siesta was a mix of the good and the bad for me while growing up-mostly bad, because it was mandatory and our house help knew how to enforce that mandate - "close your eyes and sleep, i dont want to see those eyes open....." sadly we had to do this every school day except Wednesday when she had to go for her secretarial classes. Bad also, because she always had to wake me up from the siesta and all the time it seemed i was less-than-ready to be woken up. She'd shake me roughly "wake up joor, or you want me to beg you to come and eat". It'd take me a while to fully wake up and the only other thing that spurred me on was the fact that i was hungry. I'd wake up utterly confused, partly still in my world of dreams and probably sweating a little. Sometimes, if i'd wet the bed then my sorrows seem to multiply cataclysmic-ally.... My brother seemed to handle waking up better than i did (just like he handled a lot of other things better, but maybe because he was treated differently-in a more gentle manner).

Lunch, as I remember it, was mostly a combination of sorts : rice and beans, beans and yam, beans and plantain, beans and corn... I remember especially one of those days I was rudely woken up and i sleep-walked to the dining area where the food had been dished out for all three of us -my 'aunty', my brother and I - we were made to eat together and I think it was especially because she was trying to reduce the amount of plates she had to wash. As i sat on the mat that had been laid out, i remember taking about two spoonfuls before I realized I had meat in my mouth! In the same instance, it'd seem, Aunty Faith realized the same thing and without asking any question, just gave me a hot slap. If nothing else, that slap woke me up fully and made me pee right there on myself.... After that, i was dished my food separately as punishment and made to wash up.

i didnt like Aunty Faith at all, especially because she always thrived on bullying me when my parents where not around -which was like 80% of the time. So in revenge, i did her in everytime I could when they were around. Aunty Faith was a distant relation of my Dad's from the village who had come into Lagos specifically as a help. Her more direct relative already had a house help and decided to loan her to us for as long as we needed. So technically, she was family! Dont get me wrong, we were not always at logger heads and the child i was, i forgot many of her misdeeds within minutes of them happening. Plus my brother and i were tight buddies at the time so if she wanted to play with him, she'd have me to contend with too.

So my favourite day of the week was on Sunday. Surprisingly, i dealt with mornings much better than i did the afternoon siesta. My mom would wake us up with the smell of fried plantains and egg stew - imagine, there was a time i hated plantain! how weird....anyways, i loved the smell of fried plantain and egg stew. My dad would take a bath for us-that was part of the sunday specials. we'd get dressed up really cute with some record or the other playing off the turn table. I remember one of them skipping when it got to ..."in this world, i this world" -my brother and i would sing along until mom or dad lifted the arm up and let the record roll on. the first time it happened, i was in the sitting room running around and i was worried i'd done sth to upset the record. When mom came in and i hastily said "i didnt go there o!" she reassured me that it wasn't me after which she explained what could have happened " that the people singing got stuck singing in that place ...lol"