Food and Memory
A Sunday Bowl of Omotuo
Omotuo is a Sunday food. Not because of any rule, but because it takes the kind of time a Sunday has.
The shape of the afternoon
Rice is cooked soft, pounded, and rolled into balls that sit in soup — usually groundnut, sometimes palm nut. It is a dish built for a table with more than two people at it.
The meal is slow on both ends: slow to prepare, slow to finish. The afternoon organises itself around it.
Memory that is not nostalgic
Food carries place more reliably than imagery does. A bowl of omotuo does not need to be explained to anyone who grew up around it, and it does not need to be exoticised for anyone who did not.
That is the register we want in the work: specific, unhurried, unembarrassed.
