Okonkwo

The Chinese had been in the area for close to six years building roads and railway lines. Suddenly news filtered into Ogidi that a laboratory was being moved from Nnewi to the town. An official from the Ministry  of Agriculture in Awka had come over to discuss this laboratory with important people in the town. The Chinese had been experimenting with yams for a while now and Ogidi’s soil was considered good for what they intended to do.

The laboratory was ready in two months and was officially opened with much fanfare. The Director of the laboratory did not look particularly strong. Mr Wang Li coughed through his speech and it seemed he might faint under the heat. He spoke of developing yams for export and implored the people of Ogidi that jobs would flow into the area and create prosperity when they started large scale farms. They however had to finish all the experiments.

Mr Wang Li surprised everyone when he called for rotten yams to be brought in for a price. The laboratory was flooded. Mama Nneka whose kitchen seemed to make yams rot very quickly made a lot of money when she bought a lot of yams and stored them in her kitchen. She then got different people to go in with her rotten yams to collect payment.

This was meant to be for research purposes. It put money in the hands of the people and smiles on their faces. It was announced that by the next month land with titles would be bought for farming. The Chinese were paying above the market prices. People queued with their title deeds at the make shift Land Acquisition porta cabin. A university Professor was worried with the way Hectares of land were being sold to foreigners. He asked for a leasing arrangement so that families could continue to have ownership of their ancestral land. He was told to shut up. His father had left him no land to inherit, so who was he to say how land owners should manage their property. He was told in no uncertain terms to go and hug his second wife tight and keep his nose out of the business his poverty would not allow him to understand. His books were his second wife. A particular large land owner refused to sell his land. It was in a prime location and in the area where the Chinese wanted to farm. There were many dignitaries sent to his country home to convince him to put pen to paper and die a Billionaire. His children all begged him but he refused because he had been talking to the Professor. He was found dead in bed and the deal went through as his first son was keen on the deal. He had a great befitting burial and the word around town was that he died of stubbornness.

Mr Wang Li announced they had grown yams in the laboratory that were resistant to pests and could grow quite large. The community was invited to witness the produce. People came as far as Obosi, Ihiala, Aguata and even Onitsha to this big meeting.

The display was impressive. One particular type of yam was huge. In front of it was a plate of cooked slices of yam. Dignitaries called up to taste it all nodded as they chewed. This was the best yam ever cooked since the history of the world. The edentulous Mazi Eze was helped onto the podium by his sons. He tasted the yams and clapped his hands in approval. People called the yam Udoji Award for its size. Mr Wang Li then went on to announce that this yam could not rot.

Everybody laughed. Mama Nneka known for her ‘back luck’ kitchen asked to host the yam for three days, ‘and una go see’.

When two weeks later the Udoji Award had not succumbed to the evil spirits in Mama Nneka’s kitchen, people began to take the yam seriously. The murmur in town was that this yam would take over Africa and get Ogidi youth jobs. Things were finally coming together.

A few months to the planting season, the youth of the town were all getting ready for the jobs to come.  That was when the shipments began to come in. Lorries delivering mechanical parts arrived to the main farm site which had been cordoned off. Everyone knew the Chinese were building something very great. The town was buzzing with excitement for prosperity had fallen on them uninvited. So many workers came in from China for the construction which went on all day and all night. Some youth leaders asked when the locals would start being employed and they were told that Phase Two of the project will bring the jobs. Soon people began to hear strange mechanical noises behind the great walls around the farm. No one was allowed in. There was a lot of money in circulation due to the sale of land so the local economy boomed as people spent lavishly.

An announcement was made that the Yam Farm was going to be officially opened and a technological miracle was going to be revealed. On the great day, the dignitaries sat in the covered sitting section while the masses stood a far off in the sun. After the speeches and traditional dances Mr Wang Li announced, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, Okonkwo!’ There was a noise like thunder and out in the distance, what had looked like a heap of sand covered with leaves began to move towards them at great speed. As the leaves flew off to reveal a shiny metallic engine that had a head and eyes, people took to their heels. An announcement was made to calm the crowds and they slowly returned to watch the spectacle. What followed next was a demonstration of how this machine could prepare the ground, plant seed, spray both water and pesticides and fell trees. The tree cutting demonstration was phenomenal. The great machine drove across the large expanse of land and stuck out a giant saw which brought the tree down. This was a robot that would eat Amadioha’s lighting as a light snack. It brimmed with the artificial intelligence of an evil spirit.

A man in the crowd shook his head sadly. ‘Farming as an occupation is over in Ogidi’.

Okonkwo did the entire planting season single handed and worked for twenty hours each day. He only stopped to renew his charge from the solar power plant in the corner of the farm. The harvest the next year could have fed the whole of the State.

The produce was displayed for the cameras and they were promptly shipped off to China. The yam peelings were needed for the development of a Cancer drug that was hoped would fetch the Chinese Billions.

Mr Wang Li promised the good people of Ogidi that after the yam peelings have been removed, the rest of the yams would be made into yam powder which the approved importers in Ogidi could buy. He hoped that the government would be able to afford the cancer drugs for the people when it was ready.

People of Ogidi now travel to Nnewi to buy their yams as they have no farm land to work with. When some young people went to Mr Wang Li to ask for some Udoji Award yam seedlings they could plant in other towns, he found it very funny.

‘My friends, you don’t understand business’ he said.

Hunger

Hunger starts off politely. It greets you with an early morning hug and a kiss which is soon followed by nastiness if food does not appear. Man muss wack afterall. The older people resort to lamentations and philosophy when hunger pangs strike them at a time their fridges and pockets are empty but the babies have not read that memo. They just cry, making sounds designed to go straight to the brain of an adult and propel them to action. When parents feel impotent in the face of hunger, frustration rises and actions become unpredictable. In the midst of the painful anger the adults get that epiphany of torment: someone somewhere in this town has enough leftovers to feed my family.

People will procrastinate if they can get away with it, so nature makes sure there is no opportunity to, ‘forget to eat’ or ‘forget to feed the baby’. The world stops till that food goes into the mouth.  Various countries quote between 20 to 40% of household food that goes to waste. That is not adding the percentage of farm produce that rots away after harvest or gets intentionally burnt so as not to flood the market with food and upset the price structure.

In the abundance of water, the fool is thirsty says Bob Marley but the hungry may disagree. They do not have access to food. They are not so foolish as not to know they are hungry and neither are they so dumb that they cannot guess which part of town has well stocked fridges. They are wise enough to known that they cannot just turn up at a house and bang on the gates asking to be let in so that they could have dinner with the rich guys. Na today?!

¹⁹ “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. ²⁰ At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores ²¹ and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

Hunger can get so bad that people migrate from their homes to go and live illegally outside the gates of the rich in expectation of a few crumps. This new location guarantees nothing as the parable told by Jesus clearly shows. Death comes to take away the starving beggar on a chariot with space for two. The rich man too is taken but the food is left behind.

Hunger was meant to be a beautiful thing. It is a most gentle reminder that it is time to eat. This prevents people from wasting away. People always need to be reminded to do things, even paying the bills for what they have purchased. The gentle reminder is always followed by the bailiffs who come looking for property they can confiscate. Hunger has its own metabolic bailiffs that eat away at the body’s stored fat if there is no food in the stomach. This is a painful process and the individual starts to lose weight.

The world of leftovers is a strange one. Humans work so hard for food then throw it away. Chop-remain, is what the village people call it. There is a stigma attached to eating the leftovers of others but when hunger ‘catches you’ all stigmas are forgotten. Hunger is democratised in Nigeria. The boys of Bornu state experience it in the same way the girls in Calabar do. Once that fire burns, there is no tribal discrimination in choosing food to douse the flames and pangs. For the hungry lad in Borno who prefers to eat his own type of food, preferences melt like wax under the thermal glory of hunger. Anything will do, from the Amala and Ewedu from the West to the Afang soup of the East, he go rush dem. Apart from the ‘catching , Nigerian hunger sometimes joins forces with the hot sun and greedy mosquitoes to beat Nigerians. Hunger beating you is both a physical, psychological and spiritual abuse. The lashes are lavish and make the victim cry out loud, (usually to God), asking why they were born in this country and why their parents no get moni? Next comes the raining of curses on the heads and graves of everyone who has ruled Nigeria till date. The lashing intensifies despite the cries.

Suddenly the object of the hungry man’s hatred turns up and throws some bank notes at him and he smiles, grabs the money and runs off to buy that eba so that belle go gauge. It is election time after all.

It is impossible to discuss National hunger without a mention of Politics and Leadership as the agricultural policies and investments lies in the hands of the government and those Civil Servants that should be serving the hungry with plates of food. Anyone in charge of any local government area, State or Country should no longer feel at ease when they are in possession of the information that there are citizens under their watch going to bed hungry; that is with empty stomachs, fridges and wallets. Just what is the prestige of presiding over starving people whose brains are being burnt up for metabolic fuel? Where would National development come from when the people are in survival mode?

A 15 car procession of a governor speeding past hungry Africans on the way to the airport is an absurd curse rather than a prestigious show of strength. That is like meeting a finely dressed man out in the streets with a $40,000 watch and his kids are crying for bread at home. It would be impossible to respect such a father. The truth of the matter is that the leader of the starving is really starving, no matter how much he has in his wallet. The people may be starved of food and dignity but the leader is starved of his humanity. Ask the leader about this he would reply, ‘did they tell you my children are starving? Second bass jare!’

A Naija Food Beauty Contest

Our people say that ‘Monkey no fine but im mama love am’. Such is love in the eyes of the beholder. A perception contaminated by geography, blood and genetics. They say that beauty attracts people to come together but character keeps them together. With food the beauty is magnetic but it is the taste that keeps you coming back for more.

Everything is a contest in today’s world. Television has cooking contests that are quite popular in the UK. It is a kind of X -Factor for the kitchen alchemists, who all fight like gladiators for the winning prize. Usually the judges on these shows taste the food to score it and we know how subjective that can be. Till Elon Musk or some other clever person invents an AI (Artificial Intelligence) food taster it will be biased judges for the foreseeable future.  It would be great to have food analysis apps attached to smart phones that can scan and pick up any contaminants accidentally, carelessly or intentionally added to the food. This would please that Naija cohort who have been expecting to be poisoned for twenty years so far and are still on hypervigilance mode.

Food can look beautiful but every man is a Judge in his own gastric court. Now the beauty on the plate has nothing to do with the smell or the taste. Some Food handlers  know how to design food artistically in ways that make you want to forfeit the meal and hand it over to the Tate gallery for displays. Some Food handlers from hell will revolt you. You know those odd people who think dogs, snakes and alligators are food. Once those nasty plates are seen it takes weeks to get them off the mind.

I find that sliced paw paw on a white plate is incredibly alluring. The bright colours seem to light up some area of the brain that brings satisfaction. I don’t particularly care if I eat that fruit or not but I find it attractive. If I were a judge on any food beauty pageant, paw paw will win hands down. Second will be those wonderfully shaped cakes I wouldn’t eat. There is really much to say about the virtues of looking and not eating. The feasting of the eyes is a great past time.

Every man should belong to a team of Judges that walk in packs looking out for gastronomy beauty. The buffet section at parties or in restaurants, with their long line up of food, look at each other then set their eyes on the Judges. ‘Would they love me?’ they ask themselves as we walk on by. Further down the line the moin moin looks sideways to the dodo and says, ‘fine food like me? Na dem dey rush us’. The Judges look and choose the best. The coconut rice suddenly finds its voice and starts to sing, ‘I’m a wonderful thing baby’ like a little kid from Sierra Leone with a Creole accent. But this is a beauty contest and the judges will decide who is finest.

That smooth round pounded yam moulded by hands gifted in geometry is a delight to look at. Fried rice looks good in a large silver dish. It has so many little bits of colourful edibles.  Next is grilled fish lying on its side at full stretch. The fish lies in state at its majestic funeral having lived a life well spent. Growing in size so that it is fit for the banquet where it arrives dead, spiced and fully cooked. It will rest in peace in someone’s stomach swimming with the Fanta. Fish is fine when motionless and at peace. The heaped up chicken is not a pretty sight. Neither is the stewed beef that always seems like it is attempting to swim in a dried up river.

Looks are deceptive and many get to their tables after being seduced by what they saw, only to be greeted by all the pepper in Kano as they take their first spoon. All na hustle. The food must attract someone. Sometimes in parties inexperienced people make comments about the wowo (ulgy) food. They shout to people who are about to sink a spoon into a dish, ‘I wouldn’t eat that poison if I were you. I wonder who cooked it?’

‘I did it. On my feet all night’ comes the reply from the chef who has been orbiting her creation wondering why nobody is taking a bite. It can be soul destroying to be rejected by people but such is life. That is why some hate competitions among school children as some would come first and others would come last. They try to protect kids from the harsh realities of life. These are the same kids who are sat in the car seeing mansions along the road while they make their way to their tiny flat. No one can be protected from the fact that all the fingers on the hand are of different lengths.

If one’s fried rice looks like Tuwo Shikafa wearing make- up, one’s pepper soup might win the prize. One man’s soup is another man’s poison so it works out well for all in the end.

There is a trend of escalating beauty on social media. Lagbaja said - wowo girls don finish for Nigeria. Everyone has long hair and finger nails and flawless skin. It might be flawed skin buried under layers of Mary Kay but no one is washing off the twelve coats of paint to check.

The same applies to food. It gets prettier by the day especially on Instagram. Food now has a team of people sorting out the photoshoot. Backgrounds, fine plates, shining cutlery and good lighting produce pictures of food one normally only sees in a dream.

I wonder if this escalating beauty is a problem. It can be irritating trying to eat dinner on a date with someone obsessed with photographing every plate that comes. The actions are intrusive but the photographer is hell bent on showing that their plate – betta pass my neighbour’s. There is a competition to show your food fine pass. A short twenty years ago, there were only two people involved in a dinner date. Now it is all the followers on Instagram, monitoring spirits on Facebook and the Ogbanje spirits on Twitter lamenting they are soaking Garri at home while slay ‘cuisine’ Mama is living it up.

Izzz like everybody is contesting in a beauty contest. The good thing is no one takes selfies with the food when it comes out at the other end. Halleluyah!

Musical Plate

Nigerian Jollof was made for music as was all the other Naija foods. Pepper soup in a steamy bowl congested with assorted floating and submerged edibles is best swallowed with Peacocks International Guitar band playing that guitar that makes one forget the problems of life and slurp away happily. The Eddie Quansah song drowns out the noisy eating habits of your neighbour and prevents the panic when pepper goes the wrong way and someone starts choking. ‘Bros, drink water’ someone says and passes a glass and pats him on the back. Once the danger has passed, someone else teases, ‘Your village people don start again o’.

There are some Nigerian foods that would refuse to go down the gullet without music especially if more than twenty people are present. I recall eating at a party when the music stopped and all we had was the clinking of cutlery, chewing noises, coughing and noisy conversation enveloping us with an unpleasant sound cloud and sonic drizzle. The silence was unbearable.

Love, music and food all get along fine in the Naija ecosystem. The musicians are not oblivious to this fact and the food references abound in Naija music that we all love.

Oni dodo Oni Moin moin is a Yoruba folk song that has been covered both by Fela Kuti and Sam Apkabot at different times. That song floods my mind with visions of hot rice, slices of dodo and moin moin all baptised with the sprinkling upon of hot bright red tomato stew. Dodo is one of my favourite foods and the way the song emphasises the sound dodo makes the Naija mouth water. Fresh Dodo can never keep a secret of its presence. It could be fried at the east end of the street and the smell travels through the air tormenting each house till it gets to the end of the street and dances back.

Moin moin is made from grown beans, and beans features in another Yoruba folk song that went thus:

There is oil, there is beans

I am not afraid to have twins

Because there is oil, there is beans

Now what is better that a rice and beans orchestra? The thoughts that these song evoke produce dancing vibrations in the soul.

Bunny Mack was from Sierra Leone but his monster hit, Let me love you was loved and adopted by Nigerians

You are my sweetie my sugar

My baby My lover

In my youth when I saw nothing wrong in chewing on a cube of St Louis or Tate sugar, this song struck a chord. Gone are those days of blissful ignorance when I had no Diabetic patients.

In recent times my ability to cope with spices has waned and I avoid Shito at all costs. Just looking at it in a jar takes my gastric pH southwards but I love the wonderful personal irony when I get all emotionally involved in Runtown’s Mad Over you

Ghana girl, say she wan marry me o

I hope say she sabi cook waakye

Hope your love go sweet pass shito

Hmmm, sounds like pure reflux oesophagitis love to me. Another ironic twist is from none other than the KokoMaster himself who equated his ‘hotness’ to Hot Amala to gi  a gaan gaan in the song Gbono Feli Feli.

Now I am not an amala eater but I feel good about the song till date. And sometimes when I am really feeling myself, I think, Hmmmm! African Michael Jackson! Na dem dey rush us!!

Nothing is as attractive as hot food, after all the salesmen tell us that good merchandise sells like hot cake.

Newer sounds like Solid star and Tiwa Star sing about Baby Jollof my love, you too sweet like jollof make me wonder if a girl can be sweet like Nigerian Jollof? Hmmm, expectations should be kept attainable please.

When Duncan Mighty sang in the studio with Tiwa Savage in the song  Lova Lova, I wonder if it was real love or hunger

This your love sweet, Ofada Rice

Nne you too Sweet like a Yam Porridge.

Now to the elephant in the room. You cannot go four songs on any Naija play list without thinking all music recording studios in Nigeria are located on a plantation or on Banana Island. There is an epidermic of Banana references which risks flooding the ears with Potassium. This phase will pass hopefully and I am not a big fan of Banana music. Well I used to be when Dan I recorded Monkey Chop.

It was a big hit in the seventies and the chorus was everywhere

Monkey come chop Banana. I still don’t  understand the song till now.

But when it comes to love songs and food, the best example is down to the KokoMaster ; Dbanj

When to Kokomaster fall in love

You know say water don pass Garri

My sweet Potato

I wanna tell you my mind

My Sugar banana

As I don get you if I say make I hammer

I am not quite sure what the recipe for sugar banana is but I guess the KokoMaster has some form of Gastronomic Immunity and artistic licence in that kitchen of his.

There is no doubt that music can affect our emotional states and modify our food seeking behaviour especially in groups. In parties with very good DJs people dance for hours and the drinks and food always run out. Fast paced music ‘gingers’ people up and they in turn expend more energy, sweat more and drink more. Even when eating alone, I then to play some music. Listening to the humming of the fridge or electric generator and air conditioners (depending on which country I am in) is bad for eating. On flights that depressing white noise that aircraft engines give of is replaced with the inflight entertainment. The meals are usually just nothing to fly home about but I guess that is why everyone is given ear phones at the beginning of the flight.

In all matters of the stomach, just as it is with love, ambience is paramount. And the quickest way to set the mood is via music.

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.

Something Light

Unscrupulous individuals give ‘something light’ a bad name. You know them. They consider eating two portions of pounded yam, each the size of a new born baby's head as something light. Simply because they usually eat eight portions, but are now down with malaria and have lost the inbuilt greed. The greedy ones have all been born.

We are here to claim light back from the darkness of crude greed. The light something is really a snack.  It is a portion of food that will not stretch the belly of a toddler. This is food that caresses the palate and makes the mouth yearn for more. Pepper soup, thin slices of paw paw, akara, few ground nuts and the like.

I must warn that when a Naija uses the word ‘something’ in reference to food, they are lying at worst or being vague and misleading at best. Like the guy who is invited to join someone eating a meal who says, ‘thanks, I have just had something’. The fact that he strokes his abdomen as he speaks and looks at the plate with disgust betrays his hunger. Naijaz are never vague when it comes to food and might even give unwanted details. Offer some people a drink and they tell you how full they are by not only listing the meals they have had in the last twenty hours, but they throw in the genealogy of the goat that featured in the pepper soup.

Snacks which are also called small chops are the real light somethings. Naijaz have incorporated foods from all over the world in the creation of our small chops list but I will concern myself with snacks which can best be described as authentic Naija food.

There is no place like a Naija wedding for understanding the importance of small chops. The affairs tend to run late because of circumstances beyond anyone’s control,  and it seems the late arrival of key participants is always linked to a hair dresser. So you leave the church and take photographs then it is off to the wedding reception.

With everyone hungry, people are ushered to various tables. Like it is in FIFA World Cup Groups there is always that Group of death. The table that devours its inhabitants because there is a super hungry guy with a prominent Adam’s apple sitting there. The type of guy Fela sang about in the song Kalakuta show.

Look di man he dey waka

Hunger dey run for im face (woko -woko woko –woko)

Once seated at this table the lateness continues and the DJ tries his best to help you forget your hunger by making you deaf. Then the small chop bowls arrive, Halleluyah! Then malt drinks with no bottle top openers. Now due to politeness no one wants to be the first to make a move for the snacks and the gentlemen will usually offer the bowls of finger foods to the ladies. But not on the table of death and starvation. The super hungry man just reaches out both hands as big as shovels and grabs all the puff puff. Next he brings out his bottle opener from his bunch of 20 keys (which includes a miniature pen knife), and opens two bottles of malt for himself! At this stage the wise people excuse themselves and seek another table.

The small chops are used to keep you hanging on while you endure stale jokes from the MC that you have read on your WhatsApp groups years ago. That is till the main food arrives; Party Jollof Rice.

Here is a list of the life -saving snacks that keep Naijaz from fainting at weddings and parties operating on African time

 Puff puff

Small, tasty and just like Bonny Light, easily processed, this snack is the King of all Naija finger foods. Couples that had no puff puff at their wedding reception need to go and remarry themselves. It is made from frying a mixture of plain wheat flour, oil and dried yeast till it becomes golden brown.  

Chin Chin

This crunchy snack that comes in small hard cubes is prepared from deep frying dough made up of plain flour and margarine. This snack should come with a health warning. The hard granite like cubes of goodness can break a tooth or dislocate a jaw bone. All dignity is lost as the jaws are converted into a pressurised grinding machine causing the chin to vibrate at an astounding frequency. Maybe this chin action gives the snack its name.

While on the topic of losing dignity we might as well go there.

Sugar cane

I call this the snack of madness. A country eats all its sugar cane and imports sugar? It is messy to eat and spit out. People look like Panda’s eating bamboo when they feast on sugar cane. It is child abuse to have kids clear up the mess after adults have eaten this snack. Worse comes when the sugar ants congregate on the messy left overs. Thank goodness no one has been mad enough to serve this Bamboo look-a-like at a wedding ceremony.

Nuts

Ground nuts and guguru (popcorn) keep the mouth busy and keeps hope alive while waiting for that Party Jollof rice. The only problem here is people dip their fingers in the nuts and some fall back into the bowl. Now I have been to parties and seen how some people wash their hands in the loo. Enough said.

Akara

Bean cakes are Naija’s equivalent of hot crossed buns. They have the powers to ginger you out of your lethargic on a cold harmattan morning especially when there is Ogi (Pap) to assist it in the journey down that dark tunnel that leads to the stomach. It is made from frying blended beans which has been spiced to taste.  

Plantain Trilogy

Fried thin slices of unripe plantain are called Ipkekere (Plantain chips) and when ripe plantain is fried it is called Dodo. Roast plantain is Boli. Dodo goes well with rice, yam and moin moin.

Meats

Snails, gizzards, suya and kilishi (dried beef) can be used as starters before the main meal.

Miscellaneous

Other snacks which are usually not available in weddings but can be obtained from road side food vendors include, Suya, Roasted or boiled Maize alongside Coconut, fried yams and various fruits such as oranges, agbalumo, banana  mangoes and pears.

Kuli kuli which is fried peanut paste is popular for some as is coconut candy. Some snack on Tapioca and other love termites and maggots off the palm trees.

Mosa which is fried mash plantain mixed with eggs, pepper and flour is eaten in Northern Nigeria.

Summary.

For some, anything that is not Swallow is something light. People like this never waste time with snacks. The party starts for them when the swallow arrives. We hope and pray that something light will appear at the end of their dark tunnel of deception one day.

Hardest Naija Meals to make

Cooking is like bringing love and beauty to the world. The chef has ingredients playing their individual instruments in a gastronomic orchestra which has to be blended seamlessly into a homogenous entity. The audience come for love and beauty. Once that curtain is drawn and the burners come on, the clock starts ticking and the already great expectations go through the roof.

It is a big responsibility to satisfy the hungry with love and beauty served on a plate. Each comes with an appetite and some sense of entitlement. They might have paid some money or perhaps feel that family ties qualify them to be fed on demand.

Just like the great orchestra conductor’s work does not start at show time, the same applies to the chef. There are manuscripts to pore over, ancient recipes for success that have to be practiced over and over again. Instruments have to be in tune and played with fervour. The chef plans the meal, keeps a mental note of what elements are needed and goes to great trouble to assemble a great cast. Once the burners come on, it is a race against the clock. The meat would not be fresh forever and once in the hot water it has a narrow window of opportunity to transform from raw talent to finished article while at the same time being in rhythm with every other pot occupant that gets added at different stages of the performance. Movements of the hand come at strategic times in the process and the chef conducts alone.

 The Urhobos have a soup called Esha (Isha) cooked with a special Esha beans that needs six hours of cooking as a preliminary before the soup is cooked the next day. The most popular Urhobo soup is Owoevwri (Owo soup) which can be ready in ninety minutes. If Owo is a 100 meters sprint then Esha is an arduous marathon.

This no doubt is the hardest soup (Esha) to make in Urhobo land (Located in the Niger Delta) and was only eaten in my childhood at the Christmas and New Year seasons when there was time to prepare the ingredients and boil that beans that took forever to get cooked.

The preparation of Apku from the cassava stage is another lengthy process. There are some meal preparations that can best be described as aerobic workouts or hard labour. Long before the arrival of instant Pounded Yam powders (that contain rice, potatoes and starch with about only 60-70% yam) people actually pounded boiled yam in a mortar with a pestle. As a young lad it was not unusually to hear Lagos neighbours pounding away across the street. In a tropical country sweat flies everywhere at the hint of exertion and this was why we always heard the wives talk about all the sweat I have put into this marriage during all marital disputes.

The Naija kitchen can be a very hot and lonely place. It is predominantly inhabited by the ladies (or female domestic home helps). Some things make the meals very hard to conjure up and in retrospect it has nothing to do with the technicalities of the food making process. Below are a list of the hardest Naija meals to make.

Cooking meals with limited money

Once the next meal’s arrival is unsure, the meal at hand becomes hard to make. Positive people may say ‘eat today and sleep but let tomorrow take care of tomorrow’. One really needs a strong mind bursting with faith to cook the last food in the house, singing happily and knowing fully well that hunger like mosquitoes always come back. Mums may not announce to the family that she is serving the last supper to spare the kids of the burden of worry. Some kids might complain about what’s for supper during the cooking process. That is when sweat and tears mix on a sad face.

I don’t know where the next meal is coming from

Cooking for funerals

At a time when the bereaved should be comforted, they are busy cooking for the whole village in the name of doing a befitting burial. Men in black turn up looking a bit sad then give the bereaved a hug worth N1000 and proceed to drink beer and wine worth N3,000 and eat food worth N6,000. Why should someone who has just had the worst news of their lives be at the market buying dry fish and yams by the truck load? The ironic thing is if the food is very good, greedy relatives would start to ask if there was a Will and if their name was mentioned in it.

Cooking under these circumstances is tiring. People would gladly cook four times the amount of food and go days without sleep for a joyful occasion such as a wedding but Naija culture wants a carnival because someone had a stroke and died.

Cooking for a neurotic man

Some Naija men don’t eat soups that have been in the fridge. It has to be straight from the pot to the plate. This kind of men are not usually the indomie type. It has to be pounded yam and their favourite soup. You wonder what these men think refrigeration was invented for.  Talk about a hard knock life!

These crazy men also never cook.  It is almost as absurd as a guy saying he never watches highlights to his team’s Premiership matches on the television as his taste is live games. Then he asks someone else to buy his season ticket for home games and pay his transport costs and stadium entry fees for all away matches.

My village people will tell him that before you grow the teeth of a rabbit be prepared to grow the lip to cover it. New soup ko, new flame ni.

Cooking when pregnant

To bend down and open the oven can be problematic when you are carrying a large oven on your abdomen.

Cooking while lonely and depressed

The monotony of doing repetitive tasks that have been done so many times before such as peeling potatoes or slicing tomatoes means that one slips into automatic actions needing no thoughts as all actions are done instinctively. That is when the mind really travels. Regrets, sadness, guilt, people who are missed all come flooding into the mind. Tears flow while standing alone in a hot kitchen. No one but the chef knows how hard it was to get those plates of food infused with love and beauty to the table.

What Naijaz eat

‘Where shall we meet again? In the thunder lightening or in the rain?’ asked the British delegate as the diaries were brought out. The Naija contingent to the conference looked on with barely concealed disdain.

‘For what? You and who in lightening? Do I look like Shango’s girl friend? Please it is this same Buka, same time next week abeg’. The British murmured among themselves about how much ‘those Nigerians love their food’ on the flight back home and with good reason.

The 197 Million Nigerians featured on the Worldometer website must be eating a lot of things to have that ‘live’ number going up every 15 seconds. With about 250 tribes in Nigeria with each boasting of their own cuisine, there is such a wide variety of foods to go through and not every Tom, Dick and Garri can be mentioned.

Every area of Nigeria has staple foods. The staples can be divided roughly into the dough like meals (also called Swallows or Solids) that are eaten with soups and the ‘others’ rice, bread, beans, plantains and yams.

Beef, chicken and fish are quite popular. Game and snails are favoured by some but with the recent spate of Lassa fever infections (first described in Lassa Town, Nigeria in 1969 when the Virus killed two Missionary Nurses) the demand for ‘bush meat’ or ‘grass cutter’ is on the wane

The Swallows –

Cassava derived meals like Apku (Fermented Cassava), Starch, Lafun (Cassava flour), and Garri

Yam derived meals like Amala (Yam flour) and Pounded yam

Meals made from grains like Tuwo Dawa – Guinea corn flour, Tuwo Massara – Maize flour and Tuwo Shinkafa (boiled rice)

Durum wheat based pastes – Semovita and Semolina

Plantain derived meals – Plantain flour paste or ‘fufu’

Cocoyam meal- Ebiripo

The big combo – Pounded yam, Cocoyam and plantain all blended into one, (an Okrika/Ijaw Swallow)

The Soups-

Certain soups are well loved in different parts of the country. Pepper soups and the tomato stew cuts across most state boundaries and have become national dishes but most soups like languages tend to be concentrated in geo-nutritional zones.

The North

Miyan Kuka (Baobab leaves soup), Muyina Taushe (Pumpkin soup) Miyan Zogale (Zogale vegetable) and Miya Karkashi

Middle belt

Soya bean chicken soup

The West

Ewedu soup

Niger Delta (South south)

Owo soup and Banga Soup

South East

Ofe Nsala, Afang and Edikang Ikong soups

Due to the strong emotions that foods stir up due to their closeness to a peoples’ sense of identity, myths are bound to spring up around some certain foods which adds a degree of mystic to them.

Santana/ Apku/Loi-loi

This meal is made from fermented Cassava dough and has the power to make your visitors and neighbours ask if ‘una kill persin here as dead bodi dey smell?’ This Apku preparation is a bit like child birth. When the baby arrives, the joy takes over. This meal is eaten with a soup of choice and is famed to have Duracell battery like powers that makes the body work for twelve hours without a break and with no sign of fatigue; hence its popular name of six to six (6am-6pm staying power).

A favourite among Igbos in South Eastern Nigeria it sometimes plays second fiddle to Pounded yam which is made from the King of Crops; Yams.

Miyam Kuka

This soup is quite popular up North and best eaten with Tuwo. Made from the leaves of the most iconic tree on the planet, the Baobab tree also called the Tree of life, this is a meal that satisfies by reaching parts of the body and soul that other soups do not reach (allegedly).

The oldest trees in Africa are Baobab trees and that adds an esoteric property to the leaves.

Edikang Ikong

This soup that is cooked by the Efik and Ibibio peoples of the South Eastern part of Nigeria has an aura about it. People say that if a lady from that part of the country cooks this meal for a man, he loses his head and falls madly in love with her. It could just be that with so much variety in one pot a man is sure to have all his gastronomic desires met (my theory). The soup is more congested than a packed Molue and contains water leaves, goat meat , beef, dried fish, snail, stock  fish, cow skin, palm oil, periwinkles and crayfish. Enough to make the poor chap think, ‘I don’t get this at home, but why?’

Ukodo

At the risk of being labelled as biased I would simply say that Ukodo cooked by the right person in the right pot with the right yams and dried fish can reset your destiny. This meal is popular among the Urhobos of the South south.

Amala

For the Yorubas who inhabit the south western part of Nigeria, it might be safe to say that their world revolves around Amala. Made from Yam flour, it has the ability to make well- dressed people throw caution to the wind and risk stains on expensive fabric. And these are people dressed in white sometimes. Having observed from close quarters I am beginning to think that Amala and that Gbegiri soup has some mind altering capabilities. It gives the eater an Amala world view. Phrases like, best thing since sliced bread makes Amala aficionados laugh inwards. They know that Amala is the best thing since the records of the best things in Nigeria began and that Amala is the only Titan that exists on the plates of Nigeria. The Nass Native American tribe have a mythological giant called Amala who suspends the whole world on a stick. The day he tires and drops the stick, the world ends. For some in Nigeria, the world will surely end the day you tell them that the wooden spatula has refused to stir the yam flour anymore.

Miscellaneous

Jollof rice, moin mon, Ngwo ngwo (assorted meat in a soup), Isiewu (Goat head soup), Coconut rice, Achicha (Dried Cocoyam Pottage), Miya Kubewa and Gwaten Doya (Yam pottage) all keep the Nigerian stomachs happily engaged.

I must end with this; at every meal time an increasing number of Nigerians have been having a dish called no meal. This is due to poverty and things need to change. Apart from people who are fasting or trying to lose weight, everyone else has a fundamental human right to eat something at every meal time. Abi I lie?