Longthroat is a very Nigerian, and specific word.
It means essentially, someone who is greedy for food. Or just greedy in general. But more often than not, it refers to food – it brings to mind that rise and fall of a lump of food as it passes through a throat that has been elongated by years of chowing down more food than it should.
Well…
That is my version of the idea.
But for the author of this book, longthroat refers to a sort of greed that is more glee than sin, an appreciation of the culinary arts that can be found in Nigeria. And in Nigerian cuisine.
One thing that makes me appreciate this book is a thing the author herself points out – that it is a book that goes where few other writers have gone – seeing Nigerian food, and food from non-western cultures, as something that is an important part of cultural commentary. As a portal through which one can understand the lives, dreams, fears and psyche of the people who a particular cuisine belongs to.
Food is a very practical thing in Nigerian culture – it is meant for eating. Not something one thinks about in the deeply abstract sense of anthropology. No one thinks too much of it as a means to examine a people.
Typically, food is meant for very practical things: like celebration, for comfort, to woo a lover maybe – any Nigerian would admit to that. But look under the surface (as this book does!) and one begins to see all of the other things that food can do. That food can be this vast, rich thing that helps us understand something as complex as an entire country’s psyche.
Halfway through this book, I began to feel very bad that it had taken me so long to just buy this book and read it. I first came across the title some time in 2018 or so. A stray essay or the other from the author winded up on my timeline on socials. And I thought – wow, who is this woman that talks about Nigerian food like it is a painting to be admired, like it is a thing to be dissected for the rich cultural commentary that it can provide.
Several of Yemisi Aribisala’s essays can be found online, some of them are even part of the collection that is this book.
And really, reading this book felt like such a treat in many ways. Not only because it is about food – something I love – but also because it is very well written, and she manages to discuss nostalgia in a way that is pretty intellectual – and about food! That is very, very hard to do.
So, let’s get into some of my favorite parts of this book shall we?
Okay.
Let’s go.
FOOD AS NOSTALGIA
The essay that this book gets its name from, is an essay that takes us back to sometime in the 80’s in Ibadan, a southwestern city in Nigeria. In the essay, the author is a child on holiday at her grandparents’ house. She listens to the call of hawking food vendors who sell delicacies as varied as breakfast pap, and just… raw meat.
Okay.
I know that there have always been food vendors who walk about the streets of certain neighborhoods, selling food that is commonly eaten: like moi-moi, like uncooked pap, like eko. In Nigeria, they are more ubiquitous than the ice-cream man. But what surprised me is the direction the author takes the essay in, and how she describes something so mundane as a thing to feel nostalgic over.
She described daily, domestic life in 80’s Nigeria in the unusual backdrop of street food. Toward the end of the essay, she juxtaposes that with the much more sterilized life that exists in the present day, and in larger cities like Lagos where such hawkers would never dare stray into certain neighborhoods – their noise, their sing-song calls to invite customers, are out of place in the tarred, sometimes quiet worlds that exist in exclusive corners of the city.
Now, I wasn’t born in the eighties, not even close ha-ha, but I have always held a very strong curiosity towards Nigeria’s past. Or just, Nigeria’s past in terms of the everyday life of everyday people. As a child, I would read storybooks about characters that existed before my country even gained independence, and I would feel nostalgic for a time that I did not even get to experience.
Usually, it is fiction that does that sort of thing to me. So, I was very surprised that such a short essay - maybe four to five pages long- could evoke similar emotions in me.
In “Letter from Candahar road” the author described a much different kind of nostalgia. One that is oddly still common in Nigeria today, given the japa wave that has captured the hearts and minds of Nigeria’s youth.
The essay described a somewhat distant relative of the author’s. A woman who had moved to England some time in the fifties. And she was expecting a particular package from Nigeria – peppered snails carefully packaged for their two week trip to England by sea.
That relative wrote a letter full of longing for those snails – a taste of the home she had to leave for some reason or the other.
I found that particular form of nostalgia to be deeply endearing. How common – and human – is it to miss the things that are familiar to us, and expect that familiarity to come back to us through the medium of food.
Those snails weren’t just a delicacy for her. In Nigeria, south-western Nigeria, they are. But I imagine they were particularly delicious, even in her mind’s taste buds as she describes her longing for them in the letter.
It is so similar to the ways that Nigerians abroad, or who are moving abroad operate even today. I have heard stories of Nigerians who go to England or some Western country for holiday and they refuse to have any of the local cuisine. Instead, going on a hunt for a Nigerian restaurant to satisfy their craving for a home they left just two days ago!
As I have said, it is a very functional thing, Nigerian food but I think it is also a very deep part of who we are. People move abroad, and before leaving, freeze foods that are familiar to them for their new lives in another country. Fried meat is frozen till it is hard as stone. Runny, mucilaginous stews till they are stiff rectangles.
And it is so interesting to me, how Nigerians even turn their noses up at something like bread.
I always thought bread was just … bread.
Apparently, a lot of Nigerians find the bread in other countries to be unpalatable. Unfitting for a simple breakfast of bread, butter and tea.
It seems we are a country of people who would rather be ourselves in secret, but adopt whatever color of plumage and clothing that suits our environment. Well, at least it points to an unshakable self-love.
FOOD AS ART
Art fundamentally is about self-expression. It is about the way we see ourselves, and about the way that we choose to represent that through whatever medium we put our hands to: the page, the canvas, or pots and pans.
In one of her essays, The Institution of Stew, the author remarks at the stark difference between Yoruba stews and stews from other parts of Nigeria’s south like among the Igbo or cross-riverain people.
Throughout this book, she often extolls the great diversity of stews in Nigeria’s Easternmost state (cross-river), and the south-south in general. Some of these stews are so foreign to me, being Yoruba but I am definitely curious and would like to try them some time.
Still, it was so weird to me how the author, being Yoruba herself, describes the Yoruba’s most ubiquitous stew – palm oil stew as borderline unimaginative.
Well, maybe compared to that of other regions, it does seem like the Yorubas have a very limited range of stews to choose from. But I love that the essay didn’t end there, it went further to explain why this simple red stew is so commonplace. So revered even though it is cooked week in and week out. always present.
Essentially, the stew is only simple on the surface, look deeper – as with any other Nigerian cuisine, and you begin to see the layers of flavor, the layers of context. The layers of emotion in it.
Art ultimately is an expression of something that is both emotional and necessary to human existence. And what better to be the conduit of that than food. Each Yoruba household’s stew is a deliberate and curated flavor profile. The recipes unique to each family, and handed down through generations despite the fact that it consists of limited ingredients: tomatoes, onions, scotch bonnet peppers, a protein and protein stock of your choice … finally, a match to get the whole show on the road.
It is true though. I have often noticed that the stews I make in school are very different from the ones at home. Not only because of the limited resources as a student, I think the way you feel also affects what turns up on the plate. If you are relaxed, those languid movements, the slow stirring and gentle chopping will make an appearance in the final result
I could go on and on about my own experiences with cooking. The mishaps and the times I have gotten it right. The times I put my heart into it, and the times I just wanted to eat because I had forgotten to have breakfast and was now feeling dizzy.
I could, but this review would go on forever, and also, this isn’t really about me.
It is about Nigerian cuisine.
Ha-ha.
I learnt a lot about Nigeria, about Nigerians, and about food from reading this book. The essays were crafted with a lot of diligence, and might I add: honesty and love. This is the work of someone who enjoys food and respects its complexities and our complex relationships with it.
Really, really wish I had picked it up sooner.
And I hope you do too. It’s a really great read.
Well, I hope you enjoyed reading this review.
I will talk to you soon. Take care.