Cameroon, please eat before you drink!

Veteran journalist Charly Ndi Chia often joked that it is wrong to eat on an empty stomach. Literally speaking, he meant, rather oddly, that one must first drink (alcohol) before eating, a reversal of the popular maxim that “It is wrong to drink on an empty stomach.” By the maxim, not Ndi Chia’s sarcastic distortion, folks are advised to follow the normal sequence: eat before drinking (water or whatever else, if they must). It suggests that feeding is essential to the body but drinking (alcohol) is a luxury. In other words, business before pleasure. Whatever was Ndi Chia’s intention in…