00:05

Q – TELL ME A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOURSELF.

OK, my name’s Chika, I grew up in the rural part of Nigeria and both my schooling and my foundation school and everything all took place in mostly rural part of Nigeria. I actually had, an itinerant lifestyle in the sense that, because my dad's job we kept travelling from place to place. So, I was able to acquire some knowledge in, you know, in the process of that. But most of my childhood was in Yoruba part of Nigeria.

00:47

Q – WHAT WOULD A TYPICAL DAY BE, AS A CHILD GROWING UP IN RURAL NIGERIA?

Well, the thing about rural part of Nigeria is that, back then I was born in the ‘80s, so, back then there wasn't much of modernisation, so a normal day would be wake up, bath your child because we like doing the bath thing early in the morning, so we know we're done with that. So wake up, bath your child, feed her, and the rest of the day is left with you and whoever is there, OK? So 'cause, you know, like everybody mentioned, it’s more of a communal thing in Nigeria, so there's always aunties, there's always cousins, there's always everybody. So, whatever happens throughout the day you might even you know, someone might, you know, carry you from your house to their own house. Your mom will be like, I kept my daughter today, she's in this person’s house and that's it, nobody says anything. So that's what it's like. Then going to school, you can actually go to school, your mom can take you to school and someone else will bring you back. Someone else can take you to school and someone else will bring you back, so it's just like that.

01:55

Q – YOU SAID THAT YOU MOVED AROUND A LOT, WHAT WAS THE REASON FOR THAT?

Yes, I moved around a lot. OK, My dad is a police officer and in Nigeria, I don't know if it happens here, I don't know if you're stationed at a particular place all through your career, but in Nigeria it’s not like that. They keep transferring you from place to place, especially if, you know this nepotism thing, it's a big thing, it's a big bad culture that has actually eaten deep into Nigerian system. So, if you don't know anybody that knows anybody, so you're done for. So they keep transferring you to the worst place, they will take you, maybe you're in this position and someone says OK, in this position, maybe he's doing well, something like that. Someone might write a report or something like that, and then zoom, you’re moved to somewhere worse than that. So my dad kept moving around and stuff like that. So at that point we were just following him and that was how we kept living like that.

02:47

Q – WHAT PART OF NIGERIAN CULTURE IS MOST IMPORTANT TO YOU?

OK, there are so many parts of Nigerian culture, but the part I like most, that's most important to me is the traditional rites. I love everything about Nigerian traditional rites in the sense that, like getting married, burial, everything, every ceremony, there's a traditional right to perform, and if there’s a traditional right to perform, there is something to eat, there's something to gain, there's something to learn even… OK there’s this Tweet I came across someday like that, someone just Tweeted if you want to know the your life history, go to where they are doing a traditional right for maybe a dead person, that is where you get to know your life history. Now what that person is trying to say is that in where I come from in Igbo land, let's say there’s a burial, OK, and after the burial, there's something they do. The first son or first daughter or maybe in-laws, you're supposed to give something towards that burial, and what you’re supposed to give it’s, most times it’s a cow. OK, now after the burial, sometimes they are left… depending on how many female you have in the house, if you have five, you have five cows, stuff like that, so they get to share it. Now, how the thing is shared is based on if your mum was actually married traditionally or your children were married traditionally. Now, if your mum wasn't married traditionally, ‘cause in Igbo land there's this thing they do where I come from, there’s this thing they do like, it happened somewhere in my lineage, my grandfather – because… he was just the only boy for his mom… before he came of age they married someone for him. Now, the children aren't actually what he sired, he didn’t sire those children, the wife sired those children outside but they are considered his because they were married in his name. Now, if you don't want to be embarrassed, don't go to where they are, maybe they're doing all this traditional rites. So why that person posted I think, if you go there, maybe they shared things and you try to go and say OK, this is my share. Someone from there will tell you how your mum was married, who slept with your mom, how you were born, so that's a no-go area. That's why I say you get to learn something, that why I say the traditional rite part is what I love most about my culture.

05:18

Q – YOU TOUCHED UPON THE FOOD, CAN YOU TELL US WHAT KIND OF FOOD WOULD YOU HAVE AT A BURIAL OR A WEDDING?

In Igbo land, most of our food is fermented. It's, as in, you get to keep them minimum of three days to one week. Then when it's fermented, we get to do so many things with it. OK, so in my place our staple food, we call it about all eba or akwa, but it’s swallow, it's something, we don't chew it. We just get a mould of it, dip it in our soup and we swallow it… Now, if in a burial or even in a wedding, now, this is not served, it's like you haven't started, rice is nothing where we come from, bread is nothing, chops is nothing. You have to serve swallow for them to know you actually did something. So that's what our food is like.

06:18

Q – WHAT WOULD YOU JUST DO FOR FUN?

You mean in Nigeria? OK, like I stated earlier, the fun thing about, especially the male people, the male children in Nigeria, they love football so much. But for the women, we love dancing. Dancing… yes it is part of our culture, but it's still something we do for fun and something we use in expressing ourselves. Then we do something you might call dress-ups or stuff like that. You know, we like, you know, especially when we are young, we see our mothers tying wrappers and stuff like that, and we try to imagine, OK, what will I look like when I get to that stage, so we like doing that, like I started doing that early you know, I did that to the extent that I wore it out one day. My dad was so happy, my dad was like, yeah, you look good, your husband would be proud of you… My mum was just laughing. My dad actually got that set of clothes for me, just for me to wear, he said I looked good in it and why did I look good in it? I was chubby, yes. In Nigeria we like chubby people. So I was very chubby then, so my dad was so happy. When I started growing up, you know, I got to my university days and I started watching weight and stuff like that. If I walk this way out, my dad… he would sigh and sigh and he’s like, he calls me ‘baby’, “baby what happened?” I'm actually watching my weight, I’m trying to be healthy, I’m trying to look good and he's asking me what happened. You used to be better, you used to be finer [LAUGHTER]. So that's what it's like then.

07:56

Nigerian dances are mostly, we started off with folklore. Our songs are mostly folklore where we get to tell stories with our songs, you know, especially things that happened previously, they tend to pass it on to the younger generation through songs. We have so many of it like that and the dancing too. Most of our dancing are mostly play dance, you know, you get to represent whatever is being sung, you dance and you represent it, stuff like that. Then we started evolving into Afrobeat and hip-hop and stuff like that, so that is how we came about. But then our major dancing back where I come from, it's all folklore, OK, and we get to dress in our native attire where we get to wear a single wrapper and something like a bodice… it's not a top, it’s actually a piece of wrapper that get to tie around yourself and stuff like that. Then we have these bracelets we wear on our feet and our hands… they have some kind of rattling noise they make, they call it rattles I think. So we get to wear that so that with every step we take, there's this sound that goes with it. Then in Igbo culture, OK, there's this thing they do, especially if you're the male type, the male from Igbo and if you're a royal family, OK, choosing a wife, they get to do that through dancing. OK, so they set up some events like that and call the maidens to come and dance and stuff like that. So, however you dance would make, maybe provoke the male to choose your stuff like that. So when we dance, we dance with our body, we get to feel the rhythm, we get to twist every part of us to let the male know, OK, this is what I can do. So it's kind of a provocative kind of dancing 'cause you really need to show the male part I can actually twist all these things, you know, stuff like that.

09:45

Q – WHAT DO YOU LIKE THE MOST ABOUT LIVING IN SOUTH WALES?

OK, first and foremost because of how I was raised… I was actually living a life that my parents wanted me to live. OK, so coming here I think was a bit liberating for me, 'cause this is the first time I get to be myself in my own way. Because even at this age back in Nigeria, I'm still, I'll still live the way my parents want me to live at this age. I think sometime… few years back, I was married already, I went home to see my dad and something happened, my dad almost hit me. He has the right to do that. OK, now why I mentioned that is because here, I get to see that, you know, there are some things I do and I'm asking myself, where's my dad? Stuff like that. Even my younger sister we were talking someday… my youngest stays here, she's in London, I said something, she’d be like, “you’re lucky my dad is not around”. So I think, what I love most about staying in South Wales is the fact that I have my freedom. I get to be myself, the way I want to be myself.

10:18

Q – IS THERE ANYTHING THAT YOU MISS ABOUT NIGERIA?

Yes, I miss so many things about Nigeria. OK, first and foremost, I'm quite surprised I missed this, but indeed I truly miss it, it's farming, OK? There's a reason they put the green in our flag, because it represents agriculture 'cause it's a huge part of us. Before the crude oil and petroleum thing came in, agriculture was our main thing, it was the strongest part of our GDP. So, every household in Igbo land you have your farm… there are times you go to farm, I will spend one week. Then we set up a tent and stay there and stuff like that. And where I come from, our food is produced from the farm to the mouth. OK, so I think that is what I miss most, the fact that I get to cultivate, get this thing, process it, do it, and it gets the to the part that this is what I'm eating. That's what I miss most.

11:15

Q – WHAT WOULD BE THE ONE MEAL THAT MAKES YOU THINK OF HOME, THAT YOU CREATE IN SOUTH WALES TO THINK, ‘I MISS NIGERIA’?

OK, now it's soup. Now we have different types of soup, We have so many and they are sourced in so many different ways. We have the egusi which is common and that one, we've gotten people selling it here. But there’s this particular one, I'm from Igbo, my dad is from Igbo but my mum is not Igbo. My mum is from a different part of Nigeria and she doesn't speak Igbo. So, there's this soup they make from their side, now if I make that thing here, the whole of this park will have the smell of it. That's one meal I miss so much. That’s one meal I miss so much.

11:59

Q – WHAT ARE THE INGREDIENTS OF THE SOUP?

OK, they call the leaves atama, I don't think it has an English name, they call the leaf atama, and that's actually what has that smell, it's a very concentrated smell. I don't know how that leave came about, but they get it from the teak part of the forest, it’s not something that just grows on its own. Yeah, so it's sourced in the teak part, especially hunters are the people who normally get that. So I don't know where it got that smell from. So the leaf is called atama, then we use something we call waterleaf, some people here call it spinach, but I don't think that it’s spinach. So waterleaf, the atama leaf, it’s mostly vegetable soup. So these two, we get it in abundance, then every other thing is, you know, we eat fish a lot. So we have the dry fish, we have the stockfish, we have fresh fish, any kind of fish. Then we do the beef thing and the crayfish and all this stuff. So those are the main ingredients for it.

12:58

Q – YOU MENTIONED THAT YOUR MUM AND DAD ARE FROM DIFFERENT NIGERIAN TRIBES, IS THAT UNUSUAL?

OK, back in the day it was very unusual. It was very unusual. Like my mum, when she got married to my dad, she actually struggled with it because you know, especially in Igbo land, you're always expected to marry Igbo to keep the culture and stuff like that. But I think it was because of my dad's job, because they kept posting him of to places like that, so he started meeting up with people and that was how he got to meet my mum. And you know, to make it more difficult, to make it extremely more difficult for my mum, my mum actually had a child before my dad met her. So he was, no, he was nothing. Because of that, there was no wedding. I think I’ve graduated from my university before they had their wedding, yes. So because of that there was no wedding because everybody was against it and stuff like that. So my mum will tell us then that when she will come home you know, and you know, because my dad was moving about the normal cooking setting in Nigeria is firewood, especially my part. I think it happens to every other person but where we come from it's firewood. So, my dad had been moving from place to place, so he has seen gas, he has seen stove. So when they got married, my dad bought gas and brought it to the village OK, so she cooks with it. So there’s this oil we make, palm oil, and palm oil you can’t use gas because it sits on the fire for hours, OK… and the pot is quite wide, so I've not seen any gas that you can actually place that thing on. So when my mom wanted to make this thing, she went out to, you know, my dad's relative to like, OK, can borrow me this, borrow me that, they were like, “no, you cook with gas, go and cook with it. Have you seen anybody cooking with gas here? Go cook with.” So these are the kind of hostility she met when she came in initially into the house, but then we are all grown up now and you know, modernisation has come in, everybody's evolving, so now we’re accepted. Even right now… because of us, many of them are going to marry outside. So you see that. [INTERVIEWER – TRAILBLAZERS]. Yes, trailblazers, thank you very much.

00:15:17

Q – SWALLOW, WHAT IS THAT?

Now… after processing it the end product comes out in powder. OK let me explain with oats, normal oats… use a dry blender to blend it into powder, add a little water to make into a paste. Then you sit it on the fire and you keep stirring it till it comes like a dough. Yes, you know when it becomes malleable like a dough, then we take it out, that’s when it's done. We take, it depends on each person has their own average size it's not one size for everybody, so you just cut what you know you can swallow… it starts from how you were raised because some houses, you know they start giving their children bigger one, you know for them, so those children grow up eating larger ones. So some start with small, so you can see somebody is swallowing something as big as my hand like this, yeah.

16:24

Q – IS THERE A COMPETITION EVER FOR WHO CAN SWALLOW THE LARGEST?

[LAUGHTER] It's not really a competition until you get to eat with people who are fast eaters, that's when you know you're competing for your life. [LAUGHTER].

ENDS