On the morning of Sunday, March 7th 2021 Suan Grant came to the “Mama Z’s African Supermarket And Restaurant ” that is located in a strip shopping center located on the intersection of Meridian Avenue and 16th Street in Oklahoma City and met with OlawaleAzees, who is the patriarch of the handsome and unfailingly cheerful immigrant family from Nigeria that owns and operates that popular facility. Grant, who is originally from Kansas, lived for several years in the Caribbean island nation of Jamaica, and tells of how that like most people who have resided there for a time, she developed a love for the food and culture found there, that combines African, British, Chinese, and Lebanese traditions, which prompted her to start a business that sells Jamaican pepper jellies that are prepared in accordance with Jamaican tradition. She started doing so in 2009, with training and encouragement that she received at the Robert M Kerr Food and Agricultural Production Center at OSU in Stillwater, and soon small bottles of Scotch Bonnet Pepper jelly were found in kitchens in various parts of Oklahoma and subsequently in other locales in both the U. S. and foreign nations. And she was recently a guest on the popular radio production “The Fired Up Kitchen” where hosts Sean and Cathy Cummings documented the numerous awards that her products have received.
Jamaica’s Black majority, as part of the African diaspora, has long played an important role in African culture and culinary traditions, and Jamaican performers such as Bob Marley’s music of protest and empowerment is heard throughout the African continent and the meat pies that British colonialists brought to both their Caribbean possessions and Nigeria remain popular in both locales.
The senior Azees has previously told of how he drove a taxi when he first arrived in Oklahoma and his wife worked the night shift at a local McDonalds, while their older children cared for their younger siblings, but he soon realized that the growing African immigrant community in the Oklahoma City area was large enough to support a retail operation stocked with goods from that continent, and opened an African store on Portland Avenue. The success of that undertaking prompted the newly minted entrepreneur to move to his current large location and to open an African restaurant there as well where he cheerfully greeted Grant and examined the brightly colored jars of Jamaican jam that she had brought there with interest. Azees asked Grant to bring a case of her creations to his place later this week, and with characteristic generosity, handed her a menu and asked her to take some of the fare offered in it as a gift. She selected a meat pie, and told of how they are known as “patties” in Jamaica and were one of her favorite foods during her tenure there. And one party who witnessed their warm interaction was reminded of the concluding lines of the classic movie “Casablanca” in which Humphrey Bogart advises Claude Rains character that “This maybe the start of a beautiful friendship.”
Against the Grain 