NIGERIA AT CHRISTMAS: CASHLESS, CASHTRAPPED, FUELTRAPPED AND FOODTRAPPED SOCIETY

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Once again it’s Christmas all over the world. A time for joy and laughter, that’s why even though it’s a special time traditionally for Christians all over the world to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, it has also become a time set aside for many at the end of every year for merriment as it has now been accepted by nearly all as a special holiday period for even very large numbers of non-Christians across the globe.

Many save up to make trips to spend time with loved ones from one point to the other especially those who have not had time all through the year due to the everyday life’s hustle to make ends meet, hence Christmas for such people is a “catching up” time.

Christmas, a time you feel so much love in the air as no doubts gift shops all over the world are right now packed full with last minute buyers and of course with the many sales ongoing in virtually all the stores across the globe, you are bound to find gob smacked attendants on their feet all day attending to customers’ needs including unending questions from big-buying’ as well as the window shoppers or ‘time-wasting’ ones who will end up picking a lot less than what they must have troubled the attendants over. But then, that’s one of the challenges in working in such stores.

For us in Nigeria too, it’s Christmas again and a time typical for petroleum marketers to make their ‘end of year killing profits’ at the detriment of the masses. Therefore, we are once again like a couple of years before now at Christmas, faced with the recurrent fuel scarcity thus leading to long queues at the stations where people have to wait for long hours as though expecting the second ‘coming of Christ’ just to get a few litres of fuel and the most mind boggling part is that many sleep at the stations just to ensure they get to buy as soon as these stations commence sale yet some of these ones leave disappointed  without buying even after the horrid hours spent waiting.

This time around, we are not only faced with fuel scarcity which has led to the crazy hike in transport fare by over a 100% thus hindering some families from travelling for the yuletide season, we are also faced with long queues at ATM machines in all the banks in the country including the ones in the rural areas where on a good day would barely have more than two persons waiting to use those machines. People can’t collect their money from the banks to even buy food talk less of buying the fuel which the ‘black’ marketers are selling at very outrageous and exorbitant prices.

We have not only become a cashless society but have moved on to a ‘cash-trapped’ society as we now have to wake up very early and rush off to queue up at banks just so we can collect our own money which was saved in these banks.

In all of these happenings, it’s still the masses who are affected as those who steal us ‘red’ on a daily basis in their various leadership positions, still have their way around getting all their needs met at this season from ‘the backs’ including the scarce fuel as well as cash from some of  these banks’ officials who are sometimes even willing to make delivery to the respective homes of these ‘top shots’. While the rest remain cashless, ‘cashtrapped’, ‘fueltrapped’ and even ‘foodtrapped’. What an irony of life!

Gosh! Nigeria is beginning to choke one up more and more by the day. We seem not to be getting out of the woods anytime soon.

Nevertheless, let me still use this opportunity to wish everyone in Nigeria including all those lucky ones in diaspora a merry Christmas even as the rest of us here endure the season of a  ‘cashtrapped’ holiday taking place all over the country at this moment.

God help us all!

STELLA ENE-INYANG

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!