Joe Bennett: Bonfire chat in Nigeria dishes up dreaded soy sauce story

One of the vehicles often seen in news reports from Third World conflicts. Called Technicals - they are pick-up trucks with some sort of artillery piece bolted onto the deck. Photo / Getty Images

A DOG'S LIFE

I had expected to get through my life without hearing a story about soy sauce in Nigeria. But it was not to be.

When I saw Fred tending a bonfire just down the road I asked if I could fetch a few things from home to throw onto it, prime among which was a cardboard tube from a roll of carpet that had been lying on my garage floor for months and that had yet to cause a catastrophe but had been trying hard. Fred said to be his guest.

In bonfire etiquette it is impolite to lob stuff onto someone else's fire and then just leave. And besides who wouldn't want to stay and warm their hands and shuffle around to avoid the smoke and watch their carpet tube consumed and spin a yarn or two? Bonfires are communal things.

Fred makes his living as an engineer in places other people don't want to go to, places with warlords and dictators, places that are dirt-poor, or corrupt, or dangerous, or all three.

Recently he'd worked on a large engineering project in the remote northern region of Nigeria, home to Boko Haram, the militant Islamists who once kidnapped an entire school of girls. A kidnapped New Zealander would fetch a considerable ransom, though not as much as an American would, which was why no Americans worked there.

So Fred was housed in a fortified compound. When travelling to and from work, or indeed anywhere outside the compound, he had an armed escort, consisting of several local men armed with Kalashnikoffs, and at least two technicals.

Technicals? I said.

Technicals, it turned out, is the universal and ironic name for the vehicles we see on the news wherever there is Third World conflict. They are pick-up trucks with some sort of artillery piece bolted onto the flat deck. By far the most popular truck for this purpose is apparently the Toyota Hilux, which has the word TOYOTA printed in unmissably large capitals across the tailgate.

Soy sauce, popular as a means of masking poor tasting meals. Photo / NZME

I have often thought this to be impressive marketing by Toyota, causing their brand to blare on television nightly through the fog of war. But apparently it is not so, or at least not explicitly so, for Toyota makes every effort to avoid selling trucks to anyone who might want to turn them into technicals. But in the end the company has little control over what happens to a truck after it has been sold.

Anyway, the need for security wasn't the only drawback to compound life. The food was terrible. It was dominated by goat and often the goat had been dead for some time. Fred asked for soy sauce to mask the worst of it but it was unheard of in that part of Nigeria.

However, Fred knew a Chinese engineer working on a sister project and living in a nearby compound. Surely the Chinese would have soy sauce in abundance and could spare him a bottle. And so it proved. The Chinese engineer said he would tee it up with the kitchens and Fred had only to drop round to pick it up.

Fred's security boys spoke English only as a second or third language and he had some difficulty explaining to them after work that they were taking a detour to the Chinese compound to acquire a substance called soy sauce. But once they'd grasped it they seemed excited by the idea and off they went in convoy, technicals and all.

Now it so happened that the security forces guarding the Chinese compound were from the same outfit as Fred's. They gave Fred's boys directions to the kitchen block and waved them through. Pulling up outside, and before Fred could even open his door, the boys fired a series of rounds into the air from the machine gun on the back of the leading technical.

Half a dozen kitchen hands came running out. The guns were trained straight onto them. "Soy sauce," said Fred's head bodyguard, "Soy sauce." The kitchen hands ran back inside and shut the doors. Another series of rounds from the technical just for the pleasure of it. Then a door opened and a white flag appeared, in the form of a tea-towel on a stick. It was followed by a young man rolling out a 44 gallon drum of soy sauce. No sooner had he got it out the door than he ducked back inside.

Fred's bodyguards heaved the drum onto the back of a technical and headed home, whooping with delight. And I only wanted a bottle, said Fred.

Great things bonfires.