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Illustration by Mary Kirkpatrick
The weeks leading up to leaving Nigeria were a blend of emotions, with excitement, uncertainty and anxiety topping the list. I still didn’t have a concrete idea of what my wife and I were getting into, but the outlook was positive. We had just gotten married and were moving for the higher quality of life Canada promised.
Everyone said to pack as many food ingredients as possible, so with the assistance of family members, we started to shop: dried fish, garri flour, ground melon seeds, dried leaves and more – things we wouldn’t find in Calgary, where we were headed, or that might cost too much to find a version that would placate our Nigerian taste buds. We were packing “a mobile pantry of sorts” as Kosisochukwu Ugwuede writes in her essay Traveling Pantry, talking about the Nigerian traveller’s propensity for hauling their food things abroad.
It was a restless period and we packed our lives into four large suitcases, plus an equal number of carry-on bags. Two of those large boxes were filled with food items. We were set for new lives in the land of maple leaves. I imagined the things that dominated our lives growing up in Nigeria were, if they existed in this new country at all, a tiny dot in the cultural landscape.
To be honest, most of my worries about culture had to do with food. I wondered if I could live without my swallows – not birds, but a dumpling-like dish with many names including eba or fufu depending on what it is made of and how. I couldn’t remember if any two weeks in my almost 30 years of life had gone by without eating them. They are eaten with soups or stews by tearing off pieces with the right hand, dipping in soup and swallowing. It’s comfort in the belly, and as I often find, soul-filling. I was worried about how to keep eating these when our Nigerian pantry inevitably ran out.
But in Calgary, we discovered many African food stores across the city where I can easily find powdered milk or even my favourite bitters from Nigeria. And there are African restaurants where I can find nkwobi (spicy cow feet) and shawarma with a sausage appropriately tucked inside the Nigerian way, reminiscent of a pig in a blanket.
Before I moved to Canada, I’d had little cause to try foreign food and I continue to fascinate my Canadian colleagues with my claim of never having tried things like pickles, which they probably take for granted as universal. I privately enjoy their anticipation as they await my verdict while I chew this or that for the first time. I can’t offer them much more than “it’s okay” or “it’s great” because generally, we don’t share the same vocabulary when it comes to food. I cannot instinctively imagine what they mean when they say “herb-infused” nor did I know what “umami” means until recently. And if I said a meal was “rich,” we wouldn’t be thinking the same thing.
One big issue, however, is how to eat in public – it’s a constant source of trepidation. Should I use a fork, my hands or a spoon? Canadians are too polite to tell you you’re eating something wrong or oddly – so while others at the table are probably busy minding their meal, I’m quivering inside wondering how many of them are judging me for using a fork on food that requires hand treatment. It shouldn’t matter that much I tell myself, but it often does.
I am adapting and trying new foods. I’ll reserve my comments on poutine until I’ve tried it a couple more times. Cooked right, steaks are a delight. The many flavours of Asia that I find in Calgary have been a revelation. I have also had my fourth try at tacos and can finally eat them in public without anxiety clogging up my brain as I figure out how to fold and bite gracefully.
Most menus are still unfamiliar, but I’m doing a bit better. I sure won’t be ordering mussel linguine again, the first and last time I did was because of the familiar pasta word but the tedious deshelling of the mussels and their briny flavour sealed its fate for me. But I’d eat hummus again, it reminds me of my mother’s fluffy bean pudding, moi-moi. Bread and butter pickles were nice but I didn’t enjoy French onion soup. Wasabi was hot, but the heat felt all wrong and my dislike of raw food will probably always come in the way of my enjoying sushi.
Sometimes I think about food as a gauge of how I’m settling into this new life and country. I’m grateful that I can still fill my belly with the tastes of my childhood as I acclimatize to the flavours of a new life. This journey has been riddled with anxiety but it’s also been an enriching and savoury experience – and it’s still early days.
Wole Olayinka lives in Calgary.