Each year, when yams are full and fires dance,
the people gather for Zia Werelo—
Love Feast, they call it—
where no one owns the pot,
and the kitchen belongs to all.

Mothers wear white wrappers,
fathers clean the compound floor.
The children sing:
"We eat as one, we live as one."

One pot.
One stew.
One scoop for every soul.

But not every bowl came equal.

At first, no one noticed—
how some plates steamed heavy
and others barely warm.
How one family licked their fingers,
while another still waited, empty.

Eyes turned to the woman with the ladle.
She smiled wide, but her hands betrayed her—
scooping deep for her sister’s sons,
shallow for the rest.

They changed her.
The next disher came with soft words,
but her friends' plates overflowed
like flood in planting season.

She too was changed.
Another came—humble, quiet, grateful—
but gave more to those who whispered:
"We made you who you are."

And so the feast lost its song.

Old men stopped clapping.
Children began to fight over spoons.
Even the pot, once proud,
seemed to simmer in shame.

Then the elders gathered by the iroko tree,
and asked:
"Is it the dishers who fail us,
or the hunger for control
we pass from hand to hand?"

Next Zia Werelo,
they made a circle.
Each one came with a spoon—
no throne, no special apron.
The pot sat in the center, quiet and full.

And one by one,
with open hands and watching eyes,
they served each other.
That year, the feast returned.
And with it, the song.