My First Time
Words by Yemisi Aribisala
Photography by Light Oriye
That winter evening, while I was walking down Peckham Rye Market Street in London at shoulder-bump squeeze- past pace, a man screamed “Shaki” at me. It was in one of those brisk sections of the market where South-Asians sell a variety of fresh meat and you don’t need to strain to hear Yoruba words splicing through the mishmash of street sounds. Those same parts of Peckham Rye I walked that evening are, two decades later, referred to as Little Lagos. I had just gone past a window full of pristine pink chicken parts contrasting white tiles on the walls of the shop. When the word bounced off the back of my head, it was much too incongruous for the context, so I didn’t respond. I hurried away. If I was walking down Sura market road on Lagos Island, Nigeria? Fine… I might have turned around as if Shaki was my name, as if it isn’t what we call a part of the anatomy of a cow in South-Western Nigeria. I was in South London for goodness sake, 5020km away from home, and the man behind me calling out had a Pakistani accent. My mind easily persuaded me that I had heard wrong. Of course he couldn’t be speaking Yoruba.
The man persisted,
‘Shaki?’ ‘You want Shaki’? He swaggered after me for a bit, as if he knew me well, and wasn’t in the least bit dissuaded by my refusal to acknowledge him. I stole a quick look to identify a butcher’s apprentice in a stained coat… His presumption that I understood him, while being totally random, was spot on—I am Nigerian. I have an infatuation for the half-inch-thick, third chamber of the cow’s stomach called the omasum (as thick as a bible). Not for spruced up tripe politely swathed in cellophane apologetically labeled ‘Offal’ and tucked in the refrigerator of nose-to-tail eating specialty shops...the stuff that gets boiled with milk and onions. I’m talking about slow, long-boiled, stewed with lots of pepper, Shaki served with basmati rice. The Shaki that I am passionate about is not the same as the pre-boiled, bleached for a week, sheets that Londoners call tripe. I know this complicates the conundrum of meat-eating compromises that Nigerians make while living in London. We keenly appreciate that Londoners believe that their treatment of, and decisions on, meat are at the pinnacle of civilized butchering and eco meat eating. I haven’t eaten in a restaurant in London since moving back over two years ago because of the omnipresence of a kind of global plate that satisfies a global palate. Such a plate is trendy, aromatically restrained, overtouched, smudged, smeared, reduced, foamed… minuscule portions. I am told I have to be excited about eating from that plate when I want a large white bowl with hot peppered aromatic puddles. The most racy thing I have seen on a restaurant plate as a non-dining observer of London restaurants is marrow bone with the fat slouched tantalisingly inside. You would imagine you can suck and get away with it. You wouldn’t want to dare. The fact that you must do a double take on what-to-do is all that needs to be said on the matter.
“I see plenty of tripe as smooth as cloth—they are as appealing as eating cloth. I never see the kind that has thick lining with tendrils and fat.”
I find the texture of London tripe wretchedly diminished by dressing. The process of dressing isn’t expounded upon—is that bleach or something else you can smell on the meat? The real proposal that London tripe makes is that I ought to be reassured by inorganic cleanliness rather than the original aroma of the meat. I am uneasy with the determination to soften meat by any means possible. I will take the gaminess of meat any day over the smell of bleach. Furthermore, the butcher’s peeling strips off character. I see plenty of tripe as smooth as cloth—they are as appealing as eating cloth. I never see the kind that has thick lining with tendrils and fat. No diamond-shaped corrugation… I realise my kind that loves undressed beef Shaki don’t constitute a significant market in little Lagos.
The point of sale of Shaki in Lagos, Nigeria offers a wonderful contrast. It is perhaps evocative of Shambles in old-world London. Encrusted bowls of water balanced on tables with soaking rolls of pomo (cow hide), bokoto (cow’s hooves), plaited intestines… all first-class delicacies thank you. There will be sounds of hacking of bones with machete in the vicinity of humid aisles where slippery blood is underfoot, the smell of warm guts, sourness, and gastric acid will distend the air. The Shaki for sale might be black with polka dotted frills, beige with raised squares, cream and simply ridged, brown, tense and obnoxious and looking like it wants to fight. It will never be white, nor tear easily under pressure of fingers. No Nigerian with common sense will buy that kind of tripe. Contrary to the Northern hemispherical conclusion that tender meat is darling, white is right, bland is civilized, sterile is respect, protracted rumination is savagery, meat in Lagos markets is unhung, slaughtered and sold quickly under the miming of Arabic prayers and drained of blood. You need to rush the Shaki home in a bowl to catch the dripping perfume that will never wash out of your car mat in a year. You get home and wash the Shaki with concentration, hands picking carefully, sometimes scraping with a knife between inspected tendrils for grains of sand and digested food. You peel sparingly. You leave on fat for flavor and discard it later with the boiling water. You cut into small pieces, boil for about three hours with bay leaf and fresh ginger root. You change and throw the boiling water away at least once. You don’t start to cook the stew until the Shaki crunches and splits when you bite down on it. You stew the Shaki with other parts of beef—shin, brisket, shank. You simmer long and lovingly till the bones of brisket squish savoury sweetness and become what we call biscuit bone. Your Shaki is cooked when it yields almost gelatinously to biting, when it pulls away slightly, threads slightly, sliding easily without sticking in your teeth—not disturbing the chewing of grains of steamed rice with it.
Meat is not something Nigerians are neurotic about. We love it and consider its presence a sign of good living. Therefore it needs long attendance and staying power in the mouth. It needs spices and pepper. Sometimes we fry beef till each thread of the meat stands alone. Rumination is fundamental… As a Nigerian writer living in London, and sometimes writing about food, you must often keep the resolute, straight-faced stride in the opposite direction from the primal call of meat. To answer the call of Shaki with an enthusiastic “Yes” is to admit you are savoring those parts that people conclude self-righteously belong to a troglodyte’s table. Tripe eating went out with war eating, with the 1950s and the closing of a famous chain of offal shops in Lancashire. It is so much the stuff of nostalgia on food rationing and controversial meat-love that the celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay created a memorable moment on television when he cooked it in 2007. People still refer back to that television programme as if they are talking about “revolution”. When I see food writer colleagues in 2020 post photographs online of eggs with apologies to vegan friends, I feel every thread in the kilometers between markets. I think about love and selfconsciousness, dressing up and laying bare. Private rooms of the mouth, devilled eggs, biblical Shaki and all the worlds and civilizations between…
