Brown Sugar

My friend in Mumbai, (she’s also Nigerian) sent her Indian driver to buy her some brown sugar (she had just returned from shopping for groceries and realized she forgot to buy some).

Pradeep, looking very uncomfortable said,

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, I don’t know where to get brown sugar from”.


“Just go to ‘____’ (name of neighborhood shop), and get me some”

“Noooo Ma’am, they don’t have brown sugar there, they don’t sell brown sugar”.

Feeling quite irritated knowing she had bought some from the shop in the past, she insisted he should go and get some immediately since she wanted to use it.

“Em, Ma’am, I am very, very sure they wont have brown sugar, do you really need some?” He said peering closely at my friend’s face as if studying her expression.

“See me see wahala and this man o, I send you on an errand and you are asking ‘are you sure?’ You get luck say no be naija I dey, abeg go and get the sugar joo”. Of course Pradeep understood Pidgin English having been around my friend for about a year.

I was particularly curious since he was normally quite helpful and liked to show off as he was from, maybe, a good caste?

“Pradeep”, I entered the conversation, “just go and if you don’t find it in ‘___’ go to other shops and ask”.

“Okay, okay” he said leaving, very reluctantly.

My friend and I were surprised when he came back about thirty minutes later and said that they didn’t have it in the said shop and no-one else around had any. He then said something very weird, “Em, Ma’am, are you testing me?” See me see Indian wahala, we were both very curious now.

Apparently, Brown Sugar is the name of some hard drug; don’t know which and the poor man, having been with her for a while knew there was no such thing going on with my friend. Ha ha ha, it would have been a good mind your language episode! Je pense que oui?!