In Times like these...

''We must pay for the water we drink; we must buy the wood we need for fuel. Driven hard like donkeys or camels, we are tired, but we are allowed no rest. To get food enough to stay alive, we went begging to Egypt and Assyria...''

This morning, I read from the book of Lamentations. Yes. I'm tired of lamenting and so I've chosen to read another person's lamentation. Not that it helps the situation anyway. But I'm laughing as I'm reading this. I'm laughing as I'm reading the bible. That's the kind of behaviour that hunger elicits. You laugh without provocation. Imagine King Solomon in dirty, tattered robes going to Egypt to do 'Baa bi ya Allah'. Hahahahahaha!!! Or probably he'd hide in a cave somewhere in the wilderness and wait for his 300 wives (forget about the concubines) and his outbreak of children to comb Egypt, Assyria, and other neighbouring states begging for alms. And they will troop back at sunset to deliver their returns to the king of the cave. Of course, away from the prying eyes of security agencies. Hahahahahahahaha!!!!

Very soon I'll stop laughter and all other facial expressions that require energy. I have to start energy conservation since no one knows when the next rain will fall. A friend told me on facebook that people that say that hunger brings out the talent in a man are liars. I beg to disagree with him. They are not liars. They are hungry. Yes, because it is only a hungry man that can even conceive such a ridiculous statement. Do they even know the meaning of hungry? Yesterday, while watching a Champions League game, I overheard a lady telling her friend how hungry she was.

''I'm so hungry. Do you know I've not had a decent meal since yesterday?''

You see, those are the kind of people that make IBB want to come back. So he can give them a 'decent meal' since their problem is how 'decent' the meal is.

As far as I am concerned, there is no decency in hunger. Hunger for food, hunger for money, hunger for sex, hunger for anything that needs to be 'hungered' after.

The kind of hunger that emasculates your spirit and dismembers your soul. You lie down on your mat and, suddenly, you realize, ''Oh my room is 10 by 12.'' You've been staring at the ceiling and just arrived at that discovery even though you've been living in the same house for two years.

The kind of hunger that makes you delirious - you are walking down the street and you are having a chat with yourself. ''If I can just stumble upon a Ghana must go bag now and I open it to see bundles of money...'' And your eyes would start shining like a security lamp as you are walking, searching for that bag of money.

The kind of hunger that makes you wish you have the power to rewind time so you can quickly rewind to when you were suckling your mother's breast. And then freeze it forever.

The kind of hunger that teleports you to the streets of Chicago. You see yourself cruising down 185th Street, with a cute damsel by your side, looking for a MacDonalds where you can have lunch.

The kind of hunger that makes you hallucinate. Mohammed Babangida kneels down to beg you to support his father's presidential ambition. You frown at him and say, ''Look my friend, your father is not a good man. We hate him to infinity.''

Mohammed puts his head on your left foot.

''That's why he wants you to give him a second chance. So he can show you his good side.''

And he pleads and pleads and pleads.

And you tell him.

''Look here Mr. Man. I did not come to this world to be looking at the bad and good side of people. The only side I want to see right now is cash. Smelling cash.''

Mohammeds quickly glances up at you.

''How much? Any amount of money just mention it.''

And you'd quickly do an on-the-spot mental mathematics.

Ok, I'm 40 now. That means I can still live for, at least, another 40 years. If I have, say, 4 children, plus my wife. That will be 6 of us. Then my 4 children have, say 4 children each - 16 grandchildren. Then those ones have 4 children - 16 great grandchildren. Then those ones have their own 4 children.... Plus my brothers and sisters and their unborn generation, and my good friends and colleagues and their brothers and sisters and children and their unborn generation...

''100 Quintillion Dollars!''

The kind of hunger that make Nicholas Ibekwe and Simon Ejembi spend hour after hour arguing whether Nas is a musician or a master of ceremony (mc). I'm not kidding. They argued that yesterday.

The kind of hunger that makes you have an erection every 45 minutes.

The kind of erection, sorry, hunger, that makes you...

Let me just go back to my bible.

''Murderers roam the countryside; we risk our lives when we look for food. Hunger has made us burn with fever, until our skin is as hot as an oven...

Tales by the Fireside

I add salt to my taste and sit back to await the reward of my labour - beans and ripe plantain with a sprinkle of vegetable. My favourite. The delicious aroma has already begun to assault my olfactory lobes. As the smoke from the pot dances gently as it makes its way to the ceiling where it disappears; my thoughts drift back into time.

Father never failed to remind us, his sons, that we come from a long line of great cooks.

''My father was such a great cook that the white man, John Holt, employed him speacially to be preparing his meals,'' he would say.

''And he learnt from his father, your great grandfather, the art of cooking. He had no rival in the whole village.''

Those were the sermon he regaled us with whenever we gather to wait for mother to serve dinner.

''All of us (him and my uncles) are so good that our wives cannot do shakara for us when it comes to food. We'd just enter the kitchen and prepare something that would make them die of shame,'' he would declare.

We always listened with as much relief as pride. Relief that we would not undergo the arduous task of learning how to cook, and proud that we belonged to that exclusive class of a dying breed; our culinary skill was forged right from the womb.

Mother always smiled in whispered amusement whenever she encountered him delivering those lines to us. She never uttered a word.

Then mother lost her mother and had to travel to the village.

On Sunday morning, I was ill and could not attend Mass with my siblings.

Father decided to fry akara before the others return from church.

I was so excited about the idea I had to leave my sick mat to run the little errands - bring oil, wash the spoon, look for the match stick.

Everything was moving smoothly. The beans had been ground into a paste, the frying pan and oil were ready, the heat from the stove was already burning my skin. I did not mind. The joy of crisp akara and hot pap for breakfast enveloped me like darkness on a moonless night.

Finally, it was time for father to scoop spoonfuls of the beans paste into the frying pan. That was when it began.

Every paste that hits the oil travels smoothly through the oil, like a stone cast into the sea, and settles at the bottom.

I have watched mother perform this same chore on more than a hundred occasions. This was different.

''Papa, why is the akara not standing on the oil?'' I asked.

He looked at me, returned his stare to the frying pan and frowned his brows as if he was pondering my question.

I waited for his reply. He continued to gaze at the fire.

I repeated my question.

''Go and get me more oil,'' he snapped.

I sauntered off to fetch the gallon from which he poured more oil into the frying pan.

An hour later, we were eating breakfast in silence. Father was munching at the oil-soaked akara furiously; my elder sister was unusually quiet; my euphoria had turned to agony.

A cousin told me how they passed through a similar ordeal when they were kids. No sooner had their mum gone on a trip than their dad served them a hint of what to expect for the next three days their mum would be gone. He prepared Jollof rice with the pepper almost outnumbering the rice seeds. And then he added the obnoxious smelling Ogiri to spice up the dish. The entire family developed a hole in the anus.

The bobbing sound of the lid against the pot jolts me back to the present. The aroma of my handiwork has already drifted into every nook and cranny of the entire house and has spilled into the compound. I could hear the barking of the dogs.

I lift the lid, stir the contents for the last time, and using my hand towel, I bring the pot down. Lunch is served.

Then it hit me.

I had forgotten to add onions.