Chapter 1 – The Business and the Clients

Ama dances around the kitchen, a spectacle of clanging pots and rhythmic chopping that birth magical flavours. For her, cooking is not just a task but a symphony, a love made to last.

She infuses every dish with the essence of her soul. Lost in the world of her ingredients, Ama cooks with an unhurried grace. Time seems to bend around her, the outside world fading as she weaves her magic.

Ima checks her watch and shakes her head. Her mother would only do things her way. She is a conductor at every stage of her culinary orchestra. No one can convince her to use a food processor or a yam pounder or similar aids.

“We can’t do this for long mummy,” Ima sighs. “I promise our food will not taste any different if we make use of the equipment we already have!”

“But we say we serve home-cooked meals. What will they say in the village if they hear I cook food with electricity?”

“Who will even recognize you in the village now? Look at you!”

Ama’s cheeks burn from sheer delight with her daughter’s praises. She twirls and wriggles her waist, hoisting a knife in one hand and an onion in the other, a wide grin splitting Ima’s face. She is breathtaking for a woman in her forties. The passion with which she runs her new enterprise adds vibrant energy to her physical appeal.

“And stop saying that home cooking thing, please. It’s not as if others cook their food in the bush.”

Ama flashes a dazzling smile and bobs her head to a tune only she can hear. Ima throws her hands in playful surrender.

“Well, you know we have everything we need from that my competition win upon graduation. When your customers begin to line up with stones in their hands I’ll be here to help you become more efficient.”

“Here’s what we will do darling. We will remove that signboard and throw away the fancy name you called this place. I’ll have them make a handy neon sign that simply says “FOOD IS READY”. Our sign will light up at noon and go off once we have served our last portion whether it is at 1pm or 5pm. Let everyone have breakfast and dinner in their homes. No pressure.”

“We will change our name and remove the signage?” Ima gasped.

“Removing the signboard solves the problem of these council extortionists. Let our customers call us whatever they like. Our cooking speaks for us. I grew up knowing small “food is ready” joints normal folks ran at every corner. Big players today have come and elevated “mama put”, “bukka”, and those sorts of modest names to great heights so maybe we can do something for poor “food is ready”. We will just add two boys or girls in the kitchen to wash plates and clean while we do the cooking and serving ourselves. We are a proud small business serving home-cooked meals whether you like it or not.”

Ima chuckles and leans into her mother. Ama pulls her to herself and ruffles her wig.

The restaurant’s transparent facade owing to an all-glass finish in a ground floor location means that passers-by can glimpse its entire vibrant interior. Ama and Ima being the only visible staffers are an inevitable sight when they are open. Two beautiful women attending in a charming nameless restaurant with an inviting FOOD IS READY insignia is the sort of situation that draws men like bees to honey.

Femi is a former banker turned realtor. He takes more than a passing interest in new structures and makeovers such that when the hitherto derelict showroom transforms into a restaurant, he delays his workout at the gym one morning so that he finishes at about the time they open to enable him to take a closer look. He is 30, single, a classic Yoruba demon with the body of a professional athlete.

Femi would not have another meal in his house after the first visit. Ima. Oh, Ima!

He takes an early lead in the race for her affection by offering a valuable solution to a conundrum the women have been facing.

“The boys don’t want to leave after their meals.” He says to Ima, “And it is awkward because this place is small and it is not a beer parlour. Full-grown men nursing a plate of eba for two hours must be horrible. So this is what you can do.

“I know the property manager here. I can arrange it so that you can have the open space car park in the evenings when the businesses have closed and everyone has driven away. Put a canopy or something outside. Bring out chairs and tables. Serve pepper soup. Let the boys sit there for as long as they want while you make more money. After all, you finish before 5pm every day. Who works for only 5 hours in Lagos?

When Ima tells her mother, she shrieks and pulls Ima to herself and says, “Isn’t he the cutest man alive?”

Charles, 34, thin and topping six feet, is the supervising manager at the furniture company nearby. His life will not remain the same after he stumbles upon the mysterious FOOD IS READY. Ama serves him his first ever atama soup with stockfish and snails with yellow eba which they call garri even in its solid form to his bemusement. It is nothing his palate has ever known. Neither is her behind like anything he has ever contemplated from such proximity. He is married to his wet nurse. She breastfed him because his mother was too busy to. As an only child with an acute fear of the dark, Aunty Bimpe lived with them and nursed him into his teens. He was never weaned. One day at fourteen, he met Aunty Bimpe naked, she gave him suck, and his penis ended up in her vagina. He thus became the youngest father of his generation and ten years later at twenty-four after meeting Christ in the Apostolic Church he went after her and married her. Asked why he never looks at the younger of the FOOD IS READY women he says, “I prefer them older. Don’t mind those who castigate older women. I did not know my wife had reached menopause when I married her. Gives me no problems. She is like River Niger that just drank Fanta. Every day of the year.”

Uche, Economist, 35, rotund and balding, is a full-time research analyst in the bank and knows his days on the job are numbered because he cannot stay away from the new restaurant. He is the happiest man as FOOD IS READY begins a night shift. He hates his wife and never wants to go home and has only been prevented from running away by a crippled daughter he loves with all of his soul. He loves the food at FOOD IS READY. He loves the evening offerings even more because they are made for beer. He loves the sight of the women who run the business. One night at closing, inebriated and weeping, he explains why he would not go home to his wife. “They raped her. Highway robbers. They waylaid our night bus. My question is how can they rape you doggy style? You are already on your marks, why don’t you just run? I want to die!” The next day he appears at 8pm after putting in three extra hours at the bank, cheerful as sunshine personified.

Then there is Oscar. They say he teaches philosophy and religion at a private university. Single, 37, bespectacled with a slight frame, he shows the least interest in the restaurant owners and he is the one customer Ima rushes to serve as soon as he takes his seat. One day, the four men who have now struck a friendship and meet on the night shifts most evenings while sampling Ama’s first-time offering of fried snails with a vegetable side are discussing the growing trend of oversharing online and Oscar seizes the floor.

“It’s trauma dumping” Oscar begins. “There’s a widespread prevalence of trauma amongst this population and we are mostly unaware of it. Turning over such a delicate state affairs to an uninformed public for help or sympathy only gets you re-traumatized, and the ignorant influencers whose pages you run to will mine your pain for clout. You don’t know what is happening to you and neither do those you are opening yourself up to. Trauma isn’t only that which you suffer when you’ve survived an accident or fallen from a tree. Many have lived through their mothers being battered by their fathers, their fathers being decimated by their mother’s tongues, acute grief and confusion following sudden loss, the sheer dehumanisation of lack and want, let’s not even talk about rape and other forms of exploitation within households and closely knit communities. Children come out of these situations and grow up to exhibit deviant behaviours and some ignorant internet wiseacres, themselves equally traumatised, label them and teach people how not to be like them.

“Others come out to tell of their triumphs expecting that everyone can overcome because they overcame. A popular pastor the other day told of his struggles with pornography. Do you really need to go public with that? Your struggle is not my struggle sir, and we are not at the same place. I can assure you that someone somewhere steeped in the habit has seen that and rushed off for a fix, content in the knowledge that even Daddies in the lord at some point or the other while on the alter lifting holy hands had just jerked off, off some pixel performer. He too will believe that someday, like this pastor, he will overcome. If you doubt me, go and see the amount of views pornography continues to get on this app since the viral confession. Nobody learns from another’s mistakes. Don’t be fooled by motivational speakers. Trauma alters the brain chemistry. That is why willpower and self-discipline not to talk of sermons don’t work. You need to literally have your head corrected to be free. None of those you run to these days can do that for you. Stay with yourself first and see if you can understand what the heck is going on with you. Then work yourself up slowly. How? When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

TO BE CONTINUED

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