DIOSCOREA SPP

In those days, we stole yams from the school barn and we were impunitive about it. Yam came up second among the list of foodstuffs stolen from the pantry section of our school. You know the first. Hunger has a metabolic pathway that always produces survival instincts. 

Our school had two campuses. One for the junior secondary and the other for the seniors. So it was announced that there would be a merger. We were crest-fallen. Junior students are not to be 'trusted'. They easily tell the truth and are easily made to say it VERBATIM with testimonies detailed with who said what, when and where. But we can do nothing about the merger. 

We were merged and things changed. But hunger didn't. So we had to continue the yam theft. But this time we became botanical about it. Dioscorea spp be it rotundata or cayenensis kept disappearing from the school barn. We had enormous help from the school farmer in charge of the barn. So the stealing went on unnoticed.

Until one day, the junior students were taught botanical names of some plants in Agriculture. They were ecstatic about the laugh-provoking names; Carica papaya, Zea may, Oryza sativa, Musa paradisca and Musa sapientum. They went about and around singing the botanical names. But because they have heard us constantly using the word Dioscorea they shouted euphorically whenever they got to it.

For the next one week, they made all sorts of jokes using dioscorea spp. We knew the code has been cracked. We knew the game was ending. But hunger was still there. So we changed strategy, we continued yam theft. But this time, we were discrete about it; " Guy, how far you get am?" Once your colleague doesn't name what he was talking about, then he was talking about Yam, dioscorea rotundata or cayenensis.
#manmustwack#

photo credit:http://www.rfpp.ethz.ch/fellowships/concluded_fellowships/amf_yam