In Heirs Holdings, Food Is Both Culture And Devotion

By Tochi Eze

I found my heart racing with familiar anxiety when I started to read an account of the British explorer, Robert Falcon Scott. Here was a man caught up in the harsh winter of the Antarctic!!  Robert and his team had endured long dark nights and harsh weather. They had risked death for the promise of adventure. And then, the weight of the journey sat so heavily on their backs that they even began to contemplate death.

It was a pretty horrible narrative up until the sudden moment when I encountered the plot twist. Apparently, as they trudged along the barren expanse of land, they stumbled into sheep that had been slaughtered and preserved by the cold. As you would expect from men ravaged by hunger, a feast soon ensued. Suddenly, both gruelling hunger and weary shoulders were forgotten, temporarily erased by the food before them. In a memoir written about his life, Robert Falcon Scott recounted of that incident “With such a dinner, we agreed that life in the Antarctic regions was worth living”

I have often found myself sharing Falcon’s sentiments on how food can suddenly light up a bleak situation. I have seen how food can displace things that appear urgent, how it eases burdens and makes friends out of strangers. I have watched food make headaches disappear, hold fevers to ransom and send anxieties scurrying out of the way. Think about it, we may have different goals and histories and experiences, but with food, all of humanity has a common ground.

My Language of Forgiveness

For me, food is that friend that comforts when I am sad. It is peace offering after a fight, my language of forgiveness. Food is what gives character to events. (Imagine a wedding without jollof rice?!!)  It is also the joy of reunions, the promise in a romantic date, and the great recurring entertainment of life.

Food is what gives character to events. (Imagine a wedding without jollof rice?!!)

Food is so cherished and central to my view of the world that it only makes sense, whether with work or play, that I am constantly thrust among people who share the same avid fascination and respect that I have for food. If you work at Heirs Place, you would understand this.

The first time I walked through the glass doors of the building, I did not imagine that beneath the quietness and composure of the professionals, were people, who just like me, understood that regardless of what life throws your way – deadlines and all – there would always be a place for food. In Heirs Holdings, food is both culture and love language. It is salutation and devotion, it is promise, it is prayer and it is answer, all at once! It is the way we say welcome and the way we say goodbye. Yet, it is also the way we say, ‘I see you, you are doing alright!’

Because, Why Not?!

I absolutely adore the respect and attention that we pay to food, both as an organisation and as individuals within the system. I love that a mail comes from the front desk to go pick chocolates or corn, because why not?!! Why should food not be official? I love the camaraderie and scramble, I love the way heads bounce with rhythm when marching to the kitchen. I love the kitchen. I love lunch period. I love how the laughter and conversation hang thick in the air.

There might be a ton of work waiting back at the desk, but in that short window period, when steamed vegetables and plantains and turkey are placed before you, you can feel the flutter in your stomach and your heart expand with something soft and light. In that moment, you can feel your love for food and your love for work fusing together to become one. And that, I tell you, is a rare thing to come by!!