My kids won’t forget in a hurry how about 10 or more years ago, there used to be a Saturday tradition where one person has to sit with the driver in the car to take washed beans to the mill. The passengers job is to hold the beans bucket between their laps before and after milling to prevent spillage.
They love to eat Saturday Breakfast with the homemade akara balls and evaporated milk flowing smoothly on the bowl of corn pap but shirk being involved in the making.
Those days, I used to enjoy cooking so much but I guess we all change with time. I would rather cook everything myself than trust my stomach to a food seller or restaurant. They remind me of how when we go out, they settle down and enjoy their meals while I ask for takeaways. Why takeaways?
To enable me go home and recook or refry my meats before eating. These days some things are different because I don’t have a duplicate life waiting somewhere for me.
We continued with the homemade akara and even homemade pap until they started to leave the house for boarding schools. The more the number reduced, the more I don’t want to cook. Afterall I can just get a little thing somewhere and eat and take time to rest or do other important things better than cooking to fill stomachs.
They start returning from boarding and seeing that mummy now buys akara from one akara seller and it has to be that particular akara seller or she won’t eat.
People wait it queues to get akara from this akara seller and they are ready to wait. Sometimes after eating and forgetting about breakfast, we drive past that spot by 12 noon and people are still buying her akara.
Recently, my people started to insinuate that they feel the akara seller is using charms to pull customers and that the charms have affected me too.
So, this morning, while jogging with my daughter, she calmly asks why I insists my akara must be bought from that particular akara seller?
reasons I don’t believe this akara seller uses juju:
I gave her my reasons…
- Everytime I sent someone and they tried to be smart by buying from elsewhere, the taste betrays them because the other sellers don’t really take their time to make good akara balls.
- The woman is very neat. Beans smells a lot. They have a mill, do the milling oif their beans there on location and fry continuously before everyone while milling the next batch. If this woman wasn’t extra neat, that whole area will be smelling. There is no smell at all.
- When you drive past other akara sellers in this my small area, you see empty pure water bags littering the whole place. Some manage to clean a few inches around where they fry but a little bit further, black bags and pure water bags play around dancing with the morning breeze.
- This akara woman is respectful. Because of the crowd, frustrated customers tend to talk to her disrespectfully accusing her of cheating by selling to those she knows and all that. Never have I seen her insult a customer back. You see, being good and having good manners doesn’t come with any formal education. Respectful person is respectful whether they went to any school or not.
- Even in her calm mood, customer still try to trigger her negative emotions but she knows how to keep it together. Like one day I was waiting to get some akara since there was no one at home to send. The arguments started and a man called her names and told her that she is not fast in selling and that she doesn’t even know how to talk to customers politely. I expected her to fire back at this rude customer but the only words she said were “Ok Oga as you see say I nor sabi talk sweet make you come teach me how to talk now” That’s all.
- Her akara is always tasting fresh and crisp. I know good akara when I look at it sef. She fries excellent akara balls.
- The only reason I will think twice is if her akara balls don’t taste great and people
still line up Or her surroundings are dirty and people don’t mind. Right now., as far as I’m concerned, there is nothing like charms there. She is the best at what she does and people want to buy from the best.Even though ,my reasons haven’t yet convinced my family who think that the charms are what makes me enjoy the akara lol. I will continue to patronise her because right now, there is no energy for akara frying when the family is not that large anymore.
Does anyone still make their akara themselves? Is it because you can’t find where to buy or you just love to make your own akara balls?