Food for thought.

I’m half-Nigerian so I often struggle with trying to fit in with other Nigerians because I’m very westernized. So I was very happy to find out my co-worker was an international student from Nigeria. He’s one of the sweetest people I’ve met, and he’s quiet, but always willing to help.
Earlier in the year we had a staff dinner and he brought traditional Nigerian stew. No one really ate it except for me and my boss.
Today while walking home, I asked him if we could have a traditional Nigerian meal together and he was excited. 
But he also told me about how he wasn’t going to cook in front of our co-workers anymore. At the staff dinner, he told me about the rude comments people made about his food. Another time, he was frying plantains in the clubhouse, and someone walked in and said it “smelled like piss.”
I wish I could say I was shocked, but I wasn’t.
It reminds me of a post floating around here, of Ellen making fun of Chinese people’s names. The person who posted it said that their names were beautiful in ways that Ellen couldn’t even imagine.
It just matches this overall theme of Americans handling different cultures so callously, with no respect at all. 
The only time they appreciate it, is if they’re fetishizing it. 
For those of you who have had traditional Nigerian stew (or any other Nigerian food), you probably noticed how labor-intensive it was. Our food is cooked with so much love, and passion. Eating it in America is such a beautiful and emotional experience. It’s not processed. It’s real food, that holds real nutritional value. Not only that, it holds real sentimental value.
Cooking our food at a campus like Georgia Southern can make an international student feel just slightly more at home.
But people ruined that. It’s sad.