Surviving hard times with a garden of local delicacies
Shimenenge Akaasar, a mother of three, is certainly happier having overcome minor challenges of her family daily food needs with a small garden at the backyard of her apartment in Makurdi metropolis.
Before now, things were tough for her household, especially, her inability to provide soup condiments to support her husband's meagre income which he earns from menial jobs.
"But, learning from my grandmother in my formative years has proved beneficial to me especially, given the hard times we have found ourselves in. At least, I don't have to buy most things I require to make a decent soup for my husband and children," she said.
Shimenenge and her husband, Akaasar, have three kids- two boys and a daughter.
The first two- a girl and boy- are of school age and are in basic school at different levels but the father, who is the sole bread winner of the home, can hardly fend adequately for their needs with his menial jobs until his wife began to complement him with harvest from their small garden and further went on to trade in soup materials, particularly, for the traditional Tiv soup.
She sells dried okro chips (locally known as Igande), powdered okro (Gbodi), cow pea's peeled pods (adenger) and "Fulum" (Fulum is a edible annual crop that looks the form of a calabash, harvested when fresh and peeled in chips, left dried for soup that makes a good mixture with melon).
Like many other Tiv women who trade in ingredients and materials that are necessary for making a traditional Tiv soup, what makes the mother of three's case different is that though she lives in the city, she has a garden where she cultivates Fulum, Pretzel bean cow pea (Vigna unguiculata subsp), okro, garden eggs, as well as other vegetables mostly grown in rural settings.
According to her, at first, she began planting the crops to serve her in times of need, however the venture had shortly afterwards become a reason for her to beam with smile because a measure of dried okro chip is sold for N600 while the powdered okro costs even more.
These has enabled her to save for her family on regular basis.
"When I planted my "fulum, I never knew it would become something that people will come asking for. With many neighbours, and passersby indicating interest in it, I said to myself, if this could generate this much interest, I better trade in it.
"I discussed it with my husband and upon his approval, we raised some money, just enough for me to attend one of the local market here where I bought some of the items to try my luck. The first stock finished in no time. By the next rainy season, I expanded the number of seeds I planted and coupled with what I buy, I managed to meet the demands of my customers," she added.
The young woman recalled that as a kid, growing up with her parents in the village, she learned from her grandmother that the mother takes care of the home by ensuring that soup and soup items are not lacking to such extent that there would be nothing to prepare soup.
And so to avert the shame of going out to beg for soup thereby exposing herself to ridicule by fellow women, she decided to toe the path of hard work which her grandmother taught her by cultivating a small garden to grow nearly everything needed to prepare traditional dishes.
Shimenenge added that her household began to derive more benefits from the garden when her husband completely lost his menial job as the garden, as small as it is, was placing food on their table just as the proceeds were used to pay her children’s school fees.
"Of course, my husband is not relenting to see that we live a better life. He has not allowed the loss of his job to affect his love and care for the family.
``Having noticed that items harvested from the garden are generating nterest, he (husband) now hires land where we cultivate the vegetables on a larger scale.
"At the moment, I do not buy Fulum and the products from okro rom wholesalers, I only buy "Adenger", pepper, tomatoes, locusts beans, and "Gbaaye (okpehe).
``On the whole, I return glory to God for helping my family through the teachings I received from my grandmother and for having a husband that is so caring in spite of the challenges we faced," she said.
Like Shimenenge, it is not uncommon to find residents of Makurdi use every available space for garden where they plant one kind of crop or the other to cushion the effect of economic hard times.
More so, since the return to democracy in 1999 saw the state capital growing in population and most of the people who migrated to the city did not leave behind their traditional way of life.