Pepper Soup

The sun had just woken up from sleep that morning and hunger was already playing Ludo in my stomach. After taking an appetizer – to quench the fiery darts of the hunger pangs –the next thing was to prepare a meal for the day.

My trouble began when I and my friend decided to make stew –we are good cooks like that! So, we marched onto the street, scouting for pepper and tomato with other things needed for the soup.

“E ka le, ma! E fu mi ni ata rodo,” my friend said to the round as football woman in her mid-50s. “E lo ? ?” she asked us.

The sheer size of the pepper made us think twice before replying her “e yo kon.”

As we took the paper and tomato wrapped in black cellophane, we thought of keeping some pepper aside since “e too much!”

We straightway got to the blending machine, but couldn’t hold back the surprise –it was splashed all over my face like the rainbow on the sky.

“O boy, which one be this again? I no understand oooo!” my friend said to me. A woman was blending her tomatoes and pepper. Let me not say she came to blend pepper.

There were about three tomato seeds in her white bucket –the rest were six inches long reddened pepper.

“Na pepper soup she wan cook?” my friend asked after seeing the woman bring out another wrap of pepper from her black polythene bag.

I was just mopping like “a pregnant fish” in the words of my former lecturer. “Shey this woman go eat this food with this pepper?” I murmured.

“Shey, ata yi o poju sha? My friend asked the lady who does the grinding as it got to our turn and we asked.

“Ah! Ko tie to oo” the dark skinned lady replied with her mouth agape looking at us like “what is doing this one sef?”


When we got home and began making the stew, the spiciness of the stew, made my nostrils pay the price –hot steam was gushing out of it. My eyes were as reddish as the pepper and I was already seeing the stars.

As I shoveled the first spoon of rice into my mouth, my tongue burned fiercer than Sodom and Gomorah Atomic bombs began to explode in my mouth. I was seeing hazes; my eyes pumping water like a tap.

Since then, I “Ben Johnson” whenever I see pepper on the roadside, market, grocery stores.

I was forming #peppergang after spending a year in Ekiti, I was. I never knew that Ekiti pepper was still in primary school compared to Ibadan’s with a PhD.

You don’t need money to get high in Ibadan. Just buy pepper and you’d be competing with the most high; become his highness!

NB:Part II comes up same time tomorrow. Watch out!


http://theflowingink.com/chronicles-oluyole-jjc-1/

Part Two

Unequally Yoked

Coming from the South-South part of the country where motorcycles had been banned in the major towns, it burgled my mind to see okada flying past the road with two persons stuffed at the back.



“Sii! Ni bo?” the bike man with broken helmet signaled to me. He had a passenger on the motorcycle. “Why you go dey ask me, ‘Ni bo? Werey!” I muttered as I walked through the walkway.



As if that wasn’t enough annoyance, another bike man was bellowing “Akpata! Akpata! Nibo?” That was at Mokola Round About.



There was someone on the bike already and I was more startled when I saw other okadas with passengers at the back still looking out for more.



“Why them dey look for person when they already carry one?” “Na so dem dey do for here?” were some of the questions that throbbed my innocent mind that cool dry November morning.



While inside the taxi, different bikemen drove by, carrying more than a passenger –some with a lady tucked in between the bikeman and the second passenger, others dropped a passenger on the way and continued with one passenger.



“Who carries two passengers who never knew themselves from Adam? Who does that?” I queried within. It was new to me and I swore to also partake in the communion as soon as I could.



I was running late to my destination that day and couldn’t wait for the MICRAN taxi to fully load –sometimes in IB, it could take eternity.



“High Court for Ring Road,” I answered the bike man who asked “Nibo?” and sat on the bike, waiting for him to move the thing. One! Two! Three minutes! He was still on the spot scouting for a second passenger. My patience was already thinning faster than a conductor waiting to collect money bus passengers.



He started the bike reluctantly and we left after I insisted that I am paying for the full journey –me no get time to waste.

On the way, Ogbeni was still asking, “Ni bo?” turning left and right like a hawk looking for its prey!



“Make you come down,” the bike man said after taking a narrow route. My heart melted like wax under the blazing sun; it ran faster than Usain Bolt.



He had picked another passenger along the way and I was in the middle.



“What if they arranged this and something happens to me? What if they kidnapped or robbed me and threw me out from the bike?” I questioned myself.



“I wan piss, abeg!” the bikeman pleaded with us and rushed off to the other side of the road. We left afterwards and soon got to my destination and paid him off.



Recalling that event, as a newbie in IB, made me laugh! Anytime I board a bike, na me dey tell the bike man to wait if him go see another passenger join me so that the money go reduce. Hahaha!



In Ibadan, you don’t buy a flight ticket that you can enter the business class. You can enjoy your business class on a bike. If you enter alone, you are in the business class –just flag down a bikeman and tell him to go and you pay the whole fare without him “Ni boing” any passenger along the way.



Or if you’re too rich, there is the economy class where the bill has to be shared between two persons.



Don’t think that I cannot fly business class too, like the Otedolas of this world. Fly your first class to Abuja. I too will take a fly a bike from UI to Iwo Road on first class. You fly plane on first, I fly bike on first class! All na fly; both first class!

NB: Part III, the last part comes same time today on http://theflowingink.com
http://theflowingink.com/chronicles-oluyole-jjc-2/