Garden & Reflections

  Tall bitterleaf plants, known as olugbu, surrounded by beautiful waterleaf plants in my garden. Bitterleaf. Olugbu. Olubi. Onugbu. One vegetable I did not like as a child! It was not because of the taste. Once olugbu entered a hot pot of egusi soup the way my mother prepared it, I had no complaints. My problem was the rigorous and, in my childhood opinion, tormenting process of washing the leaves. Whenever I suspected my mother planned to make olugbu soup, I would silently hope for a sudden illness (nothing serious, of course, just enough to excuse me from the washing duty). But those convenient illnesses never seemed to arrive. Instead, I would be there, rubbing and squeezing the leaves again and again, changing the water repeatedly, and wondering whether the bitterness would ever end. To make things worse, mother would sometimes let the harvested leaves sit in the sun for a couple of hours before we washed them. That toughened the leaves and made the washing process even lo...