GARRI: BEFORE YOU BARGAIN! THINK!!

I have a motherly aunt who keeps saying that if she was to fry ‘garri’ and sell for a living, she knows for a fact that many people would not be able to afford it and this to me is understandably right. You may want to ask why I agree with my aunt, right. Try walking a mile in the shoes of those people who produce garri and you will no doubts have all the answers you need.

There are some things I find so difficult to negotiate or bargain their prices in the markets especially when you look at the people selling the items, such as garri for a living.

Gosh! Have you seen how good ‘garri’ is produced? I don’t mean the over processed machine type of garri o. I mean the real hand washed, ground and fried type. The ones the Yorubas typically refer to as ‘Ibile’ meaning ‘local, original or homemade’. That’s the type people call real ‘garri’ and it’s what I meant.

Back in the days as a very young girl with some other cousins about the ages between 8 to 10, I recall vividly during some holidays in my hometown how we would crowd my late grandmother as she and a group of other women went about frying this freshly processed cassava that has being drained of all the water and unwanted starch for days.

The aroma from the frying pan of garri was priceless even as a few of us would struggle to just take part in the frying by begging the women when the pan is just a few scoops on and of course by the time more scoops of the drained cassava is added, we beg to be released as our small/tiny hands would be too weak to push the weight of the garri in the pan around anymore or else the entire garri at the bottom of the pan will get burnt. Oh! How I miss filling up my mouth with some of the mildly burnt garri! Life was really beautiful!!

  

How much is too much for a GOOD bag of garri?

The cassava is harvested, washed, peeled, washed again and then sent to the mill for grinding. Then the women after grinding will return with huge basins of finely ground cassava on their heads and then my grandmother after making sure the cassava was well ground, would ask the women who were much younger to load the cassava in several sacks and then would tie the opened end of the bags properly with ropes and sticks and twist round till it can’t go any further. Thereafter, the bags are placed and tied firmly to the bamboo sticks leaving them to drain and ferment for a couple of days before frying begins.

Now tell me, aside the frying process coupled with the direct heat from the fire, is that not enough work already?

Alright! How many people in this generation can do such a job and feel good when a well-dressed customer walks up to him/her and say “how come your garri is so expensive”? My spontaneous reply any day would be “why wouldn’t it be expensive?

We walk into shopping malls, fill our trolleys with expensive items *which we sometimes end up not using at the end of the day*, pay the cashier at the desk without haggling or arguing over the obviously hiked prices on each item purchased, yet once we get to that petty seller on the roadside or at the markets, our negotiating skills come to play as many of us are ready to let hell loose at the point of bargaining. Hmmm! That is what a few of my ‘crazy’ friends would term WITCHCRAFT.

Please when next you meet such hardworking ‘making-a-living’ kind of traders; patronize them by buying at their price. Even when you negotiate, do it in a considerable way by not under-pricing/underpaying so much because it really hurts to see them sell with very little profit after all the effort put into getting that produce to the market.

So, whenever you eat good ‘eba’ or garri and perhaps see a producers/sellers, give them a huge SALUTE!