"The once ubiquitous De Rica tomato paste brand lives on in Nigerian markets and kitchens in more ways than one. In a busy Lagos food market, a customer points at an enamel bowl filled with rice. How much for a derica? she asks. Salesman Christopher Onyekwere scoops grains into a tin can and holds it up, listing the prices for local and imported rice."
"De Rica was everywhere. At that time, everyone considered it the best tinned tomato, she says. As the tin cans were so ubiquitous, food vendors started to use the empty cans to measure food, each scoop being a derica. We recycle so much, it makes sense those tins became a unit of measurement, Aribisala adds. There are also other units of measurement based on well-known product"
Empty De Rica tomato paste tins have been repurposed across Lagos and other southern and eastern Nigerian cities as informal measuring scoops called "derica." The tins, originally holding 400 grammes of tomato paste, often have worn branding but remain standard measures for rice, melon seeds and black-eyed beans at markets. Older traders remember De Rica’s ubiquity and dominance in the 1970s and 1980s, which led vendors to adopt the empty cans as convenient measures. The practice reflects extensive recycling and the emergence of other product-based informal units of measurement in market trade.
Read at www.aljazeera.com
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