My immediate younger sister learnt how to cook before everybody.
Of course, she is the “Ada” of the house so this isn’t news.
Where I’m from, being the “Ada of the house” is quite significant.
The “Ada of the house” is the firstborn daughter of the house.
She is respected and almost worshipped as the third parent.
To add to that, the Ada of the house eats the waist of every meat killed in the family (an age-old tradition most modern Igbos don’t even know)
This share of the meat is to show respect and appreciation to her because other than all the respect and glam that comes to the Adas at family parties,
The ‘Ada of the house’ is normally tasked with seeing that the day to day activities of the house like washing, cleaning and cooking are all on point other children help but she is responsible.
Back to our story…
My immediate younger sister,
The oldest daughter of four daughters was the first person to learn how to cook in the house.
This learning phase didn’t spare us some drama which have turned to fond childhood memories that we use to taunt her till this day
Her learning phase brought so much uncertainty,
We didn’t know what to expect.
Sometimes the meals came out good but more often than not,
We would have to just bear with her and her experiments.
This certain day was beyond bearable,
She had just finished cooking her first-ever jollof rice (I knew it was her first because mum kept coaching her over the home phone so she will cross her ‘t-s’ and dot her ‘i-s’)
She was so excited.
I think I was more excited than she was (I love rice in any form)
And we had just come back from school so all my siblings were hungry.
She moved from one corner of the kitchen to the other,
Frying and sieving and doing all whatnot.
Finally, it was ready and she dished out our beautiful coloured jollof rice…
I was yet to get to the dinning table when the middle child screamed,
“Sis, this thing doesn’t have any taste oo
Mummy has never cooked something like this”(with the bluntness of a child)
Everybody rushed to the dinning…
It turned out that there was no salt.
Ada almost cried.
She told everybody how she forgot to put salt because she was trying to make sure the jollof rice didn’t get burnt.
A sumptuous meal that my eyes, nose and brain were done eating could not pass my truth.
So beautiful on the outside with a surprisingly nice aroma.
But tasteless, I almost slipped into depression (Lol).
This is how your emails will be if you don’t tell stories.
They could be so value filled.
They could be filled with all sorts of facts and figures that could help your customers.
But your customers will never taste it, sorry, open it to read (till the end)…
If you don’t spice your emails with storytelling.
Storytelling is to emails.
How salt is to food.
Learn to write stories that interest your customers,
Stories that carry your message.
I’d be showing you how to do that daily in my newsletters
You can go here for more details.
Talk tomorrow,
Stay intentional.
Golibe.