Memoirs from the bottom of the pot

By: Tomilola Adejumo

They say every pot has a bottom, but not every pot speaks from it. Mine does. Mine hums like a radio station without signal, whispering the names of unpaid bills, missed meals, and promises made during NYSC that still haven’t matured like a pension.

The bottom of the pot is not a metaphor. It’s a location. A spiritual postcode. A place where burnt rice sticks like generational curses and water boils on borrowed gas. You don’t just arrive there. Life ushers you in gently. One failed job application at a time. One “we’ll get back to you” email. One sachet of milk that finishes the moment you start using it. Before you know it, you are sitting cross-legged on the tiled floor of your one-room apartment in Ketu, staring at the pot like it holds the answers.

That’s where I was.

I had just finished licking the last spoon of watery ogbono when my pot, old and loyal like a Nigerian politician in campaign season, groaned. Not physically. Emotionally. Spiritually. I understood. It was tired too. Tired of making magic out of misery. Tired of being the altar where I sacrificed my dignity, turning two spoons of rice into a meal fit for one depressed queen.

That pot has seen things.

It has seen me boil water I had no intention of using, just to convince my body that life was happening. It has seen me cook noodles with only pepper and pride. It has seen me measure crayfish like diamonds, count seasoning cubes like votes. My pot knows the weight of scarcity. It knows that sometimes, hunger is not a feeling. It’s a timeline.

The first time I fried akara without beans, it wept. “This is not akara,” it said. “This is audacity.”

But what choice did I have?

They say a woman must know how to cook, but they never say with what. Nobody talks about the science of boiling yam with NEPA light. Or the ancient skill of calculating whether your last N500 should go to food or transport. Or how to accept your fate when both disappear and you end up trekking to your dreams on an empty stomach.

In the beginning, I used to cry when the pot burned. Now, I just scrape the blackness and call it flavour.

This is the gospel according to broke girls. When there’s no fish, crayfish becomes tilapia. When there’s no meat, you fry onions with confidence. When there’s no rice, you drink garri with swagger.

The bottom of the pot is where I learnt that poverty is not humble. It is loud. It knocks on your door in the morning and asks, “So what are we eating today?” even though it knows the answer is “regret.” It follows you to the market and makes you ask for the price, knowing you cannot buy. It watches you remove one item at a time from your basket until only a sachet of tomato remains. And then it tells you to smile. Because there are people in worse situations.

The bottom of the pot doesn’t judge, though. It just listens.

It listened when I begged maggi to perform miracles. When I turned old stew into soup with just okro and a memory. When I invented meals that would make Gordon Ramsay weep. Not out of disgust, but confusion. It listened when I cursed capitalism while blowing on hot spoonfuls of survival.

I remember the day I hit rock bottom. Literally.

It was a Tuesday. I opened the pot and found nothing. Not a grain, not a drop, not even the scent of possibility. The hunger in my body had matured into clarity. I understood things the way prophets understand visions. I saw the truth. The bottom of the pot is not just a place. It is a condition, a lifestyle. An identity.

From there, you begin to remember things differently. You start to believe you were once rich, maybe in another life. You recall days when sardines came with bread, not shame. When you used to peel the back of ponmo instead of negotiating its price. When eating twice a day was not a miracle.

At the bottom of the pot, you develop new talents. You become a chef, an economist, a prophet, and a liar. You tell your friends you’re “detoxing,” not starving. You tell your mother you’re “managing,” not drowning. You tell yourself that things will get better, and even the pot side-eyes you.

But sometimes, in the dead of the night, after licking a spoonful of air and swallowing your pride with water, you hear the pot whisper, “You will rise.”

You don’t know when. You don’t know how. But it says it with the same certainty that NEPA uses to take light in the middle of a movie. And so you believe.

You wash it clean, careful not to scrub off the dreams stuck at the bottom. You place it back on the stove. You light the fire. Not with matches, but with hope.

And you wait.

Because one day, you know, something will enter the pot.

Even if it’s just water and salt.

Even if it’s just stories.

Even if it’s just you, again, boiling nothing and pretending it is soup.

Because that is what we do here.

We cook from memory.

We season with resilience.

And we serve it hot, straight from the bottom of the pot.