When growing up in Nigeria, my father made it a duty to go to the farm. Hence we were all farmers in the making, my late father. If he wasn’t an accountant or nurse, he would have been a farmer, and he knew it. He would drag all of us to the numerous farms he had, where we grew either yam, cassava, sweet potato, corn, guinea corn, rice, etc.. He would drag all of us to the farm some of the evenings where we would use hoes and cutlasses. If we tried to avoid my father, we had my mother to deal with. She has involved in the processing of the farm produces to its products. She also had poultry, where we had chickens and turkey. Later it dawned on my parents that they should do it for cheaper if they got professionals to do it or even a tractor, but by this time, we had become proficient in using these implements. And even get it at a lower price if they had concentrated on what they knew best, i.e. using their God-given talents to produce money and just brought the finished products. But that took time and a change in thinking and a change in their situation. It might be that they just consider it as a hobby, and they did not look at it as a commercial enterprise. But initially, they were very excited by having all this land and lots of children with spare time on their hands with nothing to do but cause problems in the house if left to their own devices. Later, we would realize our parents regarded farming and husbandry as hobbies, something they enjoyed doing and regarded as a bit of exercise. Although as children, we did not see it that way. It turns out that my parents were the norm rather than the exception of largely middle-class families and relatives in the rural northern part of Nigeria that I grew up in.
There were days in which we processed cassava to gari. One has to be very careful when processing cassava as it contains minute quantities of cyanide. It causes a form of peripheral polyneuropathy (ataxia), and if consumed in high quantities, it also affects the vision and, in some rarer instances, can cause serious damage to the kidney or may even result in some deaths. Hence, its drainage and fermentation have to be done very carefully. I remember processing the food and also putting them in large basins with large fires. Then there is Amala and Lafu, which we dried in the sun by putting them on large metallic sheets. I guess there are more effective ways of putting them in the oven after grinding and grilling them. On the market day, you see all flavours and colours of gari. Some people love sour gari, and others love theirs with a yellow tinge from palm oil. Others like theirs tasteless and white. Also, there is a variety that is powdery and looks and feels like a fine powder. Gari production is such that it is an art, and almost every family had their own special way of doing it. My father loved it yellow, coarse and sour, but my mother like it fine, white and plain. Also, they have different ways of eating it, some after adding the water like to drain it, to get rid of the effluent others like to drink this as it contains the concentrated form and that is where all the nutrients are. Some like it raw, without adding sugar, or milk believing that’s what destroys the taste. The amount of water varies from lots that it covers it to some people just adding water so that it just like a porridge-like solid. Gari can be made to a speedy snack, either adding water or oil and salt. People love it with protein sources like groundnut, meat, dry fish, cooked beans, fried bean cake (Akara), boiled grounded beans (olele), etc. As this is very important because this helps in building the amino acids that specifically prevent neuropathy. Hence, leading to some of the authorities thinking of fortifying the gari with soya. This may reduce neuropathy incidence, but I don’t know what it will do for the taste. Then not to think of people like to sprinkle gari on beans, also in the form of “swallows” prepared with hot water - Eba, i.e. because you a meant to swallow it, I never do that I always chew. The eba is eaten with vegetable, meat, soup etc.
When going to boarding school, this I thought was the norm until I met someone else. From her family, she was the exception. She is going to boarding school while all my siblings went to schools all over the country in different states. A lot of my friends always went to their boarding schools with a sack of gari. The gari was initially consumed with sugar, milk, bean cake etc. But when things became harder towards mid-term, it was consumed on its own with water. Most of the time, it was a lifesaver, with kuli-kuli (peppered fried groundnut cake). The seniors were always asking for your gari towards the holiday, and to avoid punishment, some students hoarded theirs and exchange it for favours when things were hard. A tribe from the former eastern part of Kwara State, now Kogi state, was well known for their love of gari. These guys always had gari, whatever the time it was during the term cycle. If they told you it is finished, it could be assumed that they don’t want to give you. And their love for gari could never be overestimated. These guys took it without sugar or milk - raw. Although a significant proportion of them have problems with their eyesight and ended up wearing glasses at that time, we just took it in our stride.
Hence we all loved gari in its various forms and formats. We were all familiar with the processes involved in its production, and if required, we could produce it on an industrial scale. So, you could imagine my horror when I saw in Nigeria, gari imported from India. I just could not understand it and be sold in Nigeria!! Not the UK or USA but in Nigeria. Why!!! Apart from the fact that there are different formats and forms of gari, Nigerians have developed different tastes. It might be that some people who live aboard have developed a taste for the western gari and just enjoy something different from our local variety.
To cut a long story short, in Nigeria, we are said to produce about 54 metric tons of cassava (where gari comes from) - we are the world’s top producers. If we cannot produce ordinary gari that my grandmother can produce on an industrial scale up to international standards, what hope do we have of refining crude oil or petrol?
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