East Africa solves famine by ordering Endless Shrimp from Red Lobster

Photo by Analyn Cuarto
Photo by Analyn Cuarto

Millions of African citizens ‘enjoy’ lukewarm sea bugs and stale cheddar biscuits

By Klara Woldenga, Humour Editor
After years of severe famine, the citizens of East Africa are finally free from hunger thanks to the power of all-you-can-eat-shrimp. The amazing solution was discovered by John Magufuli, the chairman of the East African Community (an organization composed of six countries in Eastern Africa), who flew to Toronto Canada to attend a conference focusing on issues surrounding worldwide famine.

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before,” said Magufuli. “After attending a panel, I found myself in a Red Lobster. I ordered the Endless Shrimp special, and suddenly I realized that I could feed an entire country with the reckless overindulgences I was being offered! It was brilliant.”

Drought, war, and high food prices are to blame for the upwards of 25 million East Africans that are in need of humanitarian services, so Magufuli proceeded to order 25.5 million orders of Endless Shrimp, just to be safe.

“I ordered them to go, of course,” said Magufuli. “And I stayed away from the breaded shrimp and the linguini shrimp—those fill you up too quickly!”

The server, Jane Dilben, did a double-take after writing down Magufuli’s order.

“At first, I didn’t think I had heard him correctly,” said Dilben. “I mean, who asks for 25.5 million orders of Endless Shrimp? But that guy did, so I got my answer right away—that was nice!”

Dilben quickly went to the kitchen to put in the order and was met with some hesitation from the kitchen staff.

“They weren’t sure if the kitchen could properly fill that order,” said Dilben. “But, I’ve always been told that the customer is always right, so I reminded the chefs of that and they started right on it!”

When Kim A. Lopdrup, the CEO of Red Lobster, received word of this shrimp order, he publicly condemned it, stating that: “Red Lobster is not a company that should produce that ridiculous amount of shrimp. When we started this sea-bug restaurant, our intention was to get customers to overindulge to the point of deep self-loathing, not to solve world hunger.”

Magufuli responded to Lopdrup’s remarks, stating that “It sounds like Lopdrup’s scared he can’t create over three million pounds of shrimp and, therefore, is subject to all of us questioning his masculinity.”

When Lopdrup heard Magufuli’s statement, he responded, “Of course I can make that many shrimp,” and then proceeded to aggressively ask who it was that had told everyone his company couldn’t.

After Lopdrup’s statement, Red Lobster quickly began producing shrimp at an unprecedented rate. Still, the filled orders trickle out of the kitchen slowly, as Red Lobster seeks to pace out their shrimp servings as to keep costs down, but Magufuli is ready for this tactic.

“I have an entire military team dedicated to sitting in the restaurant’s entrance way, picking up the orders, and packing them onto a plane,” said Magufuli. “I also have several people in there politely asking for more cheddar biscuits. They have been in there for four days.”

Marine biologists now estimate that shrimp will become extinct by 2019.