Between kerosene and rice, what do I choose?

 
Confused. Troubled. Bewildered. Disoriented. Puzzled. Perplexed. Befuddled. Between sixes and sevens.

Adjectives fail to accurately describe my current state. Never have I had to make a more difficult choice in my life. I’ve made choices for the past 15 years but this time I feel like I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. I have a feeling that I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t. I’m trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea- and one of the choices represents the sea, literally speaking.
 
I feel like the character, Alice in the classic ‘Alice in Wonderland’ when she came to a fork in the road.

’Which road do I take?’ she asked.

‘Where do you want to go?’ responded the Cheshire Cat.

‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered.

‘Then,’ said the Cat, ‘it doesn’t matter.”

My dilemma is the choice I have to make between kerosene and rice. I have been offered both but I need to choose only one. I was offered four liters of kerosene in exchange for four years of penury.

I was offered four ‘kongos’ of parboiled rice for another four years of continuity. Is this a fair exchange? I’m one of the estimated 500 million poor households who use kerosene worldwide because I have no access to electricity and gas. So I use kerosene. For cooking and for lighting. For me, it’s an essential commodity.

It’s the very essence of my base life. In spite of adulteration leading to explosions,emission of carbon dioxide leading to air pollution and impairment of lung functions, I trudge on. By the way, you use cooking gas but you give me kerosene? And how do I survive on just four liters? Will you bring more the day after?

Rice. Rice has replaced garri as the staple food on my table because the price of garri has caught up with the price of rice. I used to eat rice before only on special occasions and at events but now I eat it everyday. I can’t afford it fried so I eat it plain. I may be lucky to get the ‘jollof’ or ‘fried’ variety when people like the ‘of-error’ celebrate their vanities. But I’m not being offered that.

What I’m being given is plain rice. And North cote Parkinson said, ” Without the curry, boiled rice can be very dull”. I’ve been wondering why the language being spoken now is rice until I saw what Vikrant Parsai wrote- “If you give me rice, I’ll eat today; if you teach me how to grow rice, you’ll never see me again.” So in order to keep me in perpetuity, you give me rice. Confucius also wrote , “Give a bowl of rice to a man and you will feed him for a day. Teach him how to grow his own rice and you will save his life.

” So after this four ‘kongos’ of rice, what comes next especially when you’re not giving me Uncle Ben’s but a strange variety from Thailand, mixed with stones and very starchy?

I shudder at the short-sightedness of both the giver of kerosene and rice. The duo emphasize immediate gratification and represent the Jacobic tendency to offer porridge in exchange for my birthright. Neither cares about the future and none talks about it. They play upon the fact that I’m moved by what I eat.

So I am offered conflicting choices. Talk is cheap, but talk does not cook rice- kerosene does. On the other hand, kerosene will be a waste if there’s no rice to cook.

So what do I choose?

By Bayo Adeyinka.