Nigeria: 'I Eat Raw Meat, So What?'
Jaafar Jaafar
24 February 2008
analysis
Kano — Think of eating N6,500 worth of suya, barbecue, grilled meat, nay think of eating any other delicacy of that worth at one go - surely it will be a Herculean task. But a middle aged man eats raw meat worth N6,500, as Sunday Trust reports
Only last week in Kantin Kwari, Market in the heart of Kano city, a drama broke out when a trader dared a man to eat raw meat at his (the trader) expense. Without cutting the raw beef to more palatable size, he devoured the whole meat in no time! Waging his tongue around his lips after leaking his bloody fingers, he told the crowd: "I need more if you can buy for me." No one dared to buy again.
When the butcher whose meat was eaten raw treaded the nooks and crannies of the market vying for a costumer, grumbling inwardly that it was a bad day, little did he know that the meat worth N6,500 that dangles precariously on his head in a wide tray would be bought on that spot.
The butcher further narrated that he was about to leave the line when a trader beckoned him to bring his wares for a bargain, which he sluggishly delivered. "I have never seen a man like this in my life. He devours raw meat with haste and zeal of a hyena," the lucky butcher said.
Muhammadu Sani, a.k.a. Saiti dan Garba, a middle-aged man, is one silly character that draws crowd wherever he goes. The traders of Kantin Kwari Market attested that Saiti is very easy-going and trustworthy porter who is trusted by all the traders. Saiti is a man who earns his living by running errand for the wealthy traders and people sometimes pay him to play out the art of eating raw meat to them but no one ever bought to him raw meat of N6,500 worth.
On seeing that Saiti had cleared the raw beef in no time, the crowd chorused in unison: maye (a man who, in Hausa myths, has hereditary magical power of tormenting or killing people without physical encounter). But that quite irked Saiti, who said he is not maye, begging the crowd to stop calling him names. "It is unfair to abuse me, none of my parents and grandparents is maye," Saiti advised the crowd.
But lo and behold, when Saiti cleared the meat, he did not demand for a sachet of water but rather a stick of cigarette. Lighting a stick of Aspen , he dared the man who defrayed the cost of the meat to buy more for him. "If you can buy more for me I am ready to swallow it, and, mark you, nothing will happen to me," picking his teeth, Saiti boasted.
Saiti, who hailed from Jega, Kebbi State , has two wives with 5 children and has been in Kano for over 10 years, running errands. He said he came Kano with the main intension of selling balangu (a kind of grilled meat) not to be market porter. "But when I find the market people very accommodating I forsake the balangu business," he told Sunday Trust.
Saiti dan Garba is sane, very sane, he claimed. Despite the fact that he once lived with a cannibal in Lagos , Saiti dan Garba told Sunday Trust that he is also not cannibal. "I consider this nothing that merit the gathering of this large crowd," he stated.
The strange man told our reporter that he considers eating raw meat just as normal as eating a dish of tuwo. Dipping his sharp canines into a large chunk of uncooked beef, he explained: "The way you eat a dish of tuwo da miya with relish is the same way I eat raw meat with relish," he stated, adding that he sees nothing strange in what he does.
Saiti, who said he prefers uncooked meat to the cooked ones because it improves his health condition, said that he eats raw chicken, lamb, mutton, among others but the only meat he does not eat is pork because Islam does not allow that. He further stated that he prefers beef to any other meat because of its high cholesterol level. Buttressing his point in his heavy Kebbi accent, he stated: " kitsen shina vitamin din," meaning, the fat contains the "vitamin".
Saiti told our reporter that he also eats the bones raw and draws out the juicy marrows of sheep. He said that sheep bone is tenderer for chewing. Crushing a raw cattle bone to demonstrate his ability to this reporter, he said, "I can crush out any bone squeeze out the marrows of it but I prefer sheep bone because of its high level of juice."
He also said that during his days in Lagos , he was once a mayor of one notorious bridge where a cannibal was once arrested. "My days in Lagos were very adventurous. I was once a porter at Isolo and I was then very familiar. Even in Lagos , they knew me as raw meat eater. But in Lagos there was too much pomo and I hate eating raw pomo because there was a day it wrought serious havoc on my teeth," he expressed, adding that one of his precious teeth nearly went off in the process.
Saiti recalled that he started eating raw meat since he was seven years old and up till today it does nothing to him. On whether he learned eating raw meat from the arrested cannibal, he answered in the negative, saying he does not eat human flesh but can eat when some one dares him. Saiti, who was named so because of his marksmanship in all his endeavours, said: "I hate challenge in life and whoever dares to challenge me kisses the dust."
Don't you think it will be harmful to you? He replied Sunday Trust: I swear it will not do anything to me, he said, explaining to our reporter that it is just like taking a bag of 'pure water'. "If you drink a bag of pure water, what would happen to you?" he asked.
Revealing more on his novel art and how healthy uncooked meat makes him, Saiti said he has been certified healthy several times and no matter how much an intake he had at one go, he said he does not take drug to ease digestion.
"There was once a time that an incident occurred soon after I finished eating a bowl of raw meat. I was informed that two friends of mine were involved in an accident and they urgently need some pints of blood to survive, I rushed to the hospital and donated 3 bags of blood to them. Doctors gave me a clean bill of health, eating raw meat makes me even healthier," he declared.
According to Dr Faruq Garba Kazaure, the major diseases uncooked or contaminated meat are Listeria monocytogenes, a very deadly disease that has symptoms like sever headache, diarrhea, nausea, stomach pain, fever, among others. He added that eating raw meat also causes E-coli, a disease that affects kidney and often cause its failure, noting temperature of 165 degree Fahrenheit is needed to kill pathogenic bacteria like E-coli and Salmonella.
"Salmonella, cholera, food poisoning, bird flu, trichinellosis infection, toxoplasmosis and dysentery may also attack person who eats raw meat," Dr Faruq stated.
But the surprising side of the story is: According to Saiti, he is immune to all the diseases mentioned by the medical expert because the symptoms of all the diseases have never manifested in his body.
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