Safe as stews
If
I were asked to describe the typical Nigerian palate in one word, I
would say reserved. And if I were asked to elaborate, I would say our
palates in general enjoy foods that generate feelings of comfort and
stomach fullness and familiarity, especially the safe stodgy goodwill
of starches and lubricating grease.
Very much unlike
the exploratory constantly searching out new, quirky, exciting
sensations palate, it is a lot like that hypothesis on married men and
their wives, where men are men and their wives are bowls of Kellogg’s
Cornflakes. It proposes that some men like to eat Kellogg’s every
morning, rain or sunshine, all the days of their lives, while most men
choose to eat Kellogg’s Cornflakes only about once or twice or so every
six months and sometimes do so reluctantly or because they have no
option.
This theory
fundamentally offends me since I am a married woman. Accordingly, a
bowl of cornflakes, may be useful for pointing out the contrast between
the ability or willingness to enjoy sameness, familiarity and further,
refine and extol it as does the typical Nigerian palate; and the need
for variety and constant experimentation as a premise for enjoying ones
food as is commonplace in other food cultures.
I once hired a man
called Muri Fini to take care of my garden. He had lived his whole life
on Lagos Island and every day eaten his soft white bread accompanied
with milky tea in the morning, bowl of rice and peppery stew in the
afternoon and eba and efo riro or amala and ewedu at night.
The highlights of
his meals were as much meat as he could afford, and if there was
variety, it was present in the anatomy of the cow. If one had the
ability to eat generous portions of tripe, knotted intestines, cowhide,
cow leg, oxtail, lungs and liver then one was eating like a king.
Needless to say, he
was very set in his eating habits even though he was only in his early
twenties. He was not worried about vague distant ideas like the
requirement that one should eat balanced meals. Experimentation was of
course completely out of his radar.
My mother-in-law
had come to stay and she is of the staunch unwavering belief that one
must offer everyone who enters ones house a proper meal. She offered
Muri some food. Muri agreed with visible excitement. What was he
expecting? Probably a bowl of rice and stew.
She handed him some gari and Afia Efere; White soup.
He took the food
from her, thanked her, and my mother in law and I went upstairs only to
come down a few minutes later and discover that Muri had left the food
on the table and literally absconded.
My poor
mother-in-law was offended and taken aback and confused at this sort of
peculiar behavior. Why had he not just declined the offer of food?
Because he did want
to eat, I said, but not what he was given. And what he was given was so
completely removed from anything he had eaten in his life that instead
of inspiring hunger or curiosity, it inspired fear and probably
revulsion.
If the reader looks
through the eyes of Muri’s classic superstitious “Isale Eko” Yoruba,
upbringing and twenty odd years of eating red stews; into the alien
yam-thickened off-white countenance of Afia Efere, he just might be
able to empathise.
Muri knew he would
be coming in to work in a couple of days, so, leaving the food and
running away was not really the most rational way of dealing with a
bowl of unwanted food.
When I demanded an
explanation for his behavior a few days later, he just shuffled his
feet and mumbled something about never having seen that sort of
something or the other before. He was so embarrassed, that it would
have been cruel to continue to probe.
Though Muri’s case
is comical, I have also heard of the tragic fifty year old Nigerian
woman with crippling arthritis, eating stew every day even though she
has been given medical advice that tomatoes and peppers which are in
the nightshade family sometimes cause or aggravate inflammation. She
might get substantial relief from pain, if she does not eat her daily
stews.
Any Nigerian,
whatever their age might have that same initial suspension of belief;
how is it possible to be a Nigerian and not eat stew? Not eat hot
steaming peppery red jollof rice? Or ofada? Or goat meat stew? Then
what is the use of living! Stew after all is our established safety net
for hunger. Stew with everything.
I have had people
write to tell me how unimaginably alien they find the idea of cooking a
stew with coconut milk, or fish sauce. It makes sense because a
Nigerian stew needs to accompany everything from gari, semovita to
beans, and coconut milk stew for example, is a mighty leap for the
Nigerian imagination or palate, but I wonder about Yorubas running from
Efik soups and the unfamiliarity that we smugly hold up as a defense
when confronted with food from different parts of our very own country.
I wonder that we
are not dying of curiosity about Tiv cuisine and uncommon hot peppers
that grow in remote areas of Yenogoa. Or why our “national cuisine” is
in reality so restricted. I wonder if the typical Nigerian had to
choose between not eating stew and death, if he would really choose the
latter.
