To Have and To Sip

Before the café, there was kofi

I never really liked coffee. Or rather, I never liked what I thought coffee tasted like. For years, it reminded me of a curious ten-year-old, an empty house and a very expensive mistake.

My dad had a cup every morning before work. He called it “kofi” in his thick Yoruba accent, and the ingredient that interested me most lived in a glass container on the microwave: little brown granules that looked suspiciously like chocolate.

Chocolate was brown. Chocolate was expensive. This looked brown and expensive. My reasoning felt sound.

One day, while my parents were at work, I helped myself to a handful.

It was the most bitter thing I had ever tasted, surpassed only by the herbal concoctions my grandmother made whenever we visited her.

After spitting it out and brushing my mouth, I decided the problem must be my method. I had never seen my dad eat coffee straight from the jar. So I boiled some water, found his mug and copied his routine: two teaspoons of sugar, stirred counterclockwise.

Still bitter. But perhaps milk would help.

I stretched up on my toes to reach it and knocked the coffee jar off the microwave. I watched it fall, then shatter across the kitchen floor.

That was the end of my first experiment with coffee. I knew I was in big, big trouble, and I decided we were better off apart.

A different kind of coffee memory

Years later, cafés have become places I go to spend time with friends. Coffee now comes with conversations and memories that have very little to do with its taste.

So when we covered the Roll & Roast opening in Ikoyi, it felt like another chapter in a relationship that had started badly.

Looking through the photographs from the day, I keep coming back to the people: friends leaning into the same frame, guests holding up their prints, and portraits carrying the Roll & Roast name along their borders.

A café opening gives people a reason to gather. The photographs give them a way to remember being there together.

Something to take home

That is the part of event coverage we love at To Have & To Hold. We get to photograph people while they are making memories, then put a little piece of the day into their hands.

The instant prints from Roll & Roast tell their own small stories. There are friends sharing a portrait, individual poses outside the café, and a growing collection of faces on the tabletop. Together, they make a record of the people who were there.

It is funny how a familiar thing can hold such different memories. Coffee once meant a broken jar and the certainty that I was about to be told off. Now it can bring to mind time with friends, a café opening in Ikoyi, and the photographs we made there.

I cannot go back and take a picture of that kitchen disaster. But I am glad we were there to capture this chapter.

Let us help you keep your next gathering

Planning a launch, wedding, birthday or brand event in Lagos? Bring To Have & To Hold along to photograph your guests and create instant prints they can take home.

Tell us what you are planning, when it is happening and how many people you are expecting. We would love to help you make something worth holding.