Paper Prose

I must have been about eight years old the first time I heard ABBA. I remember the CD case cover, the black background of the graphic paper behind the plastic, the letters ABBA and Gold written in gold-ish color, so that one ‘B’ was turned the opposite way, resting its spine against the other B’s. I remember two small custom-made bedside wooden chests with single drawers in my parents' room, packed with CDs- ABBA, Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, Lucky Dube, Bob Marley, Westlife, Backstreet Boys and many others. There were movies too- Titanic, My Best Friend's Wedding, Prince of Egypt, The Lion King, Coming to America- some of the best of the eighties and nineties. Growing up, my father had music playing on a loop almost every evening, and certainly every weekend. Most of the tracks were classics, old school funk and RnB, lots of reggae. His room was, a sacred shrine of sorts to music- the lights would be off, but we heard the beats from anywhere in the house- boom ka, boom boom k

In the second week of December 2022, I started to crave chin-chin.   Like any other craving, I waited for it to pass. By the third week the craving was so strong that I considered making them myself.  It was quite odd, as chin-chin was never my favourite snack growing up. Give me overripe plantain chips- soft, dark, and spicy. I decided to go hunting for the snack one day during my lunch break from my remote job. The easy way would have been to drive to the African stores I was familiar with and purchase a jar of chin chin (which I was guaranteed to find) but I’d   just moved to a different quadrant of the city and I didn’t want to spend a huge portion of my work break time driving a long distance to search for, of all things, chin chin. After perusing Google maps, I found a couple of nearby african food stores to check. Hunching my shoulders against the bitter cold, I got into my preheated Hyundai and drove 4 minutes to one store, singing along with Sinatra as he crooned,   ‘Love-ly,