Grass for Supper

Image courtesy: weblogs.baltimoresun.com

My friend, it's quite sometime you came to the salon. Hope nothing?

Ah, na you be this? It's my husband o! He will not allow me to go out again unaccompanied. I don't know what is wrong with him. He is too possessive. He says the hairdresser should rather come to our home to dress my hair. Can you imagine that?

Do you blame him? Good wives are scarce in town. He doesn't want to lose you to the wolves in human skin that are all over town.

Na lie! What did I say? Na lie!! The Niagara Population Census Board says women are more than men, so how can there be scarcity of women?

I said scarcity of wives, not women. Just as you have plenty of men but scarce husbands.

I beg, how do you mean?

I mean not all men or women are marriable materials. So don't blame your hubby. He is merely protecting what he has.

I understand and I don't mind. But what annoys me is that he is forcing me to be a witness to the constant display of his stupidity wherever he goes.

Has he done anything stupid of recent?

Of course! Whatelse do you expect oko mi Adio to do other than being stupid?

So what did he do?

Oko mi Adio recently insisted that I must accompany him abroad to attend a conference. I said, "no be me and you".

Where did he go?

Of course, he went to the land of ABBA.

Abba Adesanya?

No, I mean the land of OLOF PALMER.

Olofinjana?

What's the relationship between Olof Palmer and Olofinjana abi you are also stupid like my husband? I mean the land of NOBEL.

Sure, I expect your husband to go to the land of NOBLE men...

You are a fathead! Don't you know the land of VOLVO?

Volvo ke? So he couldn't buy ordinary Volvo here and he had to go abroad to buy one?

It seems you are a Dundee United. Can't you get the clue?

What clue? Instead of you calling a spade a spade you are just dribbling me like Maradona. How can anybody get a clue with your usual rigmarole?

Okay, sorry. I mean he went to Sweden...

Jesus Chriiiiist! That one is dangerous o!!

What's the problem?

Ah, that's the land of EROTICA!!

Ero se kini? (Ero does what?)

E R O T I C A!!!

What's the problem with that? Oko mi Adio did not have time for whatever that means. He said he had too many issues to contend with to thinking erotica or whatever. But he admitted he saw double on the streets of the city he visited. He said he saw giant statues of men and women in public parks "nihoho omoluabi"..., some urinating to form a fountain of vulgarity!

What's that?

I mean he saw statues of naked men and women with their dangling "jagbajantis" for all passers-by to see. What kind of country is that?. I asked him if he went to their beach on Saturday and saw what "omoluabi" (a cultured man) should not see but all he did was just giggle. He said he was too preoccupied with how to get a decent meal to dancing naked on the beach like the natives. He said the first day he got to the hotel he slept on an empty stomach because he misordered.

He misordered his priority?

Not exactly. Oko mi Adio said because he could not decode the gobbledegook on the menu list he just went for the costliest course thinking that at least he would have a bellyful of whatever was brought. He could not have been more disappointed. He said with all the disdain in his subconscious that when they brought the 'thing' all he could see was a microscopic garden on a vast plate of nothingness. In the "garden" was a bleeding piece of meat, perhaps meant for a cat, with some fresh grass and weeds on top of four tiny pieces of unpeeled potato. He gobbled the "garden" fast thinking it was the appetiser. Then the long wait began. Oko mi Adio waited and waited and waited. The next thing he saw was the waiter's bill. He must have fared worse than those waiting for Godot. Yet he paid $100 for the dinner that never was. The following day he headed downtown asking every Swede he met on the way the road to any Chinese restaurant. He eventually got one and my disoriented hubby did not know when he shouted at the tiny Chinese lady at the counter that he wanted to eat Chinese by all means. "I'm hungry. I want to eat Chinese, quick, quick..." The petrified Chinese lady was speechless and motionless. She must have seen an African version of Gorgon Medusa. Immediately she came to, she held a hurried dialogue with her mosquito legs and disappeared from the counter. She later reappeared with a man who looked more Vietnamese than Chinese. He said something in Mandarin and my husband did not wait for the translation before he bellowed out again, "I want to eat Chinese o!" The Chinese man retorted: "Chop chunn chunn?" Without thinking oko mi Adio said, "Yes, I wan chop Chinese, chunn...chunn...chunn". The man then asked in 'breaking' English: "You, come, where from?". "Niagara, of course", my hubby replied. "You eat people there?" "No o o, said my husband. I mean I want to eat your kind of food". Then the man laughed for the first time, exposing his nicotine-coated teeth. In a jiffy the kitchen had prepared steamy rice, fried noodles and diced chicken with cashewnuts. Oko mi Adio said he was given chop sticks but out of shame he could not reject them. He said it took him a hell of a time to finish the ‘double-pole vaults event’ he tasked himself with. He said it was easier and more honourable for him to have kuku eaten the chop sticks rather than being at his wits end trying to use same to eat rice! At the end of the day he threw the useless sticks away and used his bare hands like the Pakistanis to swallow the grains!! He said if one throws kolanuts for divination and the result is not favourable it is better one uses one's hands to get what one wants. I asked him why he did that in full public glare. He said when hunger is holding court in one’s belly one does not have time for any fancy. I told him that one na proverb wey no cross the Baltic Sea.

What an experience!

You call that experience? I call it stupidity uncensored.

But that's not unlike Adio, your husband.

Wharrrever!