WHEN is a cake not a cake? Alaba was not going to play games with anyone on this one: when it loses its initiating ‘c’ and becomes an ache! Trouble laughed and clapped and generally made Alaba feel good and clever and know-all and just wait and him Trouble out. After hearing this story you will think thrice before you believe any Nigerian when they tell you something in their language or and especially in English. In their own languages there are statements that say the very opposite of what they mean. Take the closely fought land war between Akure and Idanre at the beginning of the 1950s. At a critical moment of the final delivery of judgment in the case, the judge, a non-Yoruba language speaker, asked if all land stretching from Idanre to Akure with cocoa trees belonged to Akure? The King of Idanre answers: “Yes” which really meant “No” but the judge would not hear that peculiar way of saying “yes” that made the “yes” a “no”. In addition the King of Idanre then added that the judge should go and give the land to Akure people. Which is what the judge did and end of story. End of story? No! The King blamed the judge for not understanding that he meant “no” when he said “yes”. The judge then lectured the royal personality of the fact that in English, which is hardly a tonal language, a “yes” meant “yes” and a “no” meant “no”.

So, when is a cake not a cake? Not until you hear the last of it is when. So, there was this birthday cake on the table. It was decorated with multiple colours of the rainbow icing. It looked sumptuous and Trouble could not wait to sink his teeth into its sugar sinful body. Speeches went on and on and on. Then there were endless recognitions, like in all public spaces of private celebrations. Someone of immense importance has just arrived among us, someone we cannot but mention before we go on with our enjoyment of our activities of today. And when the person has been mentioned, he would ask that he be allowed to stand on existing protocol and then go on to mention his lords temporal and spiritual, members of the national house of assembly and distinguished senators, our majestic traditional fathers and mothers, not forgetting our royal princes and princesses (can anyone be a prince or princesses without being of royal blood?) Members of state assemblies, commissioners, ministers of state, substantial ministers, assistants and special assistants to the presidency and governors, Vice president and president, distinguished ladies and gentlemen and we are not getting near cutting the cake.

Trouble narrated the cakes of his childhood and youth when his mama made cake for every little boy or little girl in the seaside village Barbados and there was no birthday without his mama’s cake in attendance. He remembered how they would queue up with their palms together to ensure that not one piece of that brown cake soaked in white rum three weeks before the date. All mothers knew to order the cake for their little one three weeks in advance. And the speeches were still going on to the extent that Trouble thought he would sidle up to the celebrant to ask if we were there yet? Where? Asked the celebrant. Where we cut the cake, where else. I came for the sake of the cake. O the cake, the celebrant said as if the cake that sat on the table in the middle of the important people who sat on the high table was of no importance to her. She added from a faraway place on another planet: they have gone to get the meat stew, egusi and okro soup mixed. With that she abandoned Trouble.

Whatever has been rendered into English as “cake” in Nigeria has up to this time a delight to munch on and relish. Imagine calling akara ‘bean cake’! He could depend on the best of their writers to weave words of tasteful delights in unforgettable statements: ‘filling the nights with fumes of self-indulgence’; ‘making do with little when there was little and gorging oneself when there was much.’ Still there was something that Nigerian foods have not given him – that festive practice in festivals of food in Europe copied in the Caribbean wherefore – “the tradition of stuffing foods inside other foods for festive meals, a veritable ancient practice.” Imagine a cherry pie in a pumpkin pie in an apple pie inside a pecan nuts pie in a cheese cake covered in chocolate buttercream!!!

There was dancing followed by singing and reading of messages of good will from friends within the country and in the diaspora, the Nigerian diaspora! Then there were quizzes, questions and answers and prizes to win. Every event a tedious wait for Trouble to get to the cake sitting fat on the table. Finally every activity that could be invented to delay the cutting of the cake was exhausted and Trouble stood behind the celebrant as she placed the big kitchen knife through the coloured carapace of the cake and down the heart of the cake. There was a general clapping and smacking of lips. Each person was given two small plates. Trouble did not have time to think what he was supposed to do with the other plate. Place another piece of cake on it? No, he was told. He was asked to take a look at the slab of ‘cake’ he had on the small flat plate. It was a thick and stiff lump, heavier than the usual piece of cake, not light and ready to disappear into the mouth in a second. Rather, it was heavy and it was – as Trouble finally pinched a piece of it – it was sour and it was not made of the usual flour. It was made of gari. It was eba shaped like a European cake and decorated as the normal cake. The second plate was to take the stew and soup with which to eat the eba! The eba of the cake! Who thought of it? How did the person think of it? Out of indigence? Not sure how to make a European cake? Whatever it was, Trouble had a new cake that day and enjoyed it with bitter leaf soup and some pepper stew.