I'll Be Missing You

After moving back to Nigeria from the States, people often ask me what I miss. The question is usually along the lines of, “what will/do you miss about America?” or “what did you miss about Nigeria while you were away?” and it always comes at the strangest times.

While visiting old friends, someone served me amala to eat, then followed it up with a question“Did you miss amala?” while staring at me expecting a fairly detailed report. Like I was expected to reply in my best bedroom voice “Oh yes, I missed it so much…” dip my hand into the soft warm morsel and rub it all over my chest all while crooning softly, “Did you miss me too, Amala, did you?”

No, I don’t miss amala. I wasn’t even aware people ate amala out of luxury until I ran into members of the Oyo State Amala Lovers Association (A.L.A.) wearing badges that proudly said, “Associate Member (A.M.) A.L.A.” I shook my head and avoided making eye contact with them.

With the world being what it is now, smaller and faster, the question of what I miss becomes harder to answer when I can’t think of anything that is available in one place but not the other. Sure, some items are harder to find and more expensive to get, but they are almost never completely unavailable.

So I banked the question, like I do with everything I don’t immediately have a response to, and mulled on it, waiting for the answer to reveal itself.

A couple of days later, I was standing on the streets of Abuja, in front of the Banex Shopping Plaza, eating boiled groundnuts out of an old newspaper when a fight broke out across the street. I moved to a better vantage point and saw it was a policeman carrying a rusty rifle fighting a taxi driver.

As they wrestled each other to the ground in front of a largely uninterested crowd, I popped open another kernel of boiled groundnuts and stuffed its contents hurriedly into my mouth like a kid at the movies. And it suddenly hit me that I had stumbled upon the answer I was looking for.

Eureka!

So, things that exist in one place but not the other?

Policemen with ineffective weapons and taxi cab drivers fighting them.

And more importantly, boiled groundnuts.

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Claim: Originally written by Nigerian Fiction Member 168 - TheVoid00

Nigerian Fiction Title 80