Do African men cook??

 Do African men cook?

My Dad worked for a Chinese company during his early days as a young lawyer. I can remember the amazing experiences I had while growing up, it was like the smell of sand after rainfall. I practically saw these Chinese men involved in cooking. Yes, cooking. 

Today I randomly ran into one of the Chinese men my Dad worked for while shopping with my mom at the market. I watched him carefully prize things he needed to buy. He continually bargained skillfully for the reduction of the prizes. 

I wasn’t totally amazed by this because he usually cooks the food eaten in his house. I know this because most of the time we would spend a day at his house during the festive period. We would watch this man cook, and serve while his wife along with the children would carry out other supporting activities. I must tell you this, he cooks so well! You need to taste his salad, his recipes are rare and I haven’t tasted anything like his salad before. The way he presents his food would make you want to eat every bit of it. I mean excellence!! 

One thing I love about movies is that it opens up the culture of different people right in front of us. I love watching Korean movies a lot, maybe more back then because I haven’t seen a lot recently. 

However back then I noticed that Korean guys cook, clean and serve food. Ordinarily no movie is supposed to overplay or underplay the culture and tradition of the people it seeks to represent. 

This may not be totally based on facts because some movies are really lacking in “research”. To balance this, I would still say that movies almost always reveal the intrinsic cultural realities of certain people. Chinese men cook, Korean men cook, Americans cook as much as we see in their movies. 

Do African men cook?

I cannot totally answer this here because cooking in Africa is very relative. Men who grow up in families that do not impose Cooking on ladies as their standard chores would grow up cooking. 

However what I think is that cooking or not cooking is determined by the culture of the people and their symbols. In Africa it is believed that women cook and men do not cook. Is this right? I won’t say yes or no because we define different activities based on our realities. 

All I’m saying is that cooking isn’t supposed to be a woman’s job but our African culture has made it so. It is very necessary that everyone learns how to carry out domestic responsibilities without relegating it a particular gender. It is not demeaning to cook or clean the house. Parents should encourage their male children to cook as well as the female. These things has to shared amongst everyone in order to reduce work load.