I got back into the house to check what I was cooking but immediately I got close to my house gate, I was perceiving a burnt smell. I knew I was in trouble at that moment. My mum will get home soon and she will punish me for burning the food.
I started to shiver and ran towards the gate, rushed to open the padlock and got inside. I didn’t even care about the fact that I was asthmatic. I just wanted to save myself from getting into my mum’s trouble.
I off the fire and ran out of the house. I opened all the doors so that the smoke will get out of the house. I puffed my inhaler while gasping rapidly for my breath. Finally, the smoke reduced totally and I could enter the house to find solution to the trouble I just got into.
What’s this? Who changed my food to brown popcorn? How did my food turn to brown popcorn, I ran outside the house to ask my neighbor, Ahmed if he spotted anyone entering the gate even though I knew I had locked the gate and there is no one who can enter our compound because it is locked.
You already locked the gate now. So, how will anyone enter your compound? What’s the problem?, Ahmed asked but I was still very much confused because even though my food was burnt, what I left in the pot wasn’t what I met.
I was cooking Beans before I escorted Uduak but getting back from where I went, I met some brown popcorn, I said while I was using my hand to describe what just happened to Ahmed.
Ahmed convulsed with laughter.
I even got angry because I was explaining the magic that just happened in my kitchen but he was busy laughing at me like I didn’t know what I was saying.
Don’t you know that if Beans gets cooked and burnt for too long, it looks like a brown popcorn, what kind of a thing is that? I was shocked when Ahmed told me this. How will the Beans turn to brown popcorn?
I went back home to clean the pot but it was so brown that even if I soak it for three days, it won’t get clean until I continue scrub it.
Our kitchen was so local and had no cabinet so there was nowhere to hide the pot that my mum wouldn’t see it.
Uduak is the one who put me in trouble today oh, I was so mad at myself for seeing Uduak off. If my mum then asks me how the food got burnt, it’s not possible to tell her that I escorted my high school boyfriend. That’s going to be double punishment. The first punishment will be for burning the food and the second punishment will be for escorting Uduak.
While thinking about that, I remembered that I was also going to be punished for having a boyfriend at high school level.
I was barely fifteen years old.
I ran to Ahmed to give me a little amount of Beans from his foodstuffs. We have ours too but my mum measures everything and if it decreases in size or measurement, she will know and I’ll be the one to be blamed.
Ahmed helped me out with a kind of Beans different from mine but I had no choice. All I wanted to achieve was to cook Beans before my mum gets back from shop.
I had to hide the pot in my room. My mum does the thorough cleaning of my room only on Sundays and it was still Tuesday so I was safe till Sunday and I was sure that before Sunday, the pot will be clean if I continue to scrub it everyday.
By the time my mum got home at night, she didn’t notice the smell of the burnt Beans. At the same time, she didn’t notice the taste of the two different beans which I had cooked.
Mummy, is it true that if Beans get burnt for too long, it will look like a burnt or brown popcorn?, I asked my mum.
Yes, it looks like it sometimes, she said. Then I felt relieved that it wasn’t a magic. It’s just the normal process of how burnt Beans looked like.
That gave me more experience about cooking. In order for that not to happen again, I never invited Uduak to my house again so another food magic doesn’t happen again.
Hehe, glad you remedied the situation and did not get in trouble after burning what you were cooking.😉
Hehe
It would have been another story if my mum caught me😅
Magic indeed 🤩🤩
😅😅😅😅