Hello everyone. This is my first time posting in this amazing community since I joined so let's get into it. Today, I'll be writing on the Hivenaija weekly prompt topic, "My favorite Childhood Game." It's hilarious as well as interesting. I hope you enjoy reading.
Let's dive in.
Image sourceMy favorite game as a child was the 'cooking' game. It was a game my group of friends and I enjoyed very much while growing. In this game, we weren't actually cooking but we pretended like we were just as we saw our moms, aunties and elder ones doing at home. Our cooking utensils/pots were empty cans of Milo and milk or empty tomato tins, we used plastic spoons/sticks for stirring. We would put water and sand inside and any leaf or grass we could find around was used as vegetables. I cannot fail to add the stones which served as meat for our 'food'. There would be a boy to play the role of 'daddy' and a girl to play 'mummy' and of course the 'children' who were members of the group that didn't play mummy or daddy that day.
The 'mummy' was in charge of cooking and sharing the food after it was cooked. She could also assign the 'children' to buy or get the ingredients for the food or wash the utensils after cooking. The 'daddy' on the other hand provides the money for the foodstuffs and ingredients ( the money in this case are the leaves of trees). My friends and I had a secret location where we met and did our cooking. When we weren't together or couldn't be, each of us could cook in our own different homes with our own personal utensils and ingredients but we preferred spending time with each other. Most times we were so engrossed in our cooking that we would be there for hours forgetting to go home before our parents came back from work. Even when we were called to do some chores in the house we would do it as fast as possible so that we could return to our cooking. Sometimes we didn't finish the chores at home or didn't do it properly and that landed us in trouble.
I remember one of those not too fortunate days, during the holidays. We had decided that week that we didn't want to use sand and other regular ingredients for cooking, we wanted to experiment with real food. We all agreed to prepare Jollof rice ( even if we didn't really know how to make it) and that each of us would bring an item, a day was picked and as usual the venue would be the secret location. On the D-Day, we all arrived on time each person with the items they agreed to bring except one person and she wasn't even present. The group was getting impatient and then we decided to send someone to her house to find out what was happening.
We were still deciding who to send when we saw her and her mother coming towards us. We knew there was trouble, because why would you bring your mom to our secret location? It happened that her mother caught her with a big nylon of filled with rice when asked what she was using it for, she told her mom our plan. We only told her to bring 2 cups of rice oo, but she decided to empty the bag of rice in their house. According to her she didn't think 2 cups of rice would be enough for all of us so she decided to add more. I guess she innocently did it but it got us in trouble and we were reported to our parents. We were punished for keeping it a secret and for weeks we didn't meet but after a while we resumed our cooking.
Sometimes when the rain interrupted our 'cooking', flooded our hangout spot and left us scampering home, but that didn't deter us because we would definitely meet the next day.
I remember days when I was sick and couldn't play I would seriously pray to get well quickly so I could go and 'cook' with my friends once again (only God knows what we were cooking then).
Even as I write this post, I still have nostalgic memories and I think it has influenced my love for cooking and food. I still get to see some of my childhood friends and we laugh as we remember that experiences we had "cooking" our "delicacies".
Thank you for reading.
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