My soul is out there wandering the streets of Jibowu, Yaba in Lagos, Nigeria. But my body sits on this bed typing and listening to songs. I peer at the time. 03:02Hrs. A time when normal men sleep.
However, sleep is far from me. I sit here watching myself go back again to Jibowu as I have been for more than a week now. I am ambling towards a shop whose name and street I have forgotten.
It is off Hussey Street right after the WAEC building if you approach from the YabaTech Front Gate. If approaching from The Covenant Nation Church at 400 Herbert Macaulay Street though, as you walk right past the Car Park and towards the end of that road, it is right there at the intersection.
An old nondescript building. The shop is tucked at the corner of that sprawling compound. A pancake shop. They make the best pancakes I have ever eaten. And I have eaten pancakes. That is the shop I am perambulating towards at this ungodly hour.
I cannot make it make sense to you since it does not to me either. All I know is I want that pancake. So badly that I keep hearing my mother’s voice cautioning against eating in the dream.
Longing. Nostalgia. Dictionary terms which hits more for an Emigrant. You could be ambling through the streets of Life putting one foot in front of the other, then without warning it lunges at you! grabs you by the esophagus and squeezes hard. And as it attempts to choke off your air supply, you grapple at it. Just as swiftly as the attack, it releases its chokehold and leaves you floundering.
Ukazi soup
Nostalgia is not new to me. I was that child who left home at 8 years of age and lived everywhere. I still recall a recent incidence while going through Chemotherapy. Weeping shamelessly for Ukazi and Achara soup [My native delicacy].
Why do we have cravings? that powerful desire for something. Does it only happen to idle people and pregnant women? can you be busy and yet feel its pull?
The Bible records two epic examples of a longing. Examples I have experienced at my basal levels.
David grew homesick and said, “How I wish someone would bring me a drink of water from the well by the gate at Bethlehem!” II Samuel 23>15
“As the deer pants after the water brooks” Psalms 42>1
David was a political refugee traipising around the deserts of Life. And away from his homeland, battling for his life, that pang blindsided him.
While in our everyday life, we can pass a craving off as the need for variety. Quickly satiated when and where affordable. But what do you do when it is totally unattainable? When that longing signifies more than ‘food/water’?
When it is more about your roots, memories, associations than pancakes, what do you do?
2 Comments
Lovely piece you have written. I agree with you about the longing of an emigrant, not just the meals but also the fellowship and association
An old nondescript building. The shop is tucked at the corner of that sprawling compound. A pancake shop. They make the best pancakes I have ever eaten. And I have eaten pancakes. That is the shop I am perambulating towards at this ungodly hour.
Lovely piece you have written. I agree with you about the longing of an emigrant, not just the meals but also the fellowship and association
Hey Kemo,
thank you for stopping by and sharing your views too.