Today my inner neat-freak won over my inner slob-slash-cheapskate. I finally bought an iron. The decision was nine months in the making.
After setting up house in Smichov last September, I went a bit crazy outfitting the kitchen: plates, cutleries, pans, wine glasses, et al—naturally, one must eat and drink. I even got fancy and purchased ramekin dishes. Mind you, I have surely never souffled or tart-ed a thing in my life. The need for clean-pressed clothes, however? Not so urgent. Plus, I had the season on my side. Anything beyond embarrassingly rumpled could be camouflaged with a jacket. So, thus I existed without an iron.
Like the iron, one other thing I failed to buy early on was a blender—a must in any Nigerian kitchen. Otherwise, how else to make stew, or more accurately, the blended mix of red bell peppers, chilies, tomatoes and onions that serves as the base for a good number of Nigerian meals? How much more different will the finished product taste if the ingredients were just finely diced and dumped into a pot versus getting blended? Miserably different, I found out soon enough.
My resistance to purchasing these two items was two-fold. First, buying them suggested finality, as in: “She LIVES Here Now!” How does the purchase of an iron and a blender over that of a bed and a wardrobe carry more of an impact about feeling established in a foreign country? Ridiculous, I know. But in those first few months, “settling down” still seemed uncertain given that I had set out to be gone for just a year. The bed, wardrobe, dishes, etc., I could sell to the landlord to keep for the next tenant. The iron and the blender? Something said “settlement”, “long-term” about those two. “Who needs to look tidy or eat proper stew if only for a few months?” So I held out. Now, of course, settling down is what I've recently made up my mind to do.
The other reason was money—specifically, for the want of a bargain. Something I miss about home is the option to buy a $20 blender or iron or spend $200 for a pimped out version, and then the dozen other price variations in between. For my blender—the item I deemed worthy of tackling first since I could no longer stomach my diced up obe ata—I was dismayed to find that my first price option was a whopping $30 (599kc) Tesco “cheapo” version. So folks, for five months (Sept. - Jan.) I refused to spend an additional $10 to buy the blender. I even considered asking my sisters to find me a cheaper one back home. Ship it. Fed-ex it. Courier it. Whatever. Just don't make me pay $30 for a blender. Crazy.
What made me change my mind? The impending arrival of my first guest in Prague, Gbemi. The Naija that she is, she'd already warned me beforehand: “I'm going to make jollof rice and chicken stew.” Now, what is jollof rice without the proper red base? Just plain ol' rice with red specks in it. Not cool. As a sort of “older sister” figure I couldn't afford to come across as cheap. So I ponied up the $30. I've been blending blissfully for three months now, not only creating the base for obe, but also pureeing the yummy soups I've adapted from my cookbooks.
What about the iron? Why this long? I never did shop around for one. Reasoning again that I wouldn't have much option. But not too long after the weather warmed up, I went hunting in my wardrobe for a particular light jacket. Good grief, what wrinkles. I held it up and out into the light and tried to imagine walking down the street in such a thing, if I possessed enough panache to convince others that indeed the jacket was meant to be worn wrinkled. Maybe not. I wore it around the apartment for a few days, hoping that my body heat would somehow, you know, just “smooth” things out. Uh? (I do have a college degree....) Eventually, I had to face the inevitable. Back to Tesco, where to my surprise, I found a $10 (199kc) iron. Ka-ching!
So, well-fed, and on the way to looking decently dressed too.
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