It all started during Christmas season,
when my mum brought some hens home. No, it wasn’t the type you killed to
celebrate Christmas - she bought these chickens at a giveaway price, off people
who rear them to lay eggs, and felt they had made enough money from them.
These chickens did a good job of laying
all the eggs we boiled and used in the Ofada rice sauce we served at my mum’s
birthday at the end of the year.
After then, they kept laying. The problem
is we are a very small family. My mum, in her usual giving manner, then started
a new project – Project ‘Feed my friends eight eggs each’. My mum started
giving eggs to everyone, and the eggs in the kitchen gradually reduced by the
day.
As for me, my diet changed. I started
eating one or two eggs almost every day, I even became worried that my mum’s Project
eight eggs would shorten my egg ration. Sometimes, I would wake up when the
house was empty, go to the kitchen, and find that my mum had emptied the crate
of eggs. In my worry, I would then go down to the chicken cage, and find about
eleven eggs, and with relief, eat about two of them. From my little knowledge
of eggs and cholesterol, I guessed a fully developed adult shouldn’t be doing
what I was doing, but I felt I should just indulge. As a child, my siblings and
I were never allowed to indulge in anything. Absolutely nothing, wait a minute,
the only thing we had in excess was cane and punishment. So this was like a
first time for me.
In my house, we always buy our food in
bulk, like grains in sacks, and pepper in baskets, but never eggs. So this was
the first time I was just seeing eggs idle in the kitchen all the time. I work
from home, so I am always the only one at home almost all day, until late in
the evening when others start getting back. I was therefore the only one that
was subject to the temptation of eating loads of eggs – the eggs stared at no
one but me.
So I felt, “Wharraheck, lemme just
indulge now, after all, these chickens would stop laying eggs one day, and I would
return to my two eggs a week routine.” The problem is my issues did not want to
wait for the chickens to stop laying eggs before they started surfacing.
The first thing I noticed was intense
migraine. I was and still am not sure whether I can link this directly to the
eggs, but I sure could not say my grandmother was the one ‘doing me’ from the
village, because she died last year, although she might have buried the jazz
under the ground somewhere, and somebody might have chosen that spot to pound
yam every day, and the more they pound the yam, the more ferocious the
migraine. As there was no way to link this to the eggs, I kept eating them.
One day, I then looked at my laps, and
they looked bigger. I was like “wow, I am adding weight again. 2013 is indeed
my year of restoration and bigger things. All the hips and weight I lost in
2012 is now being restored to me. God is indeed good.” After thinking this way,
I quickly went online to check the link between excess eggs and growing fat – I
saw none. So I kept eating the eggs.
The next thing was that I started
noticing irregularities in my digestive system, my throat felt like there was a
big stick in it, the upper part of my stomach was painful, I stopped feeling
hungry even till late in the afternoon. If not for the water therapy I usually
do every morning, I am sure this problem would have surfaced earlier than it
did. At this point, I knew there was a problem. It sure couldn’t be my
grandmother’s jazz, she is dead, for heaven’s sake. And in no way could
pounding on the jazz affect my whole digestive system. But I still wasn’t sure,
so I kept eating the eggs.
Later that day, things got worse. Whenever
I got up from the seat I worked from, I noticed my legs were bigger, and harder.
It was later at night that I realised that blood was not circulating in my legs.
So all the while I had been deceiving myself that I was adding weight, I was
actually swelling. Gosh, adding weight is not the same thing as being inflated
like a balloon. The last time I had a problem with blood circulation in my legs
was when I had an accident three years ago, and my legs were affected. I was
also on medication. So I wonder what foreign object was in my body to make it
swell. As of this moment, I was finding it hard to eat one meal a day.
So what in the hell could have gone wrong
that would affect my blood circulation, digestive system, and give me migraine
going into two weeks? Maybe it is the devil because he knew I was to be
featured as an author and a Spoken Word artist at a literary event in Ibadan,
and that event could be a big break for me. He’s such a destiny-destroyer.
“No @ilola, it’s not the devil. It’s one
thing and one thing only – your greed! The fact that you see something doesn’t mean
you must have it all the time.”
So the next morning, I go to the kitchen,
eye the eggs, which by now is increasing
massively in numbers, as my mum’s Project eight eggs is over, yet the chickens
won’t stop laying eggs, and then I walk away. The upper part of my stomach is
so tight and painful that I can no longer do my water therapy.
My literary program is the next day, yet I
can hardly walk well without flinching in pain. I cannot stand straight. My head
is pounding. My stomach is tight, I can’t eat because I cannot even get hungry.
After some medical advice on the internet, I have therefore changed my diet
from indomie and egg or bread and egg to oats with banana and groundnut, orange
and pawpaw. Damn cholesterol, damn eggs, I have overdosed on you long enough. Because
of you, I can’t even enjoy food this year, and it’s just January.
I just look at these eggs. If only I had
orders to deliver hair Deep conditioning mix I sell as one of my hair products,
at least, the eggs would serve a purpose for me and other ladies out there. As for
now, they are just useless.
At this moment, I am still in pain, due
to my over-indulgence, and I don’t even have the luxury of blaming my
grandmother or the devil.
You see, don’t blame me or my greed,
blame the chickens because it all started when my mum brought them to this
house.
