawfish crawling all over my head, some sinking their appendages into my ears and nose (am excited about how that feels) – may be they will break me at the middle and suck my juices just the same way the crawfish family did to them. – goodness, wait…but I didn’t eat any of you…can I go down to Shane’s restaurant and show you the guys who messed up with the countless dear idiots? How do you accept to be eaten like that, so many of you in one platter, why couldn’t one be clever and jump out, go tell the rest of the oceans that there are mean human beings up the terrestrial. They reap where they have never sowed,, and when we get out of here we are renamed seafood? I don’t envy you at all, in the second life – I wish to by anything bit not a crawfish.

Have a crawfish July 4th.