Naijamaican provides party, events, meeting and function planning; party,events, meeting and function facilitation and consultation, cookery advice and tips and catering services which include order a pot, nursery meals, prepacked and open layout meals; Order a tast of Africa, Dinner party catering and Gift shopping and wrapping facilites which are open to the general public and to public and private organisations.
Naijamaican hopes to migrate services to restauranting in the future.
Note: Naijamaican's core services are only available in the London & M25 area at present with travel to provide catering either onsite or by delivery at discretion for all other areas of the UK, except for taste of Africa and Taste of Caribbean where foods are despatched anywhere in the UK.
Patrons are welcome to collect thier own orders but delivery is available at an extra cost. Naijamaican does not provide services, have any business afilliations or import goods or foods from Nigeria or have any branches in Nigeria at present.
What inspired this business and the website?
My inspiration comes mostly from my immediate extended family and friends throughout my life. My gran lovingly known as maami by us the children in the household and mama by others; has always been willing through my life to share her cultural and historical knowledge with us; She would teach us to cook and spent a lot of time meticulously preparing foods and drinks for the entire family and her backyard has been the location for preparing meals for several celebrations of birth, life, marriage, laying to rest and religious obligations and general day to day cooking.
I cannot remember a time when you walk into her home and do not find her sitting on a small stool in the backyard roasting, cooking, cleaning, preparing or processing foods. The best was during the school holidays when we would come home from boarding school, she used to get up at some odd hour like 3am, go to Maroko or Ebute and come back with a basket full of yoyo and by the time we would get to her home, she would have cleaned them, laid them out on tray baskets in the sun to dry out before frying or smoking, and would have simultaneously washed soaked corn and taken it to be milled and be sitting there with the sieve making ogi, efo and omidun. Breakfast was almost always ogi and yoyo or ogi and adalu or ogi and akara or moi moi. After this she would move on to clean the yard and tackle the huge sacks of charcoal sorting the pieces and laying them out by the drum, pan and bowl. I rarely ever saw her sit down and do nothing. She was always busy!!!. I was astonished the last time I managed to save the million naira you need to go to Nigeria and went home;.... as with when I was younger, even now, she still does the same, when I walked into her house, she was sitting in the backyard over the coalpot cooking for grandad!.
The site does not just show business goods and services; Why all the information, links, photos and so on?
In migrating back to England, I noticed that lots of Granny's delights, family favourites and naija dishes were not on the menu here or even known to many Nigerians especially those who have remained here for a long time or have lived here since birth and I have had joy trawling the markets, searching the shops and ringing my gran and mum to remind me how to cook dishes before adaptation and they helped to recreate some of the yoruba meals on the site. By a similar token, I noticed disparity, distance from culture and suppression amongst many acquaintances and associates, few children born to Nigerian parents here could speak our languages,.....I wanted it to be like home where we greet one another, speak to one another, help one another and support one another and I am proud to say that I demonstrate as much as I can daily that the Africa in me is very much alive.
This website is first and foremost a tribute to my Grandma, may she remain with us for many more years in good health and peace and to all our mothers, aunties, sisters and cousins for being carers, helpers, guiders, teachers, suppporters, motivators, inpirers, and most of all for not balking and treating us with kid gloves and allowing us to grow and learn without fear and most of all to my parents for being brave enough to repatriate to Nigeria and granting us the opportunity to see and live in one of the beautiful African countries in the tropical region of the world.
Many have remained in England and made adjustments to their lives which has not removed the stigma attached to hailing from a 'third world country' and has detached many from culture in a bid to fit in or conform. I still meet people today who are unaware that the bulk of my education was in Nigeria who refer to it as an undeveloped and backward country and insinuate that being able to speak my language means that I must have come to England looking for something as opposed to being from England and giving a great deal or worse still meet people who view me through the lens that brands Nigerians as very fraudulent and dishonest or tell me I speak good English. Thankfully, I have learned to smile well!!
This site aims to etch knowledge and information on cuisine, cooking and the variety to African, Afroasian, Carribean and West Indian diets and cultural variations; historical and eductional information in modern stone. The world wide web, available on your telly, your mobile, the local internet cafe or business centre, on your broadband or dialup at home has opened up this opportunity and hopefully all this information will be there for our children and future generations to use as a resource and for referencing and to learn and teach others.
To have seen the sandy beaches of Badagry and Eti Osa, the heaving trading stalls at Balogun, Apongbon, Yaba, Ojuelegba, Mushin, Olosha, Oshodi, Ikeja, and more, the street hawkers, traders, the obiomas' , meshomakers', the bus conductors, the mobile typists, the recycler men with their rickshaw like barrows collecting metal and plastic, the rubbish men who come with their large barrows to take your rubbish to the collection sites, the molue and danfo drivers and sat in many a go slow. I have climbed the rocky hills and sat with friends and eaten on the plains in Plateua and Bauchi State, I have seen and smelled the beautiful hanging flowers gardens of Port Harcourt, I have seen the affluent greenery synonymous with the rain forest in Cross River, I have had a look at the fierce currents at the Niger Benue confluence and the Dam at Lokoja, I have driven and strolled through the hot sweeping plains of Kaduna and Kano and walked through the markets never finding the end. I've swum and drunk of the natural springs in Yankari, I've seen game run free in Bauchi State, I've crossed the frightening overhead bridges to get accross the many expressways we have, I have lived and survived in the era of no phones and no emails, I have eaten eba and ge like it was caviar, I have sat in fear and awe with teargas choppers and random bullet dropping like hailstone around us, I have watched as we drove by daily watching a dead body swell on the expressway verge till it burst and had to be scraped off the road with aluminium pans into pick up trucks, lived with environmental cleaning, WAI, MAMSER, Operation Gbale, The Census, The ASU and NASU strikes, no water, no light, No Essenco, The Vaccination Trucks,Riots and the scramble for green leaves and white flags for our parents cars depending on the day it was, the COUP's, the Firing Squad Executions, Dusk to Dawn Curfews, Riding on the molues, danfos, okadas/achabas and so much more. These are the things that make Nigeria what it is. A child of colonisation finding its way on.
That dusty, steamy, humid, sweltering whoosh of dust, baking hot heat and sweat that hits you in the face when you start to move into the arrivals lobby at Muritala after they stamp you in for a modest four weeks is one of reassurance, one that incites excitement and it bestows a calming feeling.
As we meander through the crowds, past the buskers, porters and officials and drive through the evening lull with lots of activity drinking in the atmosphere, rigged up lights and generators droning in the night, okada's weaving in and out of the traffic and the night traders with their lights and lamps glowing like fireflies, Smell the familiar smell of a wood fire and look around for an adogan or abacha stove, I start to prepare my stomach and keep looking out for a mesuya so I can beg my mum or dad to stop the car and please let me go by myself and buy suya and bread or boli bopa or agbado yiyon ......I look up, remind myself that the sky in Naija is the same sky God made over England, try not to start to cry and remind myself that I AM HOME and of course I AM FREE!! nothing compares to Lasgi.
I Want to Build a Website promoting my Goods and Services; Can you build me one.
I am responsible for the content, editting, management, facilitation of photography for foods and some goods, building and maintaining this site inbetween paid work. Sorry, I cannot build a site for you. If you search the internet using any search engine, you should find hosting service providers, web building software and tool providers and web designers.
Final Note A big THANK YOU to Almighty God;
To all those that have provided me with information, access to their sites, advice and support with programming and setting the site and forums up.
To those who have provided practical, realistic, sensible and non detrimental advice and support.
To those who have been respectful of my vision and principles regarding my business activities and my life and remain polite, sensible and diplomatic around me.
To my business advisor for keeping me going with helpful pointers, advice and information and for allowing me remain on my own track.
To my Grandma and Grandad (now nanogenarians if you must know!) and other elders in the family for passing on a wealth of cultural and traditional information.
To my mum and Grandma for helpful instructions, hints and tips and teaching me how to prepare a majority of the dishes featured
To my dad for his continued encouragement and positivity and my sisters for their support.
To my aunties, uncles, cousins, neices, nephews,dear friends and extended family for all the helpful praise, advice, support and feedback and for passing on their knowledge and skill over my lifetime.
To members of the public who have mailed me happy, thankful and positive messages and simply surfed on in and had a look see.
Most of all thumbs up for my DAUGHTER who has put up with me working on this venture to secure both our futures and continues to make declarations of approval when eating the food I knock up!!.
Please do tell your friends about this site, the primary purpose is not just to make money but to keep culture alive and enable a continuance of transfer of traditional practices such as cookery and language skills whilst promoting communication and sociocultural cohesion within the black and minority ethnic groups community.
Many come but few are chosen, God Almighty has the last dance in the dancehall of life, we are all human and remain at God's mercy, no man exceeds God and his infinite mercy and power and we must never allow life and modernisation to demolish our faith in God, our respect and appreciation of our heritage and our hopes and aspirations, Our future is what we make it and not what we allow others to shape it into, May God's blessings bestow us all with peace of mind, prosperity, happiness, good health and ease our passage through life by blessing us all the time and keeping us from harm and ill will and helping us to remain victorious in the face of adversity and despite all maintaining our self preservation as God naturally meant it to be. Amen.