Free I Used to Say My Mother Was Shirley Bassey by Stephen K Amos

barbecued, then roasted, then stewed. The meal went on for so long that you could go to bed, sleep it off and then come back hours later to find a fresh plate in front of you.
    The meal went on late into the night and by the next morning people were slumped on armchairs, across sofas, in beds and even outside at the dinner table. I thought back to the Christmases we hadn’t really enjoyed in London. Christmas back there involved a roast in our jeans and T-shirts followed by watching telly and heading to bed at a sensible hour. By Boxing Day morning normally Mum or Dad would be back working and all memories of Christmas would be fading fast. Here in Abeokuta the mammoth task of cleaning up didn’t even begin until Boxing Day evening, simply because it took that long to rouse everyone from their slumbers.
    The next few days were marked by more relatives coming and going and, before we knew it, New Year’s Eve had arrived. Nigerians know how to party like no others and that evening I was to learn the words owambe (party), effizzy (swagger) and shakara (showing off). Simply dressing for the occasion is an all-day thing for most women, who go out in their absolute finest. We all went out in the early evening wearing the clothes Mamma Ola had had made for us and the whole town was on the streets ambling around. There was to be a free party at the Abeokuta football stadium that night and, even though it was only a few minutes’ walk, it took us nearly an hour to get there as we had to stop and talk to everyone that crossed our path.
    Abeokuta stadium can hold 30,000 people in the stands, but when they open up the pitch for a public event it can hold twice that. As we stepped into the middle of the stadium we could have been a visiting football team dressed in our matching outfits. Massive petrol generators had been installed around the edges of the pitch and the sound they made was already deafening. Auntie Yomi from Ikeja had come up to Abeokuta from Lagos to set up the sound systems and when we arrived she came and greeted us one by one.
    â€˜Welcome! Welcome! It’s loud isn’t it? What a lot of work to control all of this! Thank God they chose some of us from Lagos to look after everything. But you wait until the Gbedu (sound systems) are installed. It’s going to be a real owambe tonight!’
    We watched all evening as people and equipment arrived. A small market was set up where people could buy food, drink, streamers, bangers and sparklers. When the massive sound systems were hooked up to the generators, they started playing music at a deafening volume and slowly more and more people from across town showed up. By nightfall, giant bonfires were lit all around the stadium and they served as little centres of activity, each with their own sound system playing different sorts of music from Afrobeat to soul and rap music. There was even one area in the stadium where they were playing church music and a gospel choir had turned up. Religion, as I said, is everywhere in Nigeria, but even if one person is very conservative and God-fearing they don’t mind rubbing shoulders with people who are on the wilder side of life.
    There were hundreds of suya spots, but instead of getting barbecue for us, Dad ordered the whole family a big bowl of pepper soup each. This is an incredibly spicy mixture that should have meat in it. Unfortunately, on this night they had substituted the beef for a piece of unappetizing cow skin, which floated around in the radioactively hot soup. Cow skin doesn’t normally feature on the average Western menu. None of us could stomach it that night and we pushed it away. Aunti Yomi was surprised that we didn’t take to it. ‘Your English teeth cannot handle this delicacy,’ she roared. ‘Waste not, want not.’ And she gathered all of our bowls together and ate every one, carefully chewing each piece of meat until the bowls were empty.
    Mum and Dad had long