While in Abuja, I was fortunate enough to be able to take a trip up north with some colleagues. I was anxious to see something outside of Abuja as everyone EVERYONE kept assuring me that Abuja was not really Nigeria and I had to go outside to see the REAL Nigeria.
Now, to be honest, these sorts of exhortations always kind of annoy me. Perhaps because I often live in cities or towns where expats and locals alike assure me that it is not the REAL fill-in-the-blank, but rather if one goes elsewhere, they will then find the REAL fill-in-the-blank. I assume that these cities and towns are real enough for the inhabitants.
Regardless, I was going to go out of town for several days. Any sort of going out of town is immeasurably exciting. The drive was going to take about five-six hours. We headed out of town, four of us all together. Jimo, our driver, got to pick the music as he was driving. We listened to the same evangelical cd, which I believe consisted of five songs, the entire six hour trip. By the end, I was singing along to the songs which were a mix of English and Yoruba. I almost accepted Jesus Christ as my personal saviour (again). But then I realized that the songs were slowly driving me insane.
On the way, we stopped to use the restroom at a mosque/market area. One woman in our group was OBSESSED with mangoes. OBSESSED. Every time we saw a mango stand on the side of the road, we had to stop so that she could buy some. She was searching for the mythical perfect mango. Sweet, juicy, not so stringy. At every stop, her mango dreams were shattered by sour mango, stringy mango, hard mango. We started getting out with her to check them and were all trying to find the perfect mango, mainly so the search could stop. It was to be a theme throughout our three day trip. Luckily, the other woman’s obsession was bananas, which were easily found, purchased, and consumed with much delight. The bananas were different from what I grew up with–smaller, sweeter but with a chewier almost gummy flesh.
Upon learning I hadn’t had much Nigerian food, they made sure I tried suya (a spicy barbecue type of meat dish that we ate with rice cakes that were more spongy than rice cakes i’d had in japan or korea). The suya was quite good, though I have to admit to being leary of eating it as it was in a black plastic bag and I’ve had challenging meals in the past from black plastic bags (see Mongolian adventures with marmot). After I got over my initial hesitation, it was amazing. I love spicy food and after my companions were convinced I wouldn’t choke, they kept shoving suya at me. Next we stopped and bought roasted corn from the side of the road.
I was incredibly interested in the roasted corn because everyone in the car was so excited about it. Even Mango stopped talking about mangoes for five minutes and started waxing lyrical about roasted corn. This was going to be good.
I think one has to grow up with or become accustomed to this manner of corn to truly enjoy it. I grew up on very sweet corn in the states and when it was roasted, it was usually buttered and then had the husk replaced around the ear to preserve the juices, then just roasted to a goldeny color. This corn wasn’t as sweet in the first place, and then was roasted to more of a hazelnut brown, so it was much harder/chewier than I had anticipated. There was no burst of sweet corn juice in your mouth. It was kind of dry and hard. Not unpleasant and something that I think could become very crave-worthy with time, but it wasn’t something I was going to start hankering for immediately.
The last thing I ate that was noteworthy was pepper soup. My friend Banana took us to a famous restaurant and I asked for advice on what to pick out. She said I’d probably like the pepper soup. I asked what was in it. Beef. and spice. Awesome.
She went to the other counter and I stayed at the counter with soup and myriad other things. I should have followed her, in hindsight. So I order fried plantains and pepper soup. They dish me up my soup and plantains and I go to take my seat. I’m trying not to look at my soup because I believe there is a jaw on top of the soup. I sit down, look at my plate and there is in fact a jaw in my soup. This disturbs me on two levels. One, I’m sorry, I’m an American from the city. While I lived in Mongolia, I saw sheep bits scattered around the house, ate meat that distinctly still looked like the animal, but I never really got over the idea that meat was in the shape of a square or a rectangle or sometimes a strange triangle and came wrapped in either paper or plastic wrap and styrofoam. I know it is wrong and a little disrespectful to the animal to forget that you are eating its actual body, but that’s how I roll. So the whole actual jaw in my bowl of soup was a little disconcerting. But ALSO, the jaw was patently smaller than a bovine jaw. I was pretty sure it was a goat jaw. And while I can eat sheep (though after two years of mutton, sometimes I can’t hold it down), goat has just never been something I could get behind. I tried, though. I ate as much broth as I could, but as I was poking around looking for veggies or pieces of meat not attached to teeth, I found other bits and bobs of the goat. White parts with fili-type pieces waving about. Solid and waxy looking brown bits. Rough looking red bits. The soup and my imagining where exactly these bits came from defeated me. I fished out the last of the recognizable bits and asked Jimo if he was still hungry and if so, would he like my soup? He was shocked I didn’t eat more and readily agreed. First thing? He picked up the jaw and sucked the meat right off of it. Again, it is my own squeamish citified whatever, but there is something kinda weird about seeing one jaw engulf another jaw, slurping it clean.
I finished my plantains and nostalgically thought of the days when I would eat blowtorched marmot or boiled horse penis. (Okay, it wasn’t like I liked it or ate more than a bite. But still! I used to be much more adventurous. If Anthony Bourdain ever met me, he’d greet me with nothing but mockery and disdain.) But I’m not that person anymore. It may be obnoxious, but I accept that I prefer to think of meat in a square little packet and not actually hanging on a bone.
Beyond the food, the scenery on the way north and in the north was so beautiful. Trees and red earth and rolling hills. Different types of architecture everywhere–huts, mosques, churches, buildings in the process of falling down and buildings being built. All very active and wonderful. It made me want to see more of Nigeria.
I don’t tend to talk about work in these pages. But there was one thing that happened that just about killed me. We were watching a peer educator give a condom demonstration to some drivers. One driver became extremely agitated during the demonstration and started gesturing very decidedly at his crotch and making all of these diagnal motions with his hands and all of the other drivers started laughing. Then the peer educator’s supervisor grabbed the demonstration phallus with both hands, and while talking rather heatedly, swung the phallus (at crotch level mind) to the right, to the left, straight up, and pointing rather far down. The initial man gestured again and the supervisor performed the same dance. I finally asked my friend what was going on and apparently the initial man was quite firm in his conviction that a man whose penis pointed to the right or left would not be able to wear a condom, because every demonstration phallus is always straight. So he believed that the condoms only went on straight penises. The supervisor was trying to demonstrate that it was only because of the demonstration phallus standard, but that condoms could go on a penis that pointed any which way.
The conversation? Went on for fifteen minutes, a continuous cycle of heated debate and pointing with the demonstration phallus. Awesome that he was getting proper information and great that he felt comfortable discussing it, but HYSTERICAL to see this supervisor who was an incredibly serious man waving about a demonstration phallus at crotch level while speaking excitedly.
The cap on the entire trip was on the way home, when I started noticing signs. One church was named “The Unashamed of Christ Church”
