Seeds of Plenty by Jennifer Juo Read Free Book Online Page A

looked indignant, and he looked around at his fellow villagers, his eyes bulging and his mouth stretched in an expression of ridicule. The other men laughed, but Simeon did not join in the laughter.
    Winston didn’t know what to say. In one sentence, the man had questioned the core of capitalism—the grow more, want more, get rich mentality. Winston felt uncomfortable and suddenly out of place as if he and Richard had been accidently dropped in the jungle, bundled haphazardly in some sort of aid care package. He imagined the villagers staring in awe but then quickly casting it (and them) aside. He didn’t like the way Oluwa had laughed at their expense as if hinting at some superior knowledge of the way things would turn out in the end. There was some truth to what Oluwa was saying. Perhaps Oluwa could see right through him, see him for the charlatan he might be, nothing more than a man with a bag of tricks. Winston stood up abruptly and took his leave. Only Simeon took a Starter Pack and agreed to plant the hybrid maize seeds as a demonstration plot on his small farm. Winston and Richard drove off in silence; the orange dirt swirled in front of their jeep, caking the windshield with a layer of dust.
     
     

SYLVIA

Chapter 6
    Sylvia had married Winston as an escape, but in reality, she found herself in a prison full of large rooms, high fences, and the solitary company of herself. She kept the young doctor’s card in her pocket for a few days, touching it occasionally before eventually placing it underneath a dusty stack of canned Chinese food in her kitchen pantry. She didn’t know why she hid it there or why she had to hide it at all. But she knew Winston wouldn’t have any reason to enter the pantry and the servants could not read.
    While she was in the pantry, Sylvia stood staring at the rows of canned Chinese food around her. She had forced the essence of her culture into the boundaries of a suitcase, cramming her bags with bottles of soy sauce, sweet lychees, fermented black bean sauce, and dried ro sung pork purchased in London’s Chinatown. Since Lila’s birth, these bottles and tins had sat on the shelves of her pantry, collecting dust. Suddenly, her mouth watered for her forgotten food. She took a tin of sweet lychees off the shelf and walked into the kitchen she had seldom used, looking for a can opener.
    In an effort to make something of her marriage and life, she turned to the food of her culture. It required great improvisation to cook Chinese food in Africa. With her steward Energy’s help, she planted dark, leafy green Chinese vegetables in the back garden. She found a local supply of soybeans on the compound, an experimental plot grown by the scientists.
    She made the tofu from scratch. It was a labor-intensive process that involved soaking the beans for several days until they were soft. Then she strained the creamy mixture through a cheese cloth to produce the liquid soymilk which she poured into a plastic Tupperware container. She placed several of Winston’s heavy books on top to harden the tofu. It was a labor of love, an effort to please her husband, all of her loneliness and longing went into this process.
    Sylvia cut pieces of her fresh, white tofu and cooked it together with chili peppers and ground pork, making Winston’s favorite spicy tofu dish . She fried up the tough beef from the “meat man,” who came door-to-door with bloody shanks hanging on a metal rod across his shoulder. The West African cow was a skinny creature with a large bony bump protruding from its back.
    She served the spicy tofu, beef and broccoli, steaming garlic noodles, and fried shrimp to her husband. Like a dutiful Chinese wife, she kept replenishing his plate throughout the meal, making sure it was never empty. This was the first meal she had prepared for him since their marriage and arrival in Nigeria. It was a small, unspoken way to show some kind of affection toward him, a substitute for the physical