The joys of food

Wilson Orhiunu

First Gentleman with Wilson Orhiunu

Email: babawill2000@gmail.com Twitter: @Babawilly

My son said “write an article about the foods you have enjoyed and how the dishes made you feel”.  I thought that would be an impossible article to write till I gave it a bit of thought. I have written a few poems with food and drink references already.

Ukodo tonight

Tonight’s the night

We celebrate our love

You’ve been to Igbudu market

To buy choice yams

Some crayfish

Alligator pepper

And dry fish

I am on my way home

For Ukodo tonight

 

It’s been 12 months

Since we both said “I do”

Oh, how sweet time flies

With a candle-lit dinner

We are insured against Nepa

Let’s celebrate

We have made it this far

Stir that boiling froth real slow

Yes, my appetite is higher

Than any Warri T.V aerial

For Ukodo tonight

 

Franca De La Renta

I tried hard to date her

She ate all my suya

And now I am a pauper

She says it’s all over

 

She no sabi cook

I didn’t learn my lesson

Went there for Easter lunch

She served one kain egusi soup

that looked like oil spill

Palm oil floats above

Submerged vegetables

Was on the loo all night,

and in the morning, saw my doctor

That babe no sabi cook

It’s true just cannot cook

Town crier warn the neighbourhood

That lady just can’t cook

 

Kai kai Lady

The babe you suckled

Lies comatose, succumbed to milk and Kai kai

Oblivious to mosquitoes that

gyrate in its small ears

The ill-informed suck your blood

but it goes straight to their Anopheles brains

Unbalanced in flight

As Ogogoro takes over

So here is a brief tour of my memories on food-related matters. Growing up in Lagos meant I grew up with the sounds of food vendors with sweet voices singing about the qualities of their products.  These were songs that could induce hunger and thirst in someone who has just had breakfast at home.  To match the voices, the girls had necks that might have been manufactured in Germany for they balanced their trays or epa (peanut) and guguru (popcorn) boxes on their heads while jumping across gutters like gazelles.  These boxes of food made of wood and glass allowed the prospective customer do some window-shopping that is always followed by a purchase. Through the glass in the boxes on their heads one viewed puff-puff, kuli-kuli or coconut candy with great longing.

Guguru and epa was a favourite to look at. I still get déjà when I see the popcorn in cinemas neatly stacked in their glass prisons.  When you called a guguru seller, she didn’t just sell you the product. First, she reaches for the box on her head and lowers it to the floor while the idle men around admired her figure. Next, she played around with the groundnuts and got their skin off. The chaff gets blown out as she tosses the ground nuts in the air and she lets out air at time through pouted lips. As soon as one customer gets his purchase, other onlookers feel left out and they order. Guguru and epa made us happy especially in primary school whenever we had money in our pockets.

On the hot streets of Lagos when it was dry and dusty, like an oasis in the Sahara appeared the Fan ice cream cyclist that carries an ice box with the answers to a thirsty youth’s prayers. Those with money waved him down and as he opened up his ice box held in a metal cradle fitted to the front of his bicycle, the cold mist rose up. Peering into that box on a hot day was like peeping into heaven. Ice lollies lying in ice (or was it liquid nitrogen?) beckoned. You paid and got your taste of heaven; a cold lolly on a hot day.

On the home front, Saturday night was rice and dodo night which was never to be missed.  The Bar Beach Show hosted by Art Alade usually played on the telly and I remember those Face-to-face Football pools adverts which I found so interesting.

Sunday morning was Ukodo morning. Best dish of the week, and we ate to our heart’s content. This was in the 70s.

In the 80s, the best meal was Sunday chicken with jollof rice at the main cafeteria of the University of Benin. Talk about living for the weekend. Some students were known to have gone two rounds just to experience those chemicals the brain fires when the stomach is sweetly stretched to almost breaking point.

For girls being wooed, a special snack was enjoyed on the route of the lovers’ lane. That was suya. Many girl chasers spent money buying generous rounds of suya and delivering the parcel to the girl’s hostel where the roommates went into a feeding frenzy. When the meal was reduced to crumbs and onions, the poor ‘nice boy’ was invited to eat some suya.  He had to eat the onions and tomatoes with dignity for he was here on a mission.

There was a ‘buka’ in Akoka in the 70s close to my secondary school we called Station.  Boys who had eaten breakfast at home went to eat rice, dodo in a watery stew as if addicted. Many said the food was ‘jazzed’ and a hypnotic spell had been cast on us all but we loved the food.

In the university, some families in the junior staff quarters had converted their accommodation into make-shift restaurants that opened in the evenings. Some students felt some juju magnet made us troop there every night to eat. Some mornings you woke up thinking of rice in the pots at JSQ. Those were the days of nice food and good banter.

Bread has provided much joy through the years. From the Good Luck bread of the 70s, to the long home-baked bread we called Marco Polo in the University of Benin after the brand of luxury coaches that were popular at the time; we spread the blue band on the bread and stayed well-fed.

Of all the food I have eaten, the most artistic chefs were the tea-making Hausa guys that poured tea from one cup into another for show and those young girls that peeled oranges like their hands were manufactured in a Japanese robotic unit.