This Christmas was hectic (I slept through Boxing Day:)...but wonderful. I spent the day in a neighbourhood called Sha Sha. To get there you drive past U.I. and down a very beautiful road that cuts through land owned by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Eze's former employer. I consider the road a lovely respite from the increasingly traffic-congested Ibadan, but most of the locals know it as a site of car-jacking and armed robbery. I have yet to see any evidence of that, though we do sometimes pass young men hanging out at massive potholes, pretending to repair the road and threatening to stop your car if you don't toss them 20 Naira notes out the window. At any rate, I always enjoy the pilgrimage to Sha Sha.
It is the neighbourhood where Eze's parents live, and this year they were very excited at being able to have most of the family home for Christmas. The picture shows all but two who were there to celebrate. Missing from it are Eze (cameraman) and Nonye (Eze's Lagosian big sister and mum of the strong, rambunctious toddler Tola and her baby sister Sola). Present in the picture are Mumsy and Popsy, Chime (younger brother currently working in the northern town of Mina), Agatha (Chime's lovely wife-to-be), Uche (older sister working as an environmentalist in eastern Nigeria), her husband Johnson and Chichi, the doctor-in-training-nephew who is the apple of everybody's eye.
Eze and I spent the day before Christmas hunting for gifts at the local Aleshinloye Market. It was a challenge to find something for everyone -- especially for me as I didn't know everyone yet -- but we managed it. I insisted that each gift had to be wrapped and stayed up late recycling scrounged bits of tape (which we had forgotten to buy) in order to make that happen. We woke up very early on Christmas morning in order to roast two chickens -- our surprise contribution to the day's festivities. We used a special recipe we have developed over a few attempts. Very much our own conconction -- roasted chicken stuffed and overflowing with sweet plantain and savory potatoes -- but it has been termed 'Virginia chicken' by a friend of ours who assumed I must have brought the recipe with me from across the ocean. Especially funny because, as I keep reminding everyone, 'I used to be a vegetarian.'
We didn't make it to Sha Sha until noon, which was a disappointment for the rest of the family until they caught sight of what we brought with us. Eze managed to capture a few photographs in the joyful chaos of chicken-gobbling and gift-unwrapping that ensued. We spent the rest of the day hanging out, watching dvd's on the family's new television set and, later, the young folks stole away for a bottle or two at a local bar. All in all it was a great day -- wonderful to be with a loving family for Christmas and magical to be able to share some of my own festive traditions...of course slightly tweaked for reasons of taste and logistics.
The next post will feature a German Shephard puppy and a late night church vigil, but that's another story...
