LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE - DEAREST HEART

Dearest Heart,

Another day another dollar or as I say in Nigeria, another day another opportunity not to kill or get killed by an okada.

How are you, I hope you are missing me as much as I’m missing you.

The extent of my missing you is so great I did something very atypical of myself, I watched one of ‘our’ films, Like Water for Chocolate, and it made me laugh.

I remembered the last time we watched it , it was just before you left and you told me that it was so romantic that they waited 22 years to be with each other and then dying in the ‘ supreme passion of the moment’. Right!

Being the ultimate realist and according to you ‘the romance destroyer of the 21st century’ I still have to tell you, I don’t get the film.

Ok so the food was good, and so were the steaming looks , and the naked horse riding (which must have chaffed some), but marrying the sister to be closer to the one he loved and then waiting for 22 years before they got busy and to make matters worse not even sealing the deal because he died while they were doing it FINALLY which is totally rude, it boggles my mind.

So he loved her so much that he had to be close to her somehow, but to be honest being a down to earth – sometimes- Nigerian girl, I cannot for one see myself sitting in the same house with the man who claims to love me and then marries my sister to be close to me. That is bad enough, but then to have to cope with it for 22 years and then even if I allow myself to phantom those impossibilities allow the guy to die on me when we are finally getting what we wanted and then eat matches and die. A beg!! That is craziness to the ‘enth degree.

Of course if it were a Nollywood movie, the girl would have jujued the sister and the husband, had his illegitimate child and then at some point religion would have come into play.

I miss your romantic and totally unrealistic take on things, it balances out my cynicism.

Talking of juju, I cannot believe you told your boss that your girlfriend in Nigeria did some medicine so that any woman who you have sexual encounters with turn into men!

Honestly what would she have thought of me, you should have told her that they turn into men painfully with that part of their anatomy coming out cm by cm for a month, while ripping through the skin down that a good reason to do juju.

I’m feeling crazy today, I’m feeling the loss of you in my life, I’m feeling slightly lost without you and maybe, just maybe, I’m understanding the waiting bit of ‘water for chocolate’.

With all my love

Ahoranui