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In strong contrast to the wishy-washy speculation that a bowl of
simple fish stew can be used to bewitch a man, is the notoriety of a
potent love charm or potion that guarantees total infatuation from the
object of one’s affections; if indeed affection is the right word. It
facilitates the creation of a love slave or fawning fool, or it tames
straying husbands, or gives a woman the compelling ability to have any
man that she likes or wants.

The muscle that such a charm carries cannot be overstated not only in
Nigeria where men in relationships tend to be all powerful, but in
Africa,
where women are always getting slapped in the face by cultures that
allow their men to marry many wives and keep many more mistresses.
African women are (supposedly) always outwardly shrugging at their
“predicament”, at their alleged underdog positions in marriages.
If a Nigerian woman’s husband cheats on her, and she is asked to give a
response, there is a strong likelihood that she won’t do a Sandra
Bullock.

That response of giving up a man, divorcing him and moving on
with one’s life does not altogether make sense in the context of
Nigeria or Africa. A Nigerian woman never wins by pouting and being
nonsensical …when she can dig her heels in and really win by lassoing
him back in. The winner is the woman who gets to keep the man, or a
part of him, (if he must be shared) no matter how dog-eared, how
rickety, how completely unsavoury the man is:
A great irony if ever there was one.
But what has this got to do with food? It is a question that I myself
am always asking. Why is the typical Nigerian or African love charm
ingested?

Why are all the symbolisms, the figures of speech centered on
food and drink?
Gbelekokomiyo that central Niger Delta phenomenon that casts strong
shadows of self-doubt in the hearts of Nigerian men is a complex, mind
bending, dynamic thing. The strongest symbolism as well as the Constant
is not sex but food. A man eats food or drinks drink laced with
“something”. That something is strong medicine and only the Lord knows
what it is. No one really seems to know what Gbelekokomiyo as ominous
as it sounds means.
It appears the onomatopoeic knocks in the syllables are engineered to
strike fear in the hearts of men and women.
Ikhide Ikheloa gave me a definition that works well because of its
simplicity.

He says it stands for a man drinking his wife’s “Kool Aid”
And supposedly, after drinking said Kool Aid he does her bidding for
the rest of his bewildered life. It of course works not only for wives,
but for any woman who has the access the willingness and the stomach to
spiritually override a man’s will. The end result interestingly is not
the undying love of an individual with all his senses intact.
It is not really the advertised product. It is not a peeling away of
layers, allowing the man to see the intrinsic value in the woman who
has gone to the effort of charming him. It is adding on more layers,
with strains of deep painful self-hatred, retribution, diabolic
mischief,
death. It is like the devotion of a zombie to its master.

Why would
anyone want to be loved by a zombie?
If Kool Aid is too foreign a concept, then perhaps African peppersoup
is more apt. African peppersoup has as many versions as the idea of
Africa allows, and the same can be said for the love charm. Every
dialect of every language of every village in every African country has
its own name for Gbelekokomiyo. Gabonese love charms are famed as some
of the strongest.
Togo’s version echoes the Yoruba language word for word. It is called
“Gbo temi”. Moving East in the Niger Delta, one inevitably runs into
the Efik “Kop mo mi” which translates simply as “gree for me”.
These charms are all administered, stirred in, spooned into the mouth,
eaten.
Some people say that it is best administered in “soups that draw” or
mixed in with cooked snails, or fish stews, or whatever. Some say the
failsafe recipe is for a woman to bend over her cooking pot and wash
“parts of her anatomy” into it. Or at least that is what it sounds like
when it is transliterated.
The million Naira question is does it work? If Nigerian men believe it
does and Nigerian women believe it does, then in a fashion, it does
work.
Almost all the Nigerian men and women that I asked admitted that they
believe that putting something in someone’s food can make them love
you, and that this is usually the craft of women.
Do I believe it works? The very fact that one has to make another
person love one has already negated love. Love is foremost an act of
the will.

I do believe in foods being aphrodisiacs because here the mouth
is eating and the brain is thinking and consenting, and observing
psychological and cultural rites, and there is proof that some foods
regarded as aphrodisiacs produce true biological reactions in the body.
But that I can be forced against my will to love someone by simply
eating food… this I consider completely impossible.