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.
