Designing dining: How kitchen objects become imbued with culinary culture

Banga, my absolute favourite, was always top of the list. It is a soup made from cooking a combination of palm nut fruit with an assortment of spices and varieties of meat and fish. It is indigenous to several South-South Nigerian tribes, predominantly the Urhobos and Itshekiris, and is traditionally served in a clay pot called Evwere (or Ewere in another local dialect), with accompanying cassava “swallow” meal known locally as “starch”. The soup is first prepared in a regular pot and then transferred into an Evwere right before serving to thicken until a foamy rim of dried palm nut cream forms, signalling it is ready. The Evwere is a lidless pot built from clay, with a wide-open mouth enabling the person cooking to see the soup thickening as it boils. The outside of the pot can be plain or decorated with motifs including sgraffito lines running from the centre of the base or across its body and rim. The rim at the ends of the mouth is moulded in a manner that creates a flat flap that stretches outward so that the pot can be conveniently carried. I craved to have one of these with me in the UK and requested my mum bring one for me on one of her future visits.

About a decade ago, when I had since moved from the Northeast of England to East London, my mother brought with her as a gift a modification of the traditional clay Evwere. Made from metal, she proceeded to describe it to me as “a stylish version that would fit well into my contemporary British-Nigerian kitchen”. I must admit, I was slightly disappointed not to get the traditional version as there is some indication – call it an old wives’ tale – that cooking in a clay pot contributes to improving the taste of the soup. Alongside this, as someone who loves ceramics, the original clay pot also points to an important long-standing history of Nigeria’s matrilineal pottery traditions responsible for making functional, everyday pottery through a skill passed down from one generation to the next.

Pre-pandemic, my mother would visit annually and I would hand over the Banga preparation to her. It has now become a ritual and is still served in my Evwere. For over a decade, this pot has become both a potent symbol and a reminder of how, when people migrate, many other things move with them. It represents more than dining ware and is imbued with both tangible and intangible remnants of a culinary culture that migration forces individuals to leave behind, which becomes strengthened by the diaspora’s transnational bonds to their homeland.

The Evwere, for me, serves as a connection across the globe to my roots as it triggers nostalgic feelings that demonstrate how important food is to the migrant experience. Food, just like language, is an important connection to people’s origin. It is a major celebration of culture, heritage and identity which is able to tell remarkable stories about people, their movement and exchanges. A pot or dish at dinner can just be a vessel for serving food but in this case, it’s so much more. It’s a marker of my beloved Nigerian heritage through an object that others might deem odd when spotted in a cupboard filled with mix-matched tableware, from Ikea to Heal’s, Abuja pottery to charity-shop finds. A hybridised selection reflecting a hybridised diasporic life like mine.