Dog meat: New obsession for young Akalites.
3 min read
Chima Nnebuo (not real name) an Akalite who lives in Malaysia just returned home during the Yuletide. A day after his arrival in his village in Umuaka, he personally went out to a neighbouring village in search of a live dog to buy. About three hours later, he came home with one big dog and a man whom he described as a dog butcher. His neighbours thought he had bought the dog for security reasons. They were wrong.
Nnebuo instructed the man to kill the dog and slaughter it in his presence so as to make sure that no part of its meat would be missing. The butcher obliged.
A few hours later, the butcher had not only finished his work but his second-in-command had already prepared a delicious pepper soup laced with marijuana with the dog meat. Food is ready! Friends of Mr Nnebuo and some family relations gathered in the evening of that day to enjoy a feast of god meat with some foreign wines.
While eating and drinking was going on, some of the guests who partook in the feast requested for more plates of the dog meant pepper soup but Nnebuo bluntly refused to grant their request.
That is the new normal “get-together situation” seen in Umuaka today over dog meat. Unlike before, it was something shameful and almost a taboo to point at someone and label him a god eater. Today, the scenario has drastically changed. Big and ordinary boys in Umuaka now place dog meat on number one position on their menu list. Umuaka Times, after going round the whole 10 villages in the community, observed that there was no village in Umuaka Ebe Iri where dog meat butchers and sellers were not found. The heavy presence of dog meat butchers and sellers in the community has on its own part made the prices of life dogs to go high. Before the obsession for dog meat hit the community, a dog could sell for between N5,000 and N8,000 but in today’s market, the prices of dogs range from N15,000 to N25,000 and even more.
Umuaka Times findings showed that is not only the boys that eat the dog meat, girls also eat. Several dog meat sellers Umuaka Times visited their business premises, told the newspaper that even girls also come on their own to make some orders for dog meat. A dog meat eater who spoke with Umuaka Times said that the rush for dog meat was as a result of the marijuana which the meat is cooked with. “Most of them who eat the meat smoke marijuana. So when they eat the dog meat pepper soup and drink the soup which is highly laced with igbo, they still get high.”
Dogs themselves are not happy over this plight that has befallen them in the community. An Uba woman who sold her dog in far away Amandugba to a dog meat butcher, was surprised to find out that her dog traced his way back to Uba all the way from Amandugba after 24 hours. The dog sensed that there was a plan to kill it and it had to run back to its original owner in Uba who treated her with love and care.
For those who visit their friends and family relations and they are served pepper soup, Umuaka Times warns that there is a need to ask questions and ascertain the type of meat being served to you anytime you make such visits. Perhaps, dog meat laced with marijuana has been deliciously prepared for you, not minding if your brain has the shock absorbers to accommodate the marijuana shocks or not.
