TRAVELS w/P: Tales of Adventure Here & There

13/03/2013 – Wonderful Wednesday

Today was the closest thing to a tourist experience yet. It begins with a brief lesson in Efik, the local language, compliments of Angela.

amesiere (am-ay-see-air-ay) = good morning

so song = thank you

no me = give me

ifang (ee-fan) = how much

ntog (ng-toe) = toilet

me fre (may-fray) = I’m lost

afo akeredie (a-pho akayready) = what’s your name?

Stella invites me to join her for lunch at her favourite local eatery. We walk down the laneway and around the corner. Take a plank-of-wood bridge across stagnant, green-scum water I can only guess is the open sewage system. On the other side of this walkway is a semi-enclosure that opens to a yard with roaming chickens, barefoot children and a village I didn’t know was there. Hearty welcomes and few guffaws later we’re seated at the single table with other customers.

Stella asks what’s on the menu. It turns out to be a really yum delish treat by Nigerian standards: Efere Abak (ef-airey aback) soup and Eba (aye-bah) dumplings. She orders a meal for each of us. The owner/slash/cook moves to containers stacked against a wall and ladles out a thick red stew in one bowl and a generous mound of what looks likes kinda-mushy but kinda-not corn meal patties in another. Bowls of water arrive at our spots. We wash our hands.

                                                                                           
Stella tells me to use only my right hand, roll a piece of the eba (cassava dumpling) into a ball, dip it into the soup, pop it in my mouth and swallow without chewing. The meal is a medley of those wriggling, pinky shaped periwinkles I saw at the market, hunks of snail, chunks of goat and beef, and curls of animal skin in a spicy hot fish sauce. The periwinkles are surprisingly good once you suck them out of their shell. The other stuff – well, I simply can’t muster the courage to taste curled skin, and the meat and snail are rubbery beyond mastication (it’s the dumplings you’re not to chew). The rest is okay. It’s definitely an acquired taste I’ll have to acquire. Or not.

On our stroll back to the office Stella tells me she’s a widow with four children ranging from 22 to 15 years in age. Her husband died 10 years ago.

Oh my, how did your husband pass?
“Poison.”
“Poison?!”
“Yes, his girlfriend poisoned him.”

Yikes. How do you respond to something like that?

After work I decide to take Lola for a walk through the neighbourhood. We pass half a dozen women sitting in two rows on benches in the middle of a field, singing. I stop to listen, give them the thumbs up; they thumbs-up back and beam without losing a note.

I buy a pineapple from the skinny weary-looking lady who sits at her tiny stall day in and day out, just a few paces from the compound. This time her weary face gives way to wariness and outright fear; the dog. Nearly everyone we pass, children and adults alike, give us wide berth or cross to the other side of the road. Despite the threat of “such a big dog!” the “good evenings” and “hellos” string together along the street like strands of festive lights. The most memorable comment on today’s walk goes to the guy, a tad on the thin side, hanging out with his bros: “That’s a nice dog. I eat dog. Good sweet meat.”