Once upon a time
My heart is less whole, but this is not my fault at all. I attended a boarding school even though I am from a very poor background.
My sweet mother, she is a gift so divine with mother’s eternal love. Every time I planned on returning to school, she would always give me enough garri and kulikuli to take with me to school.
Apart from the varieties of food we get to eat from our hostels, it is either garri or no other food for me again. Oh, I drank different types of garri from all across Nigeria, ranging from ijebu garri to bende garri and every other type. It gets to a point where my colleagues named me garrison, even though my actual name is Shedrack.
Before I continue my story, can we take a few moments to sing the praises of garri and how it has been saving our lives since the beginning of age?
Oh, garri, you were more than just a drink.
You are the unsung hero of many gatherings.
With your powdery charm, floating berries, and sweetening brothers, you turn our hunger into laughter with a splash of water.
You are the life of a household, bringing people from all walks of life around a bowl.
Here is to garri, a drink that unites us, taught us the value of simplicity, and made itself readily available for our consumption.
The boarding school I attend has a restriction of generosity. For those who have been to boarding school and knew they had to manage their foodstuffs, there is this stingy spirit that will grip you tight and won't let go of you.
Even for our money, there is prudence and caution for each penny before we spend. A student in boarding school must be able to manage 1k for a week; if not, sapa will hold you in a quiet corner when your pocket becomes shallow and there is nothing else to eat.
Well, I understand everyone is aware of the situation at home, especially as a Nigerian, so they manage their resources well.
I remember how I used to hide my sugar in an empty toothpaste tube; I am just too stingy to the extreme until life decided to punish me in school one day.
That very day, I noticed my colleagues had been making use of my detergent every time I was not in the hostel. So I came back from class one day before anyone could get in and hid it close to where my kulikuli [groundnut snack] was.
After our final class that day, I returned to drink garri, which used to serve as my everyday lunch. The moment I sipped a spoonful of garri and broke a piece of kulikuli to accompany it down my throat, ladies and gentlemen, it began to foam in my mouth. That is when it dawned on me that my detergent had poured on my kulikuli, and I nearly cried.
I quickly brought out all the kulikuli, poured it in a bucket to wash, and it all began to foam.
Ha! Two thousand naira kulikuli my mom just bought for me, I cried. After washing it all, I spread it on zinc and had no idea that birds used to chop off kulikuli. They had perked close to half of my kulikuli before I found out. It was a horrible experience for me. This is when I realized that I had taken this act of stinginess too far. I tasted the kulikuli and realized it was all soft and would spoil the following day. So I called my classmate's and decided to be generous this one time.
I shared my kulikuli among them, and they all brought a bowl of garri around the table to feast on my kulikuli while I nearly cried. None of them even said thank you; they just kept chewing it and saying they were tasting detergents. Humans are not appreciative at all, free kulikuli, and they cannot even thank me.
