In my country...

How was the Ukranian liquour? The African food?

The Ukranian liquor (cognac) was provided by Taras, in the pink shirt above, right,(and white shirt in the group photo.) The African food was to have been provided by Kayode (pronounced Cayote), in the yellow African robe above, but women got in the way.

The food was cooked, and while we waited for it to cool, we heard from Kayode about marriage in Nigeria. He has only one wife because, as he said, with a slight amendment to the original, 'no woman, no cry; many women, much cry'.

He did not rule out marrying another woman later when, he said, his current wife would demand that he take another wife so that she could be relieved of her household duties. She would then be able to order the younger wife to run her bath, cook dinner, carry her things from the market.

By the time we had heard about how Nigerian women kneel to greet their husbands, how men can touch an unmarried woman anywhere he likes if she sells him oranges, it was 11.45 pm, and we still hadn't eaten. In any case my tongue was hurting too much. Cultural differences can be very challenging.

Food has, however, been more forthcoming on other occasions; the State Department has been very generous to us. Every day we are given $26.00 to spend on food in the campus cafeterias, which is more than enough. However, today a third cafeteria was revealed to us, and such a land of plenty as was this cafeteria has never been seen before. It actually won a prize for the best campus food in America.

Well deserved! And, for $11.00 you could eat all you wanted.

I personally immediately consumed at least $11.00 worth of blueberries. Twice.

Food of many varieties - chinese, Thai, Indonesian, African, Italian; vegetarian, fresh and healthy, deep fried and greasy, roast beef and mashed potatoes, three salad bars, all the coffee, tea, sprite, soda and coke you can drink. And donuts. Lots and lots of donuts. Homeresque proportions of donuts.

I am sorry to say a number of my colleagues exercised no restraint at all. Several loaded up three dinner plates, combining, for example, macaroni cheese, ginger soy chicken, chips and mayonnaise, with cous cous salad and roast beef.

And then there was dessert.

Suddenly the obesity epidemic made total sense. And here in New England, it is clearly a very serious epidemic.