There's food at home.
When Nnnenna said, “carry plenty money when you're going to camp”, she was talking from the experience that I only actually understood when I couldn't allow hunger finish me.
I honestly didn't remember that people have different taste buds. I mean there are people who enjoy dipping bread in tea and people who actually do not like plantain.
When we first came into camp, a good number of people were boasty, telling all and sundry that they couldn't eat the meals served at the camp kitchen. Now fast forward to the second week in 😂
There were three different sets of people in my camp; the constant patronisers of the maami market, the regulars at the camp kitchen and the ones who only eat at the kitchen when it's rice, boiled yam, bread and butter or bread and boiled eggs and eat at restaurants in maami when it's eba, beans and the likes. I was in the third category.
Unsurprisingly, after the first five days in camp, we noticed that the line at the kitchen started increasing, the third set who were initially among the first set of spenders, moved to the third set after the first week of luxurious spending because spending more than 2k on food in one day was no longer sitting well with their bank accounts.
On this Thursday afternoon, I got back and was pondering if I had enough money to buy a plate of rice, moi-moi and fried meat, when my bunkmate said, “today eba sweet o, the soup sef thick and the maggi comot”. The part of me that knew my pocket was hitting red quickly pushed my body down from my up bunk to go and collect this ‘delicious’ eba from the camp kitchen. I got back and the soup was actually thick so I quickly washed my spoon, said my prayer and took the first spoon. Let me just remind you again that taste buds are different, because how'd I taste bitter inside this supposedly sweet egusi soup? I looked down and saw my bunkmate and some other people in my room eating progressively and then decided to try again. I felt a number of emotions including disappointed, betrayed and perplexed because how? Fast forward to dinner, this ‘nice’ eba from afternoon was still uneaten when I went back to the hostel to get my flask for yam and stew. I'd tried yam and stew here before, the stew definitely didn't stew but it's yam and stew and yam can even be eaten without stew if it comes to that. I desperately went round the hostel asking if anybody was interested in my eba because I didn't want to waste food. After a few minutes of going round and sounding cringe, I took the advice to throw the one spoon eaten eba away, got dressed and quickly rushed downstairs. Halfway there, someone coming back with her empty flask said very lightly, “food has finished”. I didn't want to believe that I'd heard clearly so I kept walking in faith.
In the afternoon, my new friend suggested that we collect eba without soup because she heard that people usually buy just soup from maami. Not like I didn't listen, I did and I considered it but getting to the line for eba, I forgot to refuse the spoon of soup, or something.
I'd given myself so many talks this year on self-love including eating well so I dressed early, took my purse with my money that I'd been mising and went to the market to buy my new favourite toasted bread meshed with fried eggs and accompanied it with a very chilled bottle of my favourite excuse for yoghurt; nutri-yo.
In this life, eat food. Money will come and money will go but hunger will cause you ulcer if you don't use your money to buy food.
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