Food for the Soul

I have always starved myself of food as I don't eat early not until around 10 to 11 am in the morning. It has been a habit for me till now and when it's time to make some meals, it takes me a long while to contemplate what to prepare.

Food is good for the body, soul and spirit because, without it, you cannot gain enough strength to tackle the day's activities. They say a hungry man is an angry man but in my case, I don't say much when I am hungry and when the worms are screaming, "Give us food...give us food", it would be shown on my face how squeezed and wrinkled it would be.

As usual, I went to work on this day without eating because I considered it too early for that. As a teacher, one has to fill the stomach before taking a class as you would be standing all through the period of teaching, shouting and being frustrated by the students' behaviour.

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I just finished taking a double period which lasted 80 minutes and as I walked out of the class, I was staggering with the textbook, an exercise note hung under my armpit, a slim cane on my right hand and it was written all over me that I was extremely weak. I had to manage myself to the staffroom.

I didn't eat before I left home and had to go through stressful work in the classroom. The students didn't help matters too as they kept disturbing and distracting me with their constant murmurings, moving in and out of the class unnecessarily. It got to a point, where I vented my anger on them with my scream and for a while, they kept quiet but didn't last long as they began another round of noise.

The constant shouting and raising my voice so loud made me weak and I endured using my time before walking out. I entered the staff room and all I heard was, "Corper Busayo, you are tired. Well done. Those students can frustrate somebody" This was when I told them what I had faced while in class.

"Teaching is hard", said one of the corpers who kept sharing her experiences with the students whenever she was in class.

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I sat down on the chair and bowed my head on the table just to relax. Then after some minutes, I raised my head up and started thinking of what to eat; at least something to munch on before I got home because when I looked at the watch on my wrist, there were still hours left to close.

"There is nothing to buy that will satisfy me. I need a good meal right now". I said to myself and began regretting not eating from home or better still waking up to prepare a meal to bring to school.

I didn't want to waste my money on junks because I wouldn't be satisfied than eating normal food. Gladys who was seated beside me kept urging me to go home since I was not having any class again for the day but I told her not to worry about me.

I opened my phone to check what was happening. WhatsApp was the first place I went to and the first status I opened was a video of a meal (white rice, fried stew, grilled fish and fried plantain) I couldn't stop staring at it and salivating. I paused the video with my finger just to savour the look and as I did that, my mouth got watered and I imagined myself eating such.

"How I wish I could have something like this right now", I thought as I kept swallowing the spit back down to my throat. I thought of making something similar but the difference would be that there wouldn't be grilled fish.

I decided to branch the market on my way home to buy the ingredients needed including frozen fish. Immediately I got home, I zoomed into action by entering the kitchen and preparing the meal. Finally, I finished the preparation after another 45 minutes.

As I took a spoon into my mouth, I sighed and smiled knowing I ate a good food that went down straight to my soul hitting the bone marrow and it was what I needed to calm me down from the whole stress at work.

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^{Images were imagined with Meta AI}