"There's rice at home"

 - a survivor's guide through recession

The phrase is quite popular among young adults, denoting a time when we were much younger and wanted every snack by the roadside.
The gala hawker would almost thrust a piece into your hands because of how much you kept staring at the well-stacked snacks in his brown carton. Ice cream followed closely, and on other days we just really wanted popcorn.

Some of us took liberty into our own hands when we were handed over some little change of money to go about our days. For Sundays, we'd split the offering into two. One for the Lord, and the other half for our bellies. Oily puffpuff, and for me, I was obsessed with the ₦20 meatpie they sold at church gate.

Yes, we were supposed to be good kids, but everything looked so tasty. When you blink your eyes at your mom, she raises a stern look, followed by "There's food at home".

Sometimes we just go along with the flow, but some days, we threw tantrums, convinced our parents hated us. This might have been because we couldn't imagine going back home to the tasteless concoction rice at home, or the palm oil porridge that lacks for something extra. Just give us ₦50 for puffpuff, sweet mother.

We once had a neighbour who returned home one night, and kept saying he wasn't interested in the palm oil rice they made at home, "Rice elepo oshi lo wa nile, rice olororo ni mo fe".We laughed, but it was his pain. Another of my friends almost took to begging, because his parents made their own fried rice out of pawpaw cuts into oil. It was a nightmare.

 

Having to be dependent on your parents for your next meal is almost torture, especially when they're struggling to cover expenses. Some mothers hacked the concept of making the trenches meal they made as sumptuous as possible, while other mothers just made the kids want their independence. I mean, you can't really tell your mom that the rice she kept at home was crap.

 

Entré adulthood-

I went though a restaurant's online menu today, and I knew it wasn't my destiny. I just muttered under my breath, "there's yam at home". Not a day goes by without me doing checks and balances of my expenses on food.

Who cares if my self-concocted plate of rice isn't banging like the one that Sisi at the next apartment makes with a lot of chicken broth? Does it fill me? Yes. The cooking skills may come later, but as long as there's rice at home, I'm not buying that gala in traffic.

-Mo