Among our other traditional foods, garri is so popular and entrenched that it has for long been recognised by English dictionaries. For instance, Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries defines it as a type of flour made from the roots of the cassava plant.
Well, whoever lives in Nigeria and other neighbouring countries that does not know the jolly good staple? Far from being an offering for only the poor – as it was largely derisively regarded in the past – nearly everyone likes it one way or the other. If you like, you can take yours fresh with water – alongside groundnut, beancake like moinmoin and akara. If you are led by the spirit, you can have it sprinkled on beans. Don’t mind Yoruba folks who used to label it sokudale. Another popular choice is making eba with garri, by pouring it into boiled water, and transforming it into solid food. I must stop here as I remember that fasting is ongoing!
A question, however, arises: what verb do we use with garri when consuming it with water? In the circumstance, some say they want to drink garri – or have drunk garri. This is sub-standard, if not outright wrong, because garri is a food, not water. It’s also neither beer nor wine. So, ‘drink’ is a wrong verb to attach to it. It is simply better to say you want to take garri, the way you take other foods. Similarly, ‘soak’ is a non-standard expression. In formal settings, you don’t say you want to drink or soak garri. Just say you want to take it.
You may be tempted to argue that ‘take garri’ is ambiguous in the sense that some refer to eba as garri. So, if I tell you I want to take garri, you might not know which I exactly have in mind. The simple answer to this is that the context will normally resolve the ambiguity.
Drink orange?
This is another popular blunder. You don’t drink an orange; you eat or suck it. But you can freely drink orange juice.
Here are more sentences showing some other foods you don’t ‘drink’:
I plan to drink pap with akara this morning. (Wrong)
I plan to take pap (the hot liquid type) with akara this morning. (Correct)
My sister says she will drink custard. (Wrong)
My sister says she will take custard. (Correct)
Neither of us wants to drink corn flakes. (Wrong)
Neither of us wants to take corn flakes.
