The story of the "Chewing gum fish".

On this episode of stories that might never get published, here’s the story of the “chewing gum fish”.

As you all know there’s a global pandemic in the name of “COVID-19”, deadly deadly disease that’s been eating up humans and the very core of our existence, literally keeping us off our streets and eating at our economy daily but that’s not where this started from. It just so happened that when this pandemic hit my country “Naija” it kind of crept in and suddenly we were getting advised to stock up our pantries, well me I like fish, meat and so and so. I obviously knew I was going to stock up on these items so I was thinking of how to preserve my precious food items for as long as a month(I don’t know how long this would be for, in fact we have no official memo yet) this led me to remembering the case of the “chewing gum fish”.

When I was a kid there was a time that we couldn’t afford our rent anymore (sad thing) and we were tossed out of our home. I mean tossed, as in tossed, if you’re Nigerian and you remember those home videos where some landlord just comes in with “goons” early morning and starts throwing items belonging to a tenant out on the floor outside, yea that’s what I mean. Horrible day but that’s the beginning story of the fish. We were tossed out, we had no where to go but for a while we the kids were asked to stay with a particular uncle and family. God bless their hearts as I imagine this must have been a hard sacrifice to make even for your brother’s family.

Well well the fish story happened there. There’s this local very populous fish that’s mostly eaten by “Yoruba” people. It’s called “panla” but it’s hake, small hake usually roasted and then dried and sold. Thing about this is the fish is cheap and is mostly not so fleshy because it’s been roasted and then dried. 

So you can imagine my utter confusion when this particular family still dried this already dry fish in direct sunlight for more than 5 hours daily. I mean I imagined the flesh would then disappear, but it happened that the flesh turned “chewing gummy” I mean it was tough, impossible to chew and I presume dangerous to swallow. 

But we ate it, it was even served to us on days that felt special because I presume here you shouldn’t eat fish daily, meat? Not for kids.

Now I understand that this delicacy was not for their own kids but for the poor homeless kids as a rule. For some weird reason I can’t begin to phantom, I am craving that fish as I think it’s my preservation savior. I mean I want its dryness and inability to chew and possible unhealthiness, I just want it.

I guess there’s no point to this story except cravings are weird, sun drying already dried fish is a form of good preservation and you should practice it, pandemics are terrible, remember to stock up your pantries and most importantly do everything you can to practice social distancing. By the way always remember to be kind to kids, those tiny people never forget a thing. So family of the “chewing gum fish” any day you get to visit me I am going to have some “dehydrated panla” ready to serve you, just remember to give me the heads up.