It has been 11 months since I published on this blog. The last post was on 8 January 2019. If you are one of the, like, ten people who subscribe, man, sorry, this wasn’t what it was supposed to be like. It’s not like this was a crazy year of anything like that. Sure, I’ve been busy; but is there any year where that is not the case? I have just been a bit more distracted and a good deal more dispersed in my endeavours. I really haven’t managed my time as well as I would have liked.

This, I guess, is the part where I commit to “do better” next year, isn’t it? But that is a lot of nonsense as you and I know, no one is fooling anyone. So I won’t attempt it. All I will say is: I’ll try.

And, oh, look here, you already have a new 150 word post.

The hot plate fell on the table with a loud clang. It had only been three or so seconds, but that is all the time you need to burn your fingers. Stupid. I licked my tender fingers and studied the white ceramic cereal bowl carefully, worried that it may have cracked when I dropped it. It was fine, and the contents steamed satisfyingly in the dark, airless room. On my way back to the kitchen, I banged shut the microwave and ran my fingertips under cold water to take the sting off. I inspected them. It did not feel too bad. But I knew from long experience that my diagnosis was only valid until I buried my fingers into hot eba; that was the true test of how bad the burn was. I was to find out soon enough.

I grabbed a cup from the cupboard and went back into living room, past the tray of food on the dining table, to the water dispenser in the far corner. I noted that this was my first glass of water for the day.

“At 4 P.M?’ I thought.

But I did not dwell on the matter too long. This is “Christmas Period”, let us enjoy and be merry. I sat before the plate of afang and eba. Before beginning, I turned on the standing fan and made sure the blast was directly on my back. This is a standard precaution. I could already feel the sweat building around me, within me. But what is that to me? Can one truly say he has lived if he did not at least once experience what it is like to sit to a steaming meal in a tropical country, sweating, shirt off, with a blast of air pressing on skin enthusiastically?

It is a treat for the gods.

And so it was that in this condition, having unconsciously taken note of the sensible green-black colour of the soup, I carved my first ball of eba.

It did not burn the fingers. Good.

The first ball is all critical. It heralds the beginning of a stroll in paradise or a descent into a bland, saltless desert. Is it too hot? Then you need to slow down and track your prey more patiently. Too cold? Well, who eats cold food? You moderate and adjust. And when the temperature is just right, you chew carefully, swallow slowly, pause here and there to consider all that you have learned.

A burst of juice from a stray shard of okporoko, with its unmistakeable, pungent taste filled my mouth. I nodded and said a quiet prayer of gratitude to my ancestors who I knew then still smiled warmly on their son. After carefully selecting and setting aside the usual obstructions—cubed beef, dried fish, okporoko, and so on—I was still able to enjoy this piece of fish without reaching into my priceless hoard.

It is the mark of an experienced professional to cook the soup so as to achieve that perfect consistency which allows that each scoop of soup contains within itself some memory of the end, the last act, the conclusion to the whole business. It was clear that the dried fish and okporoko had been introduced at such a time, in such a manner, and in sufficient profusion as to ensure that each quantity of afang one summoned never arrived unaccompanied, never met the palette unescorted.

But I get ahead of myself. At this stage I had just entered a spiritual seance when I noticed a strange phenomenon: There was no periwinkle.

No periwinkle!

What was this provocation? How did this cook, of whom I had thought in such reverential tones only a few moments ago, think it fit to prepare afang without periwinkle? I must admit that I was so gravely offended by this realisation that it threatened to capsize the canoe on which hitherto I had sailed on a river of perfect bliss.

“Nobody does anything properly anymore,” I said aloud.

I put my hand down in despair, careful not to ensure my fingers did not touch table. The dark mood, slowly enveloping me like the shroud of an evil, giant mkpokporo, threatened me with absolute ruin in that hot room. I heard the NEPA horn blare and the fridge and deep freezer compressors kick-in to return the salute. But even this, this smile from the Nigerian Goddess of Electricity (she who is the protector of sleepers, scourge of the generators, ancient of days) failed to lift my spirits. I sat staring with glazed eyes into that cereal bowl.

Then it appeared. I blinked hard to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. But it was plainly there: a green-blue slug glistening under the light of a low voltage energy-saving bulb. I picked it up and placed it in my mouth and chewed gently. Confirmation! I fingered the plate feverishly looking for other signs and there they were all around! It had all been an unfortunate trick of the mind. Where I had been looking for the hardened shells of the periwinkle, I had not allowed the possibility that its less noble de-shelled relatives may be standing in substitute. The gods did indeed smile on me. In a moment, the storm had passed, I was back at the head of the canoe sailing calmly home, sailing towards the sun which sank behind the palm trees.

After the festivities of looking for the elusive periwinkles, I was in no mood to delay the final entree for much longer. I picked one piece of cubed beef, topped it with some of the leftover soup, then delivered it all into my mouth. I chewed for as long as the thing would emit its juices. Next, it was time for the kpomo: one kpomo, two kpomo, three, all boiled to perfection, not too soft, not too hard, not too thick, not too thin. Towel came after, then the dried fish, then the snail, and finally, critically, historically, okporoko, the king of the soup. In this manner, I did as was expected, I preserved the ancient order of precedent set out by my forefathers’ forefathers when they sat in the distant past to decide the order in which the obstructions of a well-appointed plate of soup are to be absorbed.

To complete the ritual, I placed the now cold cereal bowl on top of the flat plate now littered with bones and other detritus. I downed a glass of cold water. I was starting to realise that I was getting cold. Gone was the sweat and humidity, replaced by a hypnotic feeling of satisfaction and contentment. I could feel the approaching state we call Itis. I picked up the tray and left it by the sink, making sure to empty the bones in the bin then soaking the plates in water so that it could be washed easily later. I washed my hands and applied hand cream, which left them supple and smelling faintly of stock fish and lemon.

The room upstairs was ice cold. I had forgotten that I had left the AC on that morning, but it was all as it had been ordained, wasn’t it? I climbed into the bed and laid in it for a minute thinking of nothing in particular. I listened and all I heard was the hum of the AC and the banging from the construction site next door, something which usually annoyed me to no end, but in my present state of intense itis, I found not at all disagreeable. My thoughts drifted to the new year coming. I prayed. I prayed to the Christian God. I prayed to my ancestors. And I asked the Goddess of Electricity to give me smooth tidings even if it was only for the next two hours.

I shut my eyes and slept.

Today my mother turns sixty.

She was down at my house this past weekend where she, my dad and my siblings recounted old tales of where we have come from and how we got to where we are now. There was a lot of food and nostalgia in the air this weekend, a wonderful time to remind oneself of all the things which ultimately really matter.

It is the way with these things that when the conversation gets going the memory is rejigged and new recollections are brought forth. We were reminded of the time in 1989 when, out of work and down on their luck, she and my father left Calabar for Lagos with three young children in tow, hoping to find something. We roomed with a relative in Ajao Estate in Isolo for the first year. The details of that house are sketchy to me. All I remember was Italia 90 and Roger Milla. We soon found an old house in Surulere which came to serve as our first home in Lagos. My youngest brother came soon after. I can still see him coated in dust from crawling on the stoop of the old house we found just off Adeniran Ogunsanya.

This was the early 90s and Nigeria was anything but a party. This was true even for a family of two professionals who graduated from good federal universities. My mother, a lawyer, could not find work in any law chambers or in any corporate organisation. (Things were not much better for my dad who couldn’t find work as an architect or builder.) Being a person with a basic impulsion to strive and achieve something, she set out to start a business selling fish and roasted plantain. The details are hazy now, but it seems to have transpired something like this: My mother got it in her head that this local delicacy from Calabar could generate some interest among the urban Lagos crowd, so she found a partner who had a shop on Lagos Island. She seeded the business for some amount which nobody can remember now, and agreed that her partner would supply the balance in fish and raw plantain. She was somehow convinced to hand over her capital to this partner, returning home to prepare for what was to be the beginning of a new and fruitful enterprise, she thought. That was not to be, of course. My naive small town mother never saw her business partner again, and ended up out of pocket and with an invaluable welcome-to-Lagos lesson (and a great story).

This early setback didn’t break her. In characteristic fashion, she shook it off and moved on to new things. The sheer range of activities she has gotten herself involved in leaves me exhausted. At various points she has owned and run a salon; she has worked as a barrister; she has studied and trained as a development expert; she has founded and run an NGO for several years; she started a business frying and selling puff puff and buns out of our old blue 305; she has run what might be called a ‘garden’ in Surulere, selling roasted fish, coconut rice, fried turkey, snails, gizzards and booze in front of our house at night (on Fridays and Saturdays we helped to wash plates and serve customers when we got old enough); she has also worked as a diplomat and as a member of parliament. Her sheer willingness to dare to do is a constant inspiration to me and a reminder that I, too, can.

This enterprising spirit is one of her defining qualities. She gets an idea that she needs to do something, and she does it. She does not think too much about it, she does not dwell on the downsides of it. She starts, she bootstraps, she hustles. “You can’t” is a meaningless phrase to her. We hear a lot about what’s wrong with such a crude approach to life. But I’ve seen the other side of this coin, I’ve seen a person who was long on execution and short on strategy, and I think there is a lot to be said for the grafters of this world, those who act quickly and leave the pondering for later.

In writing this piece, I had to think about some memory or defining moment between us. The more I thought about it the more I came to the realisation that that moment did not exist. All of it is a continuum in my mind, a sort of smorgasbord of sights, familiar smells, fierce shouts, hard slaps, awkward smiles, laughs, hugs, hairstyles, boubous, large heavy 80s lens frames, and so on. Here she is one minute working on a report on Adobe Pagemaker late into the night, me dozing off in a corner, standing, because I had failed to obey a simple instruction to go to bed at 9PM. Here she is on sanitation day making akara and ogi for the house, sternly driving all of us to our domestic duties. Here she is at Visiting Day with my favourite meal ukang (an excellent pottage of bushmeat, plantain, palm oil and scent leaf), me embarrassed because the meal was a bit too ‘local’ for my fancy private school where fried rice and jollof was the order of the day. (Turns out fancy private school boys absolutely love ukang, judging by what happened to the cooler I took back to the dorm.) And here she is, slumped on the stoop in the front of the house in Anthony Village where we had moved to. A few metres from where she is seated the neighbour’s massive diesel generator is on, filling the night air with its industrial growl and the smell of Lagos. We did not have a generator then. She had had a long day, it was 10PM. There had been no light all day and we could not pump the water from the borehole into the tank. Me, too busy galavanting, as we say, with friends, had failed to fetch enough water to ensure that there was water upstairs for her return. And so the one thing she had been looking forward to that evening, the one break in her crazy day: a bath, was not possible. She was too tired, too defeated to yell. She would not raise a hand to me either. She just sat there, with her handbag at her feet, and wept. She sat there for a long time.

But she beat that, and she beat everything else life has thrown at her. And she is here now. How do I describe such a leader? How do I tell her how much she means to me?

How does one, say, describe what breathing means to them?