Connect with us

Features

Arit Okpo: A Pot of Afang Does Not a Calabar Woman Make

Published

 on

dreamstime_l_60016479Writer, Yemisi Ogbe recently penned a piece on Calabar women, and her story took me down memory lane to the place settings of my childhood. {Click here to read it}

The ceremony involved in preparing a meal for my father. Three place mats, one above the other; one to the right side, a water coaster in the upper right hand corner. A bowl with water, handwash and a hand towel placed on the placemat to the right. ‘Swallow’ and soup placed in serving dishes on the upper mat, serving spoons placed neatly alongside empty flat and soup plates placed on the lower mat. It was a ceremony carried out with military precision for the King of our castle.

I watched my mother carry out the ceremony of serving her man; the attention to his every detail, every quirk accounted for. If my father woke up and decided that he only wanted seafood in all his soups, then seafood was all he ate. In soups cooked specially for him, it was measured so that he only ate them twice.

Nobody ever really sat down to give me a lesson, but in the conversations and processes and rituals of my mother and the other women I grew up around, I learned that there were rights and rites to the serving of a husband; to the serving of a king.

I grew up trying to replicate these processes. With each lover, I found favourites and replicated them carefully, adding the attendant neuroses and worries when a meal was not perfect…not equal to specifications.
I cried on the road the day the Mallam, who sold ram suya, decided not to come. The noodle dish that the lover of those days loved was made with carrots and ginger and day old ram suya. With no suya it would be nonsense. I would be nonsense.

Then I met the one who simply didn’t care. I planned meals – elaborate, flavour filled meals, and put them aside to the refrain of – no, I don’t eat that, I don’t like that. I found myself stifled by a diet that cared not a whit for my creativity or the ways in which I expressed my love.
Presentation was irrelevant, there were no compliments on flavour or texture; there was no attention. Soups laden with meats and fish of all kinds received the smiling complaint that there was no space for the soup. Who on earth didn’t know that soup is never about the soup? It is about the things in the soup. Did my lover not recognise that I crowned him with every tender morsel that obstructed each piece of Eba?  And if he did not accept his crown, created in pots and soups and plates, then how could I be a Queen? If he didn’t make me a Queen, then I was nobody.

These were the things I grew up knowing. This was how we “Calabar women” got and kept our men. How could it not work? It didn’t click. Not even after I heard the Chinese whispers from the other woman. All I was good for was English and talking and grammar; she knew what it was to keep a man. What did she mean? Were we not doing the same things? How could she win? She wasn’t even Calabar for goodness sake!

When that relationship ended I closed my pots. I was no longer interested in expressing my love in pots of food lovingly slaved and sweated over. Whoever wanted to love me would cook for me, slave for me. I would not allow myself to be that vulnerable ever again.

Then I came back to Calabar…back home…and in my little kitchen, with no one to please but myself. I fell in love again. I discovered the flavours and textures that I liked. I dreamed up meals and created them. I identified tastes and patterns and modified them till they said exactly what I wanted to hear. And when I was done cooking, I plated my food exquisitely, each meal a celebration, sometimes with candles and music, a ceremony fit for a King…or a Queen.

I cooked for me, and fell in love with me. Each flavour, each hint of spice, each morsel was a gift from me to myself, an acknowledgement of my worth, a celebration of my value.

One day, after tasting something on the stove, I looked up to a friend’s bemused glance. He asked “Why are you listening to the food?” Suddenly I saw myself as I looked to him; eyes closed, tongue separating flavours, ears open over the pot on the stove. He was right; my food talked to me…and the happier and more balanced I was, the better I could hear. I heard what flavours it needed, how much longer it needed to cook, what it needed to be paired with. My food was magic…for me.

Then there were the other lessons that I learned: life lessons discovered in pots and pans. I learned that for me, simple is always better.

I learned about flavours that shouldn’t work, but did. I learned that sometimes even the surest meal can go amiss. I learned that a failed meal doesn’t make me a failure.

I learned that sometimes there is a lesson that leads to a better effort, and other times there is a shrug and a meal in the dustbin.

I learned that there is as much place for the former as the latter. I learned that there is always something new to learn, to taste, to explore, to discover.

I learned to make mistakes; to laugh at meals gone wrong, to laugh at meals gone right…to laugh. I learned that it is important to me that the ones who love me cook for me; because for me, food is a love language all on its own. I learned that my meals must be recognised, celebrated, appreciated, but that it must start from me.

I learned that lessons from food can be applied perfectly to life.

Two years later and I understand what it is I didn’t quite get; what it was I missed in the ceremony and the rituals. I understand that a King cannot be crowned by exquisite flavours and richly made meals. I realise that a King is recognised…by a Queen. That she must love herself; that she must be home for herself. She does not remove her crown to crown him, she does not need to. I realise that a relationship is not a dethroning of one to enthrone the other, but a recognition of royalty, by royalty. I realise that you cannot cook a crown unto a commoner’s head.

The mystique of the Calabar woman is in the way that she creates a world around the one she loves. The attention to every detail that concerns him, the feeling she creates that he is the most important being in the world. I realise now what I did not before, that she does not need to lose herself to do this. That she does not give up completeness for him.

I realise that my heart will always speak through my food. When I am content and secure, my food has a synergy that has little to do with spices and everything to do with the heart preparing the meals. I think of the meals I made for the last ones that didn’t work out, how simple meals struggled to find balance in flavours, I realise that my food knew before my heart did.

I realise that I will always be the kind of who speaks through her meals. That each meal is me saying without words “You are important to me, I value you, I appreciate you, I love you”. I now also realise, that I am just as magical when I am not in the mood to cook, and all I have to offer is a bottle of wine and cheerful, lazy conversation.

I realise that I am grateful that I failed before, that my ceremonies and rituals went unrecognised, that my flavours were not enough. They helped me to understand that there was more to me than the smoothness of my eba and the obstacles in my soup; that there was more to loving and living than a meal prepared on time; that there is as much magic in laughter and conversation as there is in the deep green goodness of afang paired with smoothly pounded yam.

I realise that I have found my magic. That I had to recognise it in myself, fall in love with myself, crown myself, be magic for myself.

I realise that I could not give what I did not have.

I realise that I have it now.

Photo Credit: Dreamstime

Advertisement

Star Features

css.php