The Ridiculous Life In Portharcourt.

Photo credit : Touchdown Portharcourt

   Living in Portharcourt is ridiculously interesting, it has the odds. It is like wearing tight jeans, you fit perfectly or just struggle to fit in. My own tight jeans is barely fitting, it gets oversized or awkwardly not fitting.

  Mornings are usually neither, roused by chirps of birds; above my windows they interrupt my sleep, or the rumble of traffic. I fall in love every morning, the peace and sanity that it holds. By mid-morning, we all become insane and raving mad. Hopping cabs and buses. Screaming at hawkers, carrying trays of moi-moi, okpa, bread and akara, our breakfast, for those of us, that can't wait to cook.  How much you miss home-cooked food is usually often. You learn to eat Junk food, you can't 

wait, traffics are terrible waits. 

  

 You dress up to get love. Girls, wake up and make up, and play dumb. All of them want to wear expensive things, to play trophy wives. I'm not made up, but I still look pretty. Most of them, I don't know how they do it, as early as that, and you are in a crowd and they all identical.  Everyone can spot you, by the oversized dresses and shirts, and not made up face. The sun is always fierce in mid-mornings. Yet, you don't fit in. You are wobbling alone in your oversized tight jeans. 

  Mid-days, I'm excited to see the mildness of the sun smile at me. Downtown, you can see women in high heels wobble to their favorite restaurants. Or men, in ironed suits, at the newspaper stands, arguing and holding the papers over their faces for a free read.  I love to eat roasted yam-but it's horrifying. It can taste like burnt charcoal, it melts on your tongue. I have had better roasted yam, plantains and fish. But this in Porthacourt, has a complex taste, it's different and ridiculous.  I still eat it, I grew up eating roasted yam drained in peppery sauce and green leaves. 

 Food is one thing the city can't do well in, I guess they are terrible cooks. They can make you hate your African delicacies - the ugba, pepper soup, ngwo-ngwo, banga stew. I spent most of the afternoon, talking about how good my people can cook, it annoys them. And I crave more everyday for those home-cooked meals. The taste of their food holds no feelings, you eat because you are hungry. 

  Portharcourt is like your lover, but you are  not always in the mood to make love to it. Its frigidness pulls you away into the cold arms of your home. The raucousness can drive you crazy, the rumble of traffic melding with coarse voices in Pidign English and English, it does not care how you feel. It does not care, even when you lay in cold sheets, it just needs you to get up and dress up every day.

  The weathers are horribly amazing, one minute, beads of sweat covers your forehead, and then, you are shrugging in cold, the furious rain in a middle of a harmattan or a dry season. Mangoes are definitely why we love the rainy season, you get to kiss mangoes and suck it from the hole you bit in them. 

 Clubs are the best places, they are incurably party goers, I'm not in love with that. What of days you want to discover something new. They give sameness to your soul, it makes you weary. Just cook naked, and listen to Sensual songs, I say to me. I choose not to be there, trendy wasn't my thing. 

  It is a mess you don't want to fix. So you go with its feeble love stringing your soul and body. You now wake to listen to the morning preachers in the streets, watch the sunset that struggles from the horizon, keep your habit of no breakfast most mornings, snacking as you hop cabs, call out to hawkers, just slowly try to love the roasted yam you hate, or eat African salad that like looked long strings, avoid the stews and soups, and truly you are thrilled. 

  You call it 'baby', when all you want to do is discover its thrill. But call it crazy, when it drains all your energy and drive your insanity. It is the best part, you will never fit in the tight jeans, you were not meant to be. So one day you will break free . You laugh at how awkwardly oversized and not fitting, it left you.