How Jollof Rice Saved My Life

  I woke up on the second ring of my phone. The caller on the screen was ‘course rep’. I picked up immediately, “Ada, Prof. Nwelue would be lecturing us by 9 a.m today and you know his modus operandi. Good morning.” The
 line went dead even before I could respond to his greetings. I checked the time, it was 8:35 a.m. I quickly jumped out of bed, unsure of what to do first. What a way to start the day! I decided to just brush my teeth, having taken my bath around 1 a.m earlier that day.

     Professor Nwelue was a tall, handsome, bespectacled, young man with dreadlocks and unshaved beards who studied Sociology and Anthropology in India. At the age of twenty-eight, he already had appointment offers all over the world. He was doing a two-year voluntary lecturing job at the university. He lectured us on SOC 305. “My course is very easy. Just attend classes and read constantly and you’ll pass,” he always told us. He often ended his classes with quizzes whenever he organized impromptu lectures. He was always very punctual to his classes.

     I wore a knee-length flowery gown with brown shoes. Smoothing my hair with the back of my hand, I picked up my brown leather bag, took one last look at myself in the standing mirror and dashed out of my apartment, not forgetting to lock the door behind me. I ran out of the compound as I shouted greetings to the other occupants of the building. I kept running till I reached the tarred road and flagged down a bike. Ordinarily, it took thirty minutes to walk from my house to the school gate. I climbed the bike, “school gate,” I told the bike man as he zoomed off. I rushed into the lecture hall at exactly 8:57 a.m. Students clustered in groups; everyone was anxious because we knew that a quiz would hold. I spotted my friends at the second row of seats in the class and quickly went to join them.

     A hush fell over the class as the lecturer walked in. “Good morning students.”
“Good morning Sir,” we replied.
“We’ll be looking at behavioural sociology today.” He lectured for over two hours while we took notes. After lecturing, he asked a general question and when nobody could give him a satisfactory answer, he took to calling us out one after the other. Being a small class of forty-eight students unlike other departments that boasted of hundreds of students, he knew us all by our names. He started asking different questions and we answered to the best of our abilities. In between trying to construct the next question he would ask and looking for who to point at to answer his question, he seemed to be also taking his own notes down. After the question-answer session, the next five minutes saw him telling jokes to crack us up. He was very good at that too. “And so my dear students, this is where we’ll draw the curtain for today. Do enjoy the rest of the day,” he picked his lecture materials and walked out of the class.
There were audible sighs of relief; some were already jubilating as the quiz didn’t hold again when the Professor walked back into the class. “Attention! please, for those of you thinking of when I’ll conduct my quiz, you already had a quiz some forty minutes ago. So, grade yourselves according to the ways you answered my questions. The quiz carries fifteen marks, thank you.” He left as quickly as he came in. The class was thrown into disarray as some were rejoicing while some others cussed the lecturer.

     “Today can’t get any worse,” my friend and course mate, Chioma lamented. “All my efforts to get good marks in this quiz has just been nullified by this man. Can you imagine that I didn’t take my bath this morning talk more of eating breakfast.” Everyone burst into laughter as most people admitted to being in similar predicament. Inwardly, I reviewed the way I answered my question and had the conviction that I’ll get at least eighty percent of the marks. When the class was almost empty, my friends and I chose a spot to have our one-hour discussion on the lecture we just received. After that, we dispersed to our various destinations.

     As I trekked home, an audible growl in my stomach reminded me that I had not eaten anything since the previous night. I sighed as I remembered the events of the previous day. Lectures had ended by 5:30 p.m the previous day and on my way home, I bought ingredients for preparing jollof rice since my cupboard was totally empty. It was exam period and most students were dry on money, provisions and foodstuffs. I was just lucky that my parents sent me some money that morning to buy provisions and foodstuffs to sustain me till the exams were over. A shopping mall was opening down the road the following day and I intended going to buy things from there because they offered discount on their goods. I had gotten home and buried myself in my books to cover lost grounds against the upcoming examinations. I made a mental note to cook the rice when I was done reading. However, I woke up around 12:45 a.m the following day to discover that I slept off on my reading table. I couldn’t cook then to avoid disturbing the neighbours. I had no other choice than to take my bath and go back to sleep hoping to cook when it was daybreak, only to be woken by that call from my course rep.

   Back to the present, I planned resting a bit when I got home before going to the mall. I had long missed eba and vegetable soup which was my favorite meal and couldn’t wait to prepare it. On getting home, I met one of my neighbours, Mama Junior, leaving the compound.
“Good afternoon Ma,” I greeted her.
“Afternoon Ada. How are you?”
“I’m fine Ma. It appears you’re going out.”
“Yes o my dear. Didn’t you hear they are opening that mall down the road today? Let me go before others grab all the benefits,” she answered smiling.
I told her that I’ll be going to the mall later and bid her goodbye.

     I kicked off my shoes, flung my handbag on top of the reading table and threw myself on the bed as soon as I unlocked the door to my room. “Home sweet home,” I muttered. I had rested for barely thirty minutes when a knock on my door brought me back from my near-slumber. “Ada, are you in?” asked the caller who was also pushing my door at the same time. I swore under my breath. Only one person could knock this way on my door – Stella.
“You this girl, don’t break down my door. I’m coming biko.”
“Are you pregnant? How long will it take you to answer the door?”
“Silly girl, better go back to wherever you’re coming from. I’ve been enjoying peace in your absence,” I laughed as I opened the door and let her in.

     Stella, a 300 level student of Pure and Industrial Chemistry, was my next door neighbour. Although relatively younger than I was, she acted more maturely. She was on the six months mandatory industrial training in Lagos State. She jumped on top of my bed and sniffed the air, “ what’s the name of your new perfume?”
“Intesa. But I still use Smart Collection’s One million. I thought I.T was six months, why are you back?”
“Don’t mind me jare. I just needed to let off some steam. The work is something else.”
I went to my wardrobe and picked out a dress. “Ebee kwa ka ona-aga? Where is she going to?” she asked with a knowing smile. I shook my head and swiped at her, “I want to go to the new shopping mall. You know it’s opening today.”
She sat up with widened eyes, “really? Little wonder there was traffic congestion around that place when I was coming. Well, I’m coming with you. At least”….“to snap nah,” we said in unison and burst into laughter. My stomach growled louder this time, cutting our laughter short. Before Stella could speak, I gave her the don’t-even-try look and she started laughing again.
“Just look at the way hunger has dealt with my home girl. But seriously, Ada didn’t you cook anything?” I explained to her that I planned to cook when I got back from the mall, not forgetting to add that I had ingredients for jollof rice.
“Look at you starving! If I didn’t know better, I would have called you stupid.”
“So what’s your suggestion?” I asked innocently.
“Madam, cook rice and eat first to hold your stomach before thinking of where to go,” she replied scoffingly.
“You are still going to accompany me to the mall when I finish cooking,” I ordered, as I changed into a crop top and a pair of shorts.
“No problem. I’ll even help you cook the rice,” she replied.

     As we cooked, we chattered about many things; the firm she worked in, Lagos traffic and Lagos in general, the occupants of our compound and school. We were interrupted by a soft but firm knock on my door, “Ada, it’s me Fred.” I rushed to the door, opened it and greeted him. Fred lived in our compound. He was also a student of my department, but was in his final year. He came to give me an assignment that I begged him to help me with. I thanked him and he left.
“Fred still has a crush on you,” Stella quipped as she came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a napkin.
“What’s my concern? If he doesn’t want to voice out his feelings, let him keep dying in silence. But I’m not ready for any kind of relationship yet.” I concluded in a matter-of-fact voice. Stella just shrugged and covered the pot of boiling rice.

     The silence was suddenly interrupted by a loud explosion that shook our building to its very foundation. Some of my cooking utensils fell in the process. Both of us ran out of my apartment into the compound, to ascertain where the loud bang came from. We met some of our neighbours who were already outside. One man pointed and we all looked in the direction he was pointing. Thick, black smoke rose to the sky, and all around us was commotion.
A woman’s wail rented the air, “it’s the shopping mall, it has just been bombed!” Screams of pity and shock followed. I stood transfixed.
“Where did you say was bombed?” I asked as if I never heard it the first time. “The new shopping mall,” Fred answered absentmindedly, as he stood on his toes to catch a glimpse of what was happening outside the compound.

     Different thoughts raced through my head as I tried to absorb the news. “Mama Junior!” I gasped audibly, “she told me she was going to the mall.”
“Call her on the phone and find out if she is alright,” someone said. “But I don’t have her number.”  By this time, I had broken down in tears, “Dear Lord, please let her be safe.” I prayed through my tears. A neighbour rushed into her apartment and brought her phone. “I have her number, let me call her,” she said.
Just then, Mama Junior ran into the compound with her son, hugging him tightly to herself. There were audible sighs of relief as we took notice of her presence. She stopped short on seeing us, “there has been a bomb blast at the new mall.” “We know. We were just about calling you to know whether you were okay,” Stella said. She said that she got a call from Junior’s teacher that he was sick, on her way to the mall. She had to forfeit going to the mall to bring Junior back from school. We were all glad she was safe.

     “Ada, the food!” With that, Stella rushed into my apartment and I ran after her. It was already burning when she brought it down. Having lost appetite momentarily, we went outside again to join the others.
Grief and gloom hung over the air as the news of the blast was broadcast all over the radio and television channels that evening. The perpetrators were still at large. The dead body count was thirty-two, all burnt beyond recognition.

     As I dished out the food that night, I couldn’t stop being grateful to God. But for the pot of jollof rice we prepared that afternoon, I would have been among the casualties of the blast.  Indeed, jollof rice saved my life.