A piano is a musical instrument in which felt-covered hammers, operated from a keyboard, strike the metal strings to produce musical sound.
For the Tiv, piano is more than sound. While others play a piano, the Tiv people eat it.
Among the Tiv, good food doesn’t stop at good taste. The variety of foods served at a meal is what qualifies it as good food.
To buttress the place of variety in Tiv cuisine, meals such as pounded yam, semolina or other similarly prepared native foods, are served with an assortment of soups, sometimes up to 10 different soups in little portions.
To navigate one’s way across the assortment of soups, a diner would make movements similar to those made by a pianist, from one key to the other but in this case, from one soup plate to the other.
So as the pianist plays his piano, a Tiv person eats theirs and a visit to any Tiv home or restaurant confirms this.
21st CENTURY CHRONICLE set out on a mission to find out what makes piano an ideal ‘meal’ for the Tiv.
Sitting under a tree at an open space restaurant in Garki 2, Abuja, two men and a lady are having a meal and before them are nine small bowls containing a variety of soups and assorted meat.
A closer look reveals just three fist-sized moulds of pounded yam. So, on the average, each of these people is eating four different soups to one mould of pounded yam at the time.
This eating culture, according to Irene Awunah, a culture enthusiast, is a practical show of the way of life of the people who hate boredom.
“So, in the way we eat also, we go for variety. Eating one type of soup at a time makes eating boring, so I’ll rather eat two or at least three different types of soup whenever I am eating pounded yam or any mashed food like Semolina, Eba or Akpu,” she said.
“Ah, piano is a way of life,’’ Joe Mson said, when 21st CENTURY CHRONICLE sought to know from him why the Tiv would rather eat piano style.
He said eating piano gives one psychological freedom to express oneself and also gives satisfaction of taste, cravings and desire. Mson also said for some people, going to a restaurant and ordering a whole variety of soups for a single mould of pounded yam is a way of showing affluence or that they are financially comfortable, while for a few others, it bothers on greed and indecision as well as a level of inferiority complex, that makes them feel good with such displays, pointing out that he has witnessed scenarios where people ordered for different soups and ended up not even touching some.
“But for me, I simply eat like that for variety and the fact that I am a man who wants every good thing to myself. Piano in this context, is a formation by Tiv people to refer to different plates of soups,” he added.
This way of eating is not restricted to restaurants but is also
practiced in homes.
Vickie Austin Shior is a house wife and also runs a commercial kitchen in Lugbe, Abuja.
She said at her kitchen, she doesn’t serve everyone who comes to eat this way because her kitchen is not an exclusive Tiv kitchen, but a few Tiv people who patronise her request to be served different soups.
Shior said she, however, takes pleasure in serving her husband this way at home because that’s the only way “I get him to eat very well.”
“If I give him only one soup, he would eat only five morsels of the food. So I serve him at least four different soups. That way, if he eats five morsels per soup, that is 20 morsels of ‘swallow’ and I am happy when he eats well like that,” she added.
“I am a fan of Piano,” Tersoo Ityough said, as he excitedly described how he and his wife always order different soups anytime they eat out.
His wife is a very good cook and also does a mini piano at home often.
However, on occasions that they eat out as a family, they make it a practice to order different soups from each other, but combine and eat all together.
Ityough said, he enjoys piano so much, and at every occasion, no matter how small the ‘swallow’ is, “it is always the swallow that is left over, not any of the soups or accompanying meat.”
For people who run commercial kitchens or restaurants like Shior,
how do they make profit, serving different soups for single moulds of ‘swallow’ per customer? How does this impact their business? Is there any negative impact on their business if they do not serve their customers many different soups?
Nguuma Abel Gbuusu answered all these questions with ease. She said in spite of the prevailing high cost of food stuff and other things in the market, with careful calculations, a food vendor can cut costs in order to keep customers satisfied.
Citing the instance of melon soup, called Egusi, she said, a cup of cooked melon soup, combined with other ingredients can be served to 10 people and so, variety should not be costly, but a thing of joy and satisfaction.
Gbuusu said even though she personally doesn’t eat her ‘swallow’ with different soups at a time, she likes to keep this practice and always be ahead for the satisfaction of her customers, adding that serving her customers different varieties of soup doesn’t really impact her business, but it just helps to keep the customers satisfied and happy.
She said, for certain customers that come to her restaurant, “they want to just have a taste of all the soups because I am a good cook and they don’t want to miss anything.”
Another food vendor in Abuja, who preferred to remain anonymous, told 21st CENTURY CHRONICLE that while other people also eat a combination of different soups, they would mix the soups in one bowl, but the Tiv don’t mix the soups, they prefer to have them in separate bowls.
“Eating piano makes eating an interesting experience,” she stated.
