Hello humans........
How's it hanging? high?, low? or dangling low....
Has you week been busy, manic or just there, well mine has been pretty manic but hey I'm not complaining ill rather have it that way.
So here I am at work with nothing to do sitting at my desk with a song titled "I touch myself" playing the background,don't ask me because I'm feeling the same kind of way like WTAF! is this I'm listening to.As there is nothing for me to do I have proceeded to cruise the w.w.w and see what is happening, however, this thought invades my memory and I remember coming across this post by Lola Akinmade which is seemingly old and I'm quite surprised I hadn't come across it earlier. Any whoo it brought a flood of memories: good, bad,the not so pretty and the hilarious. To quickly summarise, she talked about her life living in Lagos, her upbringing the African way and certain things she experienced as a child.Many of the things she talked about could only make sense if you were brought up in a Nigerian household or grew up in the country itself. I catch myself nodding and giggling at my desk at work reading this post again and thinking to how eventful my childhood was, from your parents shouting your name in chronological order from the oldest to the youngest and everyone literally dragging their feet's accompanied by mumbles under their voices or for me the angry shuffle in bed and the kicking of feet in the air before getting up, exactly like so
The smell of Saturday morning breakfast, depending on what we were having, in my household it was standard Agege bread, fresh from the the mallam's kiosk which was carefully selected by making sure that there were no black dots on it and that it was very soft, this was then demolished by cutting a hole in the centre of the bread and pouring your eggs on the middle and eating it like a sandwich.
Another option was Akara( also known as bean-cake) and Ogi,from the woman who sits on her little chair at the top of our street, sweating hard under the scorching sun and scooping the blended beans from her bowl and dropping it in the hot oil, which then fries into what is called Akara *drooling*, these were good'ol times.As a child I hated times-tables, they were the death of me, especially as my mother was my teacher. I remember the torture vividly like yesterday; when it was time to recite my times table, I would immediately start crying because I knew what was ahead,The Pankere. For those of you who don't know what that it, it is an equivalent of koboko, it is very flexible and only breaks after being used profusely, anyway this was cautiously kept on the side waiting to marry my behind if I failed to correctly recite my times table from 1 to 10,to add to it all I hated times like these because my mother showed no mercy and to worsen the situation knowing the koboko was there wasn't helpful as it made me even more nervous and prone to mistakes. Thank the Lord my mother was not a teacher because Lord knows that her pupils would suffer.
Back to the diddle daddle of the story my mother truly showed no mercy as she would chase me up and down the couch and around the living room as I tried to dodge the pankere which at the end of the day never worked because it was so damn long that no matter how far I ran some part of the cane managed to bless my body. Drinking Fanchoco chocolate ice cream and zobo is another part of my childhood I like very much, i remember coming out of the school gates at the day's end of primary school and how all the ice cream men on their bicycles came flooding the school gates, tempting little kids and immediately programming them to go into puppy-dog eyed mode so their parents could spend their money on ice-cream, this was me included, it worked like a charm, nevertheless this wasn't always the case as whichever of my parents picked me up at the end of school would sometimes would drop the "NO".
As for Zobo, there's one story I'll like to share, one that is engraved in my mind so much so that if I die and come back I'll surely remember it. So,as a child I was very curious and mischievous and always wanting to do exactly the opposite; give me a step and I'll take a mile, I was going to live a littler even though the consequences following the actions were going to be tremendously painful,regardless, i did as i saw fit;pushing the boundaries a little too far sometimes, but hey i wouldn't want to look back thinking "what if". To the point of the matter, as a child my mother never allowed us to buy things or take things from sources that were unknown to her regardless of whether she knew the person or not, it was NO until she felt comfortable with it, this included the zobo.
As a child I lived on an estate in Ikeja, in the estate lived this woman who sold zobo or as known to you ajebutter children hibiscus tea. My mother had warned us( me and my immediate elder sister) never to drink it as she didn't know the processed involved making it, however, one faithful day we were out playing with one of our friends and she wanted zobo so we all went to the woman to buy it, before we know it we all are drinking the zobo and not giving a care in the world in front of our house,soon after what do we see?! My mother!, she's parking in the driveway and looking very deadly at us through her wind-shield, me and my sister immediately toss the zobo behind the bush, however, we've already been caught and the incriminating evidence is very obvious; our red tongues, as we proceed to greet her. Not wasting any time, she sends us upstairs, cutting short our playtime and flogs the daylight out of out behinds, sometimes i wonder how i don't have a big butt, given the amount of times I've been whipped, surely the swelling should have helped a bit,Right?!.
Further events that resulted in me getting whipped included: not washing my food flask( as we would call it then) from school,coming home past my curfew, breaking something or taking something without permission and so many more i wouldn't get into. Fake cooking and school role-play behind our house was another thing i loved so much as a child. In the back of our house we had plants, some we grew and other i don't know how they manifested, any-whoo, me and my sister would go to the back of the house to play "school", me and my sister being the teachers and the plant being the student, we would flog the plants with slim sticks if they hadn't done their homework, i know what you're thinking so just stop right there!,i wasn't crazy as a child just very imaginative!......DONT JUDGE ME!
On the other hand, one thing i hated the most as a kid was plaiting my hair, the whole experience was just life threatening, maybe I'm exaggerating a little lot but the woman that braided my hair threatened my scalp, she would braid it so tight that my scalp could act as road bumps to slow cars down, IT WAS THAT DEEP!!!!.... to add to the pain she oiled my scalp with ENGINE OIL... I mean that's just not allowed, like what happened to Sulfur8 or Blue-magic or even your regular Vaseline, but no way this, this woman chose to use engine oil.... in my honest opinion i sometimes think that why my hair has slow growth..lol. To top it all, i was subjected to having my head placed in-between the legs of this woman, who proceeded to hold my head tightly so as to prevent me from moving. I wouldn't even want you to picture that,( sorry in advance for those with a photographic memory), but yeah imagine that,that was my pain. I cried every-time and consistently asked for my mum but would always have to be appeased with biscuits and Capri-sun because she wasn't there, somehow they seemed to take the pain away.
These are just to name a few of my experiences, as much as ill like to go on,i feel like any more and I'll be writing a book.
Toodles for now.
XOXO
Mena
