Cooking in Nigeria...

After leaving Lagos, the three of us, Drew, Andrea, and I, went to Nsukka, a university city in Enugu State, eastern Nigeria. The University of Nsukka is large, supposedly 40,000 students, but the campus did not fell nearly as busy, frantic, and frenzied as Lagos, or even Accra. We spent three days with the artist El Anatsui talking with him, hanging out in his studio and talking with his assistants (I actually got to help make one of his newest pieces).

The guesthouse that we stay in did not have anyplace to cook and despite the size of the campus, there was only one restaurant that we could fine. The nearby town was very small and had little to offer as well. The last night on campus, after having eaten in the same university restaurant for three days, we were a bit tired of it. We asked around for any other options but really did not have any good leads. The restaurant we had been eating at was nice enough, but still had a very limited number of dishes and there was usually a pretty long wait. As we pondered our few options, Andrea came up with the idea that we should go to the restaurant, walk into the kitchen and just make whatever we wanted. I love to cook and this sounded like a great idea to me. The three of us marched down to the restaurant, walked it, noticed the place was nearly empty (which was probably good), made a bee-line for the kitchen and waltzed right in.

I am not sure exactly how or when it happened, but the original idea of the three of us cooking quickly fell to the wayside and the other two allowed me to do most of the work. I talked to the cook, Dominic, who at first was very leery of who I was and what I was doing. He seemed to come around after a short time (unbeknownst to me the others told him that I was a professional chef and had my own restaurant in New York and so wherever I went I had to see the kitchen and cook). I tried to keep it simple and make some fried yams (kind of like a West African version of French Fries) and omelets with onions and tomato for the three of us. However, the best laid plans often times go quickly askew when in the kitchen and new ingredients and spices are discovered. As I started cooking, with Dominic getting on board and lending a hand, when I saw that there were beans cooking, plantains that had just finished frying, rice that was warm and ready to serve, and some type of tomato sauce that looked interesting and turned out to be quite spicy. I changed up the game plan and started to make fried rice. To keep the appearance that I had any idea what I was doing I began to bark out orders to “wash this” and “chop that” and before I new it, the entire kitchen staff was bustling away at my direction.

During all the commotion, a waiter came in and said that someone had ordered “red red” a West African dish that consists of beans and plantain. I looked around and saw that the stuff was already made, so, I plated it, put some tomatoes, lettuce and purple onion on the plate for color and gave it to the waiter to take out. He picked it up, looked at the plate, looked at me, looked at the plate, took a deep breath, shook his head and walked out to the restaurant with it. The dishwasher lady took particular interest in what I was doing and came up and introduced herself to me. She told me her name and I did not understand it, so I asked again, did not understand; asked again, did not understand; asked again, and still did not understand. “I will call you Izzy, you look like an Izzy” I told her. She smiled and said that was fine and she helped me get plates and silverware ready to go. I went back to cooking and before long had made, with a great deal of help from the real kitchen staff, enough food to not only feed the three of us but the kitchen staff as well. As I was dong this, the other two Fulbrighters were watching these charades with obvious enjoyment. I plated the food, and the three of us went out to the actual restaurant and ate. It was pretty good (if I don’t say so myself), or at least it was edible and no one got sick.

The next morning we got up to leave early and walked by the restaurant. I went in to tell all of them good bye and found that they had gotten busy after we had left and ended up all spending the night in the kitchen. “Izzy” actually gave me a hug before I left and they all not only remembered me, but thanked me and told me the food was good.

Running in Lagos...

A few weeks ago I visited Nigeria. Two of the other Fulbrighters were going to go to Nsukka, a town in Nigeria, to interview the artist El Anatsui and they asked if I wanted to join them. I got permission to take a few days off of school and I jumped at the opportunity to go and see another country. After making the arrangements, we all left early on a Saturday morning bound for Lagos. The plan was we would stay a few days in Lagos, the capital of Nigeria (and largest city in all of Africa- 15 million) and then make our way to Nsukka to see the artist. On the plane I finished reading an article by George Packard in The New Yorker entitled “The Megacity: Decoding the Chaos of Lagos.” The article was very good, well written… and scary. The ominous depiction Packard gives of Lagos is one that conjures images of burning garbage dumps, violence, and robbery. “Area boys”, local gangs of hoodlums, run the streets taking orders only to their “oga”, or boss, as how to better make money, through any means necessary. Needless to say, as we got off the plane, I was on my toes.

We were able to stay with an official from the US Consulate in Nigeria who had a beautiful house in one of the nicest, and safest, neighborhoods in Lagos. His house not only had air conditioning and an American style kitchen (I got to cook each night we were there), but also a washing machine and dryer. To many of you in the US, this may sound very run-of-the-mill and ordinary. However, to me, who has done wash with a bucket and my own two hands for the past six and a half months, this was a luxury fit for a king. He let us do laundry which allowed the soars on my hands to begin to heal.

The first morning in Lagos I woke up early and realized that no one else in the house was awake so I decided to go for a run. As I tiptoed out of the house, put on my shoes, and started off, I quickly remembered that I was in Lagos, not Accra. People stared at me as I ran and called me “Oyebo” (the Nigerian version of “Obruni” or “White man”). All in all though, the run was nice and I felt good, not only with my run, but the mere fact that I was doing it in Lagos. I was at the 3 mile mark and the house was insight, not but 300 yards away when everything went haywire. A car on my right suddenly started to back out of a driveway, very quickly, without looking or seeing me. I swerved to the left to avoid the car and as I did, I heard the horn of an “okada” (a motorcycle taxi that is named after an old Nigerian airline that had an incredibly high percentage of crashes, as do the motorcycle taxis). I had one of two options; go back to the right and get hit by the car, or try to cross the road and, hopefully, not get hit by the okada. I choose option B and was, well, partially successful. The okada driver ran into me but only glanced off my arm with his arm and continued. We were both seemingly fine, but he did look back, glaring and yelling in a language of which I could not understand the words, but still, got the message. As soon as the accident happened, I looked over to see five policemen with automatic rifles, jump up and start running towards me. I flashed to the Packard article and thought that the reputation of Lagos is well earned, and asked myself exactly how fast I could sprint the last 300 yards to the house. However, to my very pleasant surprise, the policemen were not running at me, but rather at the okada and yelling at him to “Be careful of Oyebo”! I made it back to the house in one piece which was blessing in and of itself.

Moto...

I bought a moped. About a month ago on a Sunday I and two of the other Fulbrighters went near downtown Accra to a moped and motorcycle repair/maintenance/sales yard and spoke with Kwame. This 'yard' is literally a large open dirt and rock area that is filled with derelict cars, trucks, motorcycles, mopeds, and most things with an engine and wheels. There were two guys there tinkering with some of these old vehicles. I asked him about a moped and he gave me keys and had me test drive one. After a few hours of waiting and haggling on the phone with the owner of the moped, I bought it. I have an International Drivers' License, I bought a helmet the next day, and the moto (as they call them here) is legal and registered. So for a month now I have been driving around the streets of Accra.

About a few weeks ago Wisdom came over to visit and wanted to ride on the moto. I took him around as did Andrea, one of the other Fulbrighters. Wisdom had a blast and even talked me into letting him drive it around campus a little bit. He did well. As he drove the girls on campus were heading to dinner and when they saw him, they all cleared off the road and walked on the grass.

Just last week, as I was driving, the back tire went flat. Luckily I was just outside of a gas station with a service shop. It was about 2 in the afternoon, sunny and hot, so I was very happy that, if I had to breakdown, I was so close to a place I could get it fixed. I pushed the moto in and the guy looked at it and told me that he did not have the right tools to take off the tire to fix it. He told me that just a few hundred yards away was a shop that could do it. I pushed the moto to the next shop and the guy looked at it and told me that he could fix the tire, but did not have the tools to take it off. Again, he directed me another few hundred yards away to a third guy. I pushed the moro again, getting hotter and more frustrated by the moment. The next guys told me, again, for the third time, the same story. This time however, the difference was that I had to push it about half a mile to the nearest place. As I pushed and sweated I started to question why I ever bought this jalopy in the first place. When I finally got to the 4th mechanic, he told me that he could fix it, and that he had the correct tools to do it! I sat and waited about an hour as he and another guy took off the tire, found the hole, patched it, and put it back on. In the process however, they knocked the moto over and the headlamp bulb broke (which I did not realize until later). When they were done I paid the guy that put he tire back on 2 Ghana Cedis and started to leave. As I left, the guy that patched the tire came up to me and told me that I had to pay him too. Thinking this may be a scam I asked how much and he again told me 2 cedi (which is about $1.50 USD). As this point I was happy to pay him and get out of there with two good tires.

Since then the moto has been running fine and it is nice to have the freedom to zip around town whenever I want. The only glitch I have had was one I was when I went to the Embassy one day late in the afternoon and came back home just after dark. I got on the moto, started it up, and turned on the headlamp. No headlamp. So I had a rather slow ride home (the street lights helped a lot and the embassy is not all that far from my house). Now, I do not do a lot of driving at night if I can avoid it.