There’s
an instant pleasure one derives from biting into a warm egg roll,
especially when the dark brown pastry surrounding it is both savoury and
sweet and crumbles in the mouth. With this yearning in mind, I walked
out of the office at lunchtime in search of the eggroll sellers, who
carry their cheap but sumptuous wares on their heads to many labourers’
delight.
It was my lucky day: a teenage girl was passing by with a lidded, translucent plastic bucket on her head. I could just about make out the eggrolls inside. As she walked on, skillfully balancing her load on her head, she didn’t even need to use a hand to hold the bucket in place, such was her hawking experience.
One arm hung playfully by her side as the other held a small plastic carrier bag hooked to her wrist, no doubt containing her takings for the day’s sales so far. She walked with an air of confident abandon: “I don’t need to go to school,” she seemed to be saying. “The sun and the breeze and the open road are my education. I know these streets like the back of my hand.”
I made short hissing sounds to get her attention, and when she heard, she turned around and walked towards me. As she reached me, she brought down her bucket and opened it. “Good afternoon madam,” she said in a sing-song voice. I greeted her and looked inside her pail.
There were eggrolls alright, bigger than average and the rough unevenness of the dark-brown dough glistening with grease testified to the fact that the dough will be sufficiently crunchy. But apart from the rounded eggrolls, there were elongated dough of the same colour, moulded into fat, short tubes.
“What are those?”I asked, pointing at one.
“Fish roll,” she replied, her inanimate eyes wondering away and resting on the woman walking by.
They look interesting, I thought. “Give me one eggroll and one fish roll,” I said, looking forward to biting into one of the moist flour-casing and tasting bits of fish instead of a hard-boiled egg.
The girl took out one small black carrier bag from the bag hooked unto her wrist, spread it out on her cupped hand and used it to scoop up the delicacies, wrapping the bag up around them.
“How much?” I asked.
“N200”
I looked back at the snacks in the bag. “Remove the fish one” I said. Knowing that the price of eggrolls ranged from N50 to N80 depending on where you bought them, N200 for two – one of which was a flavour unknown to me – was too much. Plus I couldn’t guarantee that these eggrolls will taste good. Looks can be deceiving. And the freshness of the products, now that it was already 2:30pm and there were only a few left in the bucket was uncertain. Wouldn’t all the oil seep down to the last remaining rolls, making them soggy from the extra grease and the accumulated heat-turned-sweat from the sun?
The doubts raised by the extra N120 was immense. Did the fatness of my purse fool this girl into thinking it was full or money? Or did the wholesale price of flour and eggs suddenly increase in Abuja so that it translated into an extra N20 charge for an eggroll?
But I didn’t say anything. I paid with N500, and saw that I collected all her change: eight N50 notes. I wondered where the rest of her money was. But the abundance of N50s proved to me that indeed the rolls did retail at half the price. The young swindler was smart. “Thank you ma” she said, as she heaved the bucket back unto her head.
Those three words turned my displeasure into a shrug. Back at the office, I bit into the roll. It was still fresh and uncluttered by too much grease. My N100 was well spent.
It was my lucky day: a teenage girl was passing by with a lidded, translucent plastic bucket on her head. I could just about make out the eggrolls inside. As she walked on, skillfully balancing her load on her head, she didn’t even need to use a hand to hold the bucket in place, such was her hawking experience.
One arm hung playfully by her side as the other held a small plastic carrier bag hooked to her wrist, no doubt containing her takings for the day’s sales so far. She walked with an air of confident abandon: “I don’t need to go to school,” she seemed to be saying. “The sun and the breeze and the open road are my education. I know these streets like the back of my hand.”
I made short hissing sounds to get her attention, and when she heard, she turned around and walked towards me. As she reached me, she brought down her bucket and opened it. “Good afternoon madam,” she said in a sing-song voice. I greeted her and looked inside her pail.
There were eggrolls alright, bigger than average and the rough unevenness of the dark-brown dough glistening with grease testified to the fact that the dough will be sufficiently crunchy. But apart from the rounded eggrolls, there were elongated dough of the same colour, moulded into fat, short tubes.
“What are those?”I asked, pointing at one.
“Fish roll,” she replied, her inanimate eyes wondering away and resting on the woman walking by.
They look interesting, I thought. “Give me one eggroll and one fish roll,” I said, looking forward to biting into one of the moist flour-casing and tasting bits of fish instead of a hard-boiled egg.
The girl took out one small black carrier bag from the bag hooked unto her wrist, spread it out on her cupped hand and used it to scoop up the delicacies, wrapping the bag up around them.
“How much?” I asked.
“N200”
I looked back at the snacks in the bag. “Remove the fish one” I said. Knowing that the price of eggrolls ranged from N50 to N80 depending on where you bought them, N200 for two – one of which was a flavour unknown to me – was too much. Plus I couldn’t guarantee that these eggrolls will taste good. Looks can be deceiving. And the freshness of the products, now that it was already 2:30pm and there were only a few left in the bucket was uncertain. Wouldn’t all the oil seep down to the last remaining rolls, making them soggy from the extra grease and the accumulated heat-turned-sweat from the sun?
The doubts raised by the extra N120 was immense. Did the fatness of my purse fool this girl into thinking it was full or money? Or did the wholesale price of flour and eggs suddenly increase in Abuja so that it translated into an extra N20 charge for an eggroll?
But I didn’t say anything. I paid with N500, and saw that I collected all her change: eight N50 notes. I wondered where the rest of her money was. But the abundance of N50s proved to me that indeed the rolls did retail at half the price. The young swindler was smart. “Thank you ma” she said, as she heaved the bucket back unto her head.
Those three words turned my displeasure into a shrug. Back at the office, I bit into the roll. It was still fresh and uncluttered by too much grease. My N100 was well spent.
By Kimberly Ward
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