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.
Duchess PR provides Web presence promotions, publicity to web, terrestial based tv, radio, blogs and DJ and website spreads working to make your personal profile, products, event, gig, party or club night a sell out and to enhance your overall image and streamline your product or skill portfolio, building and maintaining websites, web optimisation, web submissions, organising television and radio featuring and much more, working predominantly with music artistes and the leisure and entertainment industry.
What is special and different with Naijamaican?
Naijamaican only cooks halal food and provides what is known as one hand cooking, this means that all cooked foods are prepared by just one person.
Duchess PR provides a personalised service, streamlining your product, event and or skills for the long term and tailors all services to suit the individual and your budget.
Do you Travel over the UK & Abroad?
Naijamaican's core services are 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.
Naijamaican is able to provide offshore services on demand and travels to West, South, and North Africa including many parts of Central Africa, USA, Canada, Europe and the Caribbean. Please ask for a quote.
Duchess PR predominantly serves cllentele in Europe,Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Benin Republic, South Africa, Cote D'Ivoire
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.
Beyond and away from cooking, DuchessPR has developed by firstly helping pals streamline their web presence, business or personal profile moving into promoting products, personalities and creatives and managing ad keeping a close control and management of clients overall presentation to the wider world.
By building webstores, websites, social network pages and so on, the business of selling a client, product, music, creatives or skills has become second nature and a task that I enjoy, this should not go without saying that especially in the Nigerian Industry, I have met, got to know and encountered lots of fun, creative, intuitive and talented people and representing, promoting and managing public affairs for them and their businesses is a rhapsody of pleasure.
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. She had us running errands going round to all her friends from the mosque asalatul with bowls of ogi each week, and we had fun watching the green necks turn up in their flash cars to buy charcoal when the fuel shortage crises started to rock Lagos, they were ready to kiss the ground to buy a coalpot and charcoal or as we call it 'eedu' and palmkernel sponge which we call 'ogusho', so many people did not know you did not need kerosine to start a fire, it was astonishing. Over my life, 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 and fun trawling the markets with my trolley or luggage rolly, 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, depression, hardship, bitterness and alloofness amongst many acquaintances and associates, few children born to Nigerian parents here could speak our languages, cook or stomach our foods....I wanted it to be like home where we greet one another, speak to one another, help one another and support one another with a clear heart and mind 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, travel and live in one of the most 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.
Nigeria is not a nice place............Really???
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 mobile 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, sat in cars in a bailout position with a damp towel held to my eyes as I struggled to breathe engulfed in fumes of teargas eyes sweltering and lungs struggling ofr air, sat in busses with no doors, planks for chairs and walkedmiles to do errands in a non technology era, i lived with environmental cleaning, WAI, MAMSER, Operation Gbale, The Census, The ASU and NASU strikes, no water, no light, No Essenco, The Vaccination Trucks, Civil unrest, 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. Eko ni ile, Lagos will always be home for me.
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 cooking and photography for foods and goods, building and maintaining this site inbetween paid work.
Need a site, including maintennance and domain registration, please get in touch, prices vary depending on needs.
Other sites are freely permitted to link to this site or insert a permafeed to this site using frames, however this does not imply direct association and in such cases, I do not control the content of the external site that linked you to this site, neither can I control or comment on how they work.
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 building business links,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 who is still with us for many more years to come insha Allah and my dear grandad who answered the call of Allah this May 2010 at the age of 99years and 4 months and other elders in the family for passing on a wealth of cultural and traditional information. Grandad, you are gone, but remain forever in my heart for all time, and I know you have gone to rest now, but no day passes that we don't miss you dearly. Baba wa Baba rere, O'n saluwala lowo niku wole de, on ke Kurani ni ku wole de!!! Sun re o!! Aljana re o!
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, thankfulness for small mercies, progress, 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.