My Jollof Rice Story

I am a hopeless romantic. I wear my heart on my sleeves. Although I have been hurt a thousand and one times, I still find a reason to say, “Maybe this will be the one.”

My friends grow tired of counselling me. They say it’s a waste of time, especially after my last heartbreak with Emily.

As a young bachelor living in Nigeria, you are sure to encounter some ups and downs. You know, win some, lose some. This was certainly one of them.

Emily is the tall, light-skinned girl who just started as a food vendor close to my house. She had in appearance what she lacked in the kitchen. It’s not that she didn’t know what to add to her dishes; she did. As a matter of fact, she even added it excessively, but still, something was missing; the magic touch!

I dare to put it in football terms. She was a washed-up Hazard from Chelsea. He still had the look and touch, even the promise, after the move to Real Madrid. What he lacked was the taste.

Maybe I trusted her too easily because it took just a smile and simple gestures to make me sit in her shade to order a plate of jollof rice. What she doesn’t know is, jollof rice is actually my favourite dish, I thought she understood this fact by the confidence in her gestures.

Her rice was the colour of a brazil nut.

They had big onion rings with tomatoes that struggled for attention, as though there was a competition in the dish that I wasn’t aware of. The meat was crisp and brown from too much frying (at the end, this was the only thing I enjoyed). The plantains, well, anyone who messes up plantains deserves jail time, so we can’t really applaud this now, can we?

I took my first bite, and immediately, I knew that this would be a failed relationship. I had to smile and put up a show, but deep down I already knew that this would be one of the days I tried something new only to understand why risks are dangerous in the first place.

This was the fourth new vendor I tried since Ma Benji traveled. I have only succeeded in meeting a lot of well-dressed ladies bearing pretty English names, but none of them had the touch that Ma Benji had. I began to feel hers was a grace no one else was meant to have.

Eating Emily’s rice, I began to wonder about what Ma Benji was doing that was more important than pleasing my taste buds. She had left so unceremoniously, without even leaving a sign, like she does every morning when she takes out her ‘FOOD IS READY’ signpost.

She always said, “A good cook can make do with less, and still achieve the same great taste.” The power was in the hands of whoever was cooking.

Looking down at the jollof rice in front of me, I had no reason to doubt Ma Benji anymore.

I remember how she prepared her tomato sauce for the rice to lie on. How she covered the rice with green beans, crayfish, and carrots in a manner that insinuated she didn’t want the rice to lie alone. It is rumoured that Ma Benji once won a Maggi cooking competition. She was a chef by every standard, but she decided to stick to this name: Ma Benji.

I don’t know if that was a sign of humility or not, all I know is that the woman could cook! And I feel like an adulterer, sitting here with Emily’s rice and thinking of Ma Benji.

My friends and I still marvel at the way she makes both the groundnut oil and tomato taste settle their differences without making a fuss in the pot.

How the garlic and ginger taste the same in her rice. How, unlike Emily, who tried to force meat on everybody (meat, which I enjoyed by the way), Ma Benji would ask you, “which do you prefer?” All the animals seemed to somehow agree on Ma Benji’s plate of rice, almost as if they died for the rice.

After I had finished eating my plate of rice, I paid Emily, and she asked in that voice. The same voice every trader uses when they want to inquire about how you felt about their product, ‘ Hope I’ll see you again.’

I said, yes. The ‘yes’ you say to avoid a prolonged interrogation. Emily saw me again two weeks later, but did not enter her shop. Oh-no! My super-hero had returned. I was going to Ma Benji’s restaurant.

They say it’s only in ill-health that a man learns the importance of his first wife. The gods permit this. If men knew, most would not marry a second wife. I may not know why, but I know one thing for sure: I had learned patience!

Everything good takes time. If those two weeks were engineered just to teach me how to wait for real value, then I am glad it happened.

The Chinese learn patience and dedication from a life-long tradition of planting and harvesting rice. I got my own lesson on patience from a terrible jollof rice experience.