📢 Contest Announcement #4 : YOUR BAD HABITS FOR HEALTH by @ dayographix

How Lockdown affected my Feeding shedule.

Growing up I learnt there are certain things most parents have in common:

1. Do not eat in the neighbour’s house.
   2.Do not leave the house, not even to go downstairs to play.
   3.Do not accept things from people to mention but a few.

They are like additional commandments that must be practiced side by side with the existing Ten Commandments if you must have peace. I had to adhere to Number 1 rule because I never wanted to had issue with my mum . I learnt the hard way when I defaulted in rule 2 and got bitten by a mad woman in the ass. Trying to adhere to the following instruction affected my feeding schedule drastically because our house help never allow me to eat my launch in peace and I am not allowed to complain to my parents either . I only eat when my parents is around which is morning and night . At some point I started having Ulcer but all my parents did was just to get the necessary drugs but they never looked into my feeding schedule.(you can't be doing the same thing over and over again and expect different result ).That was how I got acclimtized to two square meal some times I don't bother about food at all

I never knew a day will come when even with money one will find it difficult to buy something with it.

Prior to the total shut down of the FCT, very many of us have been self isolating, some quarantining while some others were on lock down. Upon the address of the President who took the opportunity to announce total lock down of FCT, Lagos and Ogun people started stocking up their food chest.

Banks witnessed long queues, supermarkets were no go areas. Some of us were left with the option of going to the conventional markets to get our supplies. I was in company of a neighbour who was also in need of supplies and together we out in search of food items. One thing is to have food stuffs in the house, another thing is to know how to turn it into a meal, but then its better you have something you can put inside frying pan to make noise when your neighbours are doing same than nothing to avoid dying in isolation.

It was really a day for general market as we drove from utako market to Wuse Market down to Garki market and still didn’t stand a chance of getting what we wanted. Most shops has either sold out their wares or have a lot of people standing like monuments waiting to be attended to. Some shops were even rationing what they t sell to their customers so as to meet some demands of other customers, hence one needed to buy what he or she needs and not what they want.

We ended up in one of the shops all in our effort not to go home empty handed “mmadu aburukwuo Aaron”. After a very long wait in the queue, we were able to get 2 tubers of yam. We decided to head home and be managing with what we already have till further notice.

On our way home we branched to Duste to pick up something from someone. Luckily for us we ended up eating food at his place.. While going home we came accross some make shift stores in front of Dutse Market.

People were still clustering around trying to buy food stuffs and allied ingredients. I and my friend looked at each other and discovered we had similar intention of going to try our luck. We devised a plan that will help us get what we wanted from the market and went into implementation phase.

You know this type of situation you find yourself when you have a long queue in the market or anywhere and you start helping out to ensure that everything goes smoothly. We hovered around a particular store for a while to make sure that at the end of the day if we decide to join the queue we will have something to buy.

We wore our spiritual “bad boys” vest or if you may our spiritual corps marshal vest and got to work. We never appeared as people that wanted to buy anything. The way we walked in will convince anyone around that we are members of FCT task force. My friend started telling people not to get too close to each other.

Before I knew what was going on, he already started re-arranging the line and creating spaces in between. I brought out my hand sanitizer and started giving it to everyone in the line beginning from the 1st person in the queue.

Everyone was happy that we are doing well. I called my friend and told him that the hour has come “ka anyi koo na ubi onye anyi biara maka ogbu opi na efisha imi”. I went to the elderly woman who owns the shop and gave her a few drops of my hand sanitizer with a glove. With happiness she told me “ Nwa m unu na anwa, Chukwu gozie unu”. I used the opportunity to scan through her wares to see if there are somethings we can still buy.

Truthfully her wares were almost empty as customers were buying food stuffs as if the world was coming to an end. I took the liberty to ask her the value of her bunch of Plantain and some other stuffs I saw and she told me.
I went back to my Corporal work of giving out sanitizers while thinking of how to carry out our “heist”.

Confusion started when one woman started saying she wanted all the fresh tomatoes mama has and the woman behind her started protesting that she cannot buy everything that she wants some tomatoes too. Trust women, they started exchanging words and also scattered the line that we suffered to maintain. Everywhere became rowdy. One called the other one Ebola the other responded corona.

One by one people started picking what they wanted by themselves. I told my friend that it is now or never na “Ugo ebelugo na mgbagbu” . Indeed our people said that “agbalu aka na azo ana, onye ji ji ana akonye ji na ani”. I was already counting money when I told my friend to grab the bunch of plantain I price earlier. Someone already took the basket of potatoes I saw earlier and I was left with no choice than to grab the sac of fufu just close to the plantain.

Everywhere was rowdy and it was drawing the attention of alot of people. I didn’t quite know how much the fufu will cost. I did a mental estimate and handed the money to mama and we ran away. The woman that started the whole issue started cursing my friend because we took the bunch of Plantain she wanted, she pursued us and was able to grab a piece from the bunch. How troublesome can people be, I said to myself. People were laughing out loud about the whole drama especially at us that were forming we came to maintain peace.

I came back again and handed mama extra N500 in case the money I gave her earlier was not enough.

Leaving the shop the second time I tapped the woman that wanted to buy the whole tomatoes and told her “so you don’t want us to eat rice and stew this period” while running away. The woman apparently has a good reflex as I felt one piece of tomatoes on my head. I heard her cursing me saying “irigbulu onwegi na stew”.

I have been eating fufu like doctor’s prescription, 2 wraps morning, afternoon and night and its not doing as if it wants to finish. That is how my feeding schedule changed, Even when the lockdown have ended I find it difficult returning to my normal two square meal. Right now am looking healthier than before

The message still remains Good meal leads to healthy living...