By Odolaye Aremu
Mother nature is another diligent prankster to be wary of. Her sense of biomimicry is multi-steps above the human intelligence. It is double jeopardy for an hungry man walking along a bush path, around sunset to start sensing the strongest whiff- the palatable aroma of “Efo Riro” or “Efo-Tete”, to be exact. The unkind hallucinations of the most delicious bowl of hot Pounded Yam, next to the bowl of steamy hot Efo-Tete, well-conditioned with killer condiments and a midsize, curled-up “Eja-Gbigbe” seemingly gaping at me with two buttoned-up, blackened, dead eyes with its entire large end hidden in the deep pool of the said Efo-Tete! Haa! Add to the fish, a company of two giant Escargots- with open insides like the flashpoint of a particularly delicious female organ; those door-like ends that’s invited and has possibly heralded billions of men into the most pleasurable sanctuary not found anywhere else but around the pelvic region of women. I am holding a half-cut gourd to my mouth filled with Omi-Akerese! Yeeeeeee! The lathering foam resulting from its weeks-long fermentation has carpeted my vegetative, jet-black mustache in blank white! As I walk on, I could hear my own tummy grumble in stupid, locomotive rhymes. Yet I feel the taste of the phantom meal on my tender palate, and the sequential slides of each “Okele” traveling down the moist, narrow passageway of my oesophagus on a one-way journey to the pit of my bowel. The crunchiness of the Escargot is just to my taste. The cooking oil from the soup is thick enough to impede any runs or unnecessary travel down the sloppy highway of my forearm. Life is essentially good when arrested in a daydream. The play is too much fun to miss when you have to take a leak in your sleep- while playing soccer on a huge field in a fast and furious dream- all you need do wrong, is slightly let loose your bladder and you’ve disgraced yourself and your bed- including your Aso-bora in the warmest, fast-traveling, bodily fluid- urine water!
There’s usually an Oasis and many palm trees clustered together in the far horizon of the Sahara desert. A little more walk, you shall get there and you shall drink, and drink and drink to your heart’s fill!
The strong aroma of Efo-Tete, the bowl of Pounded Yam, and the full gourd of Omi Akerese are all nature’s way of punishing the most famished, the lost or the wandering souls. The Oasis and the Palm trees in the desert are figments of a desperate, victimized imagination. It is a sure way to make dehydration, the most dutiful killer of the most ambitious pilgrim. It’s Nature’s mind games- such designed for any man to lose every time! It’s nothing but just a Mirage!
The image of Late Chief Wale Ogunyemi, of the old Nigerian sitcom “Bello’s Way”.
Nature’s Way done in the gentle style of Amos Tutuola.
