Guest Post: My First Biz Memories

Here’s Part 2 of Tipu’s nostalgic journey back to the days of Ebelebo.

—–00000—–

I come from a very sheltered home. My parents never let me take lunch money to school. Instead they gave me lovingly packed snacks of meat pies, cakes and my favorite mango juice for school.

Somehow I got wind of this “TEMITOPE BISCUIT” – it was not like the sweet European biscuits we ate at home. This was different and locally made in Lagos or so I thought, because of the name. It didn’t taste like it was made from wheat flour so I assumed it was made from cassava flour. Whatever the case it was delicious and I had to have some by any means. This kept me thinking all day long about how I was going to get money to buy this biscuit.

I didn’t get an allowance either, as all my needs were taken care of by my parents. One day, on my way to the bus-stop it suddenly occurred to me how I could get some money. It made a lot of sense for me to pick some delicious “Ebelebo” fruits and sell them to my classmates in school. So I called my friend Ozoz and we went to pick the fruits. When we had gathered a lot, we raced to the bus-stop – we almost missed the school bus.

_DSC0068

Once at school, I proceeded to sell the fruit. To my astonishment, I succeeded in getting some precious kobo coins. Shortly after, the bell for early morning assembly rang. I quickly kept the coins in my bag and ran off to the assembly grounds. When we came back – after assembly, my class teacher, Mr. Ojakorotu asked why the class was littered with Ebelebo seeds. All fingers pointed in my direction. He angrily told me to kneel down in front of the class and scolded me.

_DSC0077

I actually didn’t mind because I felt it was worth all the trouble. At break time,  I raced straight to the Tuck Shop  just beside the school gate and stretched my slim arms through the fence to buy a couple of my “TEMITOPE” biscuits.

_DSC0075

It was amazing because I can still vividly recall the taste of the biscuits as if it was just yesterday.[wpurp-searchable-recipe]Guest Post: My First Biz Memories – – – [/wpurp-searchable-recipe]

4 Comments

  1. What an amazing story. Loved reading every bit of it and it reminded me of my own school days and the shop we had in school that sold sandwiches and ran a tab for those who didn’t bring money!
    I love this.
    L

  2. Awww wonderful memories. I remember “Fruit”. We had lots of “Fruit” trees in my primary school, and we would shake the tree with all our strenght hoping for some of the fruit to fall.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.