My body failed me many times, but God, support from Nigerians, kept me going
By Christy Anyanwu
Hilda Bassey Effiong, popularly known as Hilda Baci, had her dreams realised between Thursday May 11 and Monday May 15 2023, as she successfully completed a four-day, 100-hour cooking marathon at the Amore Gardens, Lekki, Lagos, to break the Guinness World Record for the longest cooking marathon by an individual.
Interestingly, her love for cooking was all she needed to get going. Her cooking prowess, she says, is a skill that runs in her family. After spending years with her restaurateur mother, preparing various recipes, Hilda and her brother started a food business called ‘My Food.’ That was during her days as a student of Sociology at the Madonna University, Okija.
From being a manager at Breaking King, a breakfast company, she learned further about the requirements of operating a restaurant. She is the founder of My Food By Hilda Baci, located on Lagos Island.
The multi-talented chef is also an actress and television producer, among other endeavours. In this interview with Saturday Sun, she discusses her journey to fame.
During and after your cooking marathon, several eminent persons, including top politicians, visited you at the venue to show you support. You also got lots of support and congratulatory messages. How did this make you feel?
I knew it was a dream that was viable and it was worth something. But if I tell you when we were having our meetings that the governor was going to come, the president was going to tweet, then I’m joking. It’s an amazing thing that people understood the vision and realised what it took to get to that point. Even I did not realise how big it was going to be but I did know that it was important to make sure that everything was done perfectly well. I had an experience I wanted to create and I did not cut corners in creating that experience. I would say maybe God just knew what my intentions are and just decided to bring it out there way bigger than I imagined. I’m really happy it became what it is now.
Did you plan to do 100 hours ab initio?
No I didn’t plan it. My friend and my brother pretty much convinced me to make it a hundred hours. They said, let’s just round it up with a number. For me, my concern was, do we have enough material to cook for more people? Immediately, I got information that they just restocked. I felt I might as well go for it.
How do you feel now knowing that some brands refused to sponsor the project? And how did you take the rejections?
I knew this was what everybody would be jumping at. I remember having a meeting with a team and when it was getting much closer to the event, the spirit was down just because we weren’t getting the reactions that we hoped we were going to get. I remember telling them that this was not what was important. I said, what is important right now is the attempt and we making sure that it happens and we do it properly. You can’t blame this brand. This is business for them, but it is something different for me. When you are going to a brand that, I’m doing this thing and I think it will be viable to you, they will look at it from a business angle. Maybe they don’t see the vision now, but they will see it later. It’s not that big a deal. Let’s just move with the brands we have and use the resources we have to make this happen. Was I downcast about it? Definitely not. At no point did I feel that oh my God, this is not going to happen because I don’t have one million brands on it. Because when I set out to do this, I was determined that it was going to happen, no matter what. However we were going to make it happen, we were just going to make it happen. I’m so grateful for the brands that did come on board because they definitely queued together to make it a beautiful experience. Let me just use this opportunity to say thank you to every single brand that came on board. I don’t take their support for granted.
I heard that you prepared for five years for this moment. Can we understand the mind-set behind that?
When I said I prepared for this for five years, a lot of people might assume that I started losing weight five years ago. Five years ago, there was no My Food By Hilda. Five years ago, I could not afford to even start this conversation because before you start something like this, at least you need to have a little bit of backing. By then I couldn’t afford to do that but God has already laid it in my heart five years ago and I think he now prepared me, prepared my brand. I didn’t know my executive producer five years ago. God just knew He had to bring certain people on my path to make this possible, to make this happen. That was basically the journey five years ago, building the brand, building the person. I remembered when I did the trial, I said I could not have done this when I was bigger. My motivation to lose weight in Cookathon was absolutely because I knew there’s so much I want to do with my life and I have to be on my feet as much as possible. Based on that, I needed to eliminate the little things that affected me mentally. One of the things that affected me mentally was my weight. I wasn’t happy with how I looked at a time and my mother would always say the quickest way to feel better about something that you don’t like is to do something about it. I went on a weight loss journey. I put a lot more effort into fitness – that is going to the gym, being more consistent and building my form because standing for four days is no small feat. Even with all the exercises and all the working out, it was still incredibly difficult. My feet were double the size, my ankle was swollen and it’s still swollen. My back still hurts. I slept and burnt my hand at some point. Even with all the fitness, it still takes a lot out of me physically. I have lost 4kg in the last three days. Till now, I’m still unable to eat; I’m still unable to sleep properly. I’m tired but my body is refusing to shut down. It still took a lot of me. It’s a journey; it’s like a continuing journey because as the day goes by, I would have to navigate this new phase and eventually just figure out how to adjust my mental state and my physical state and back to life.
What gave you the strength, the inspiration? Even after the 100 hours, where did you get the energy to still talk to the audience when people felt you would just collapse after going the extra mile?
In the beginning, I would say the first day was the hardest day. I almost gave up at least six times. Then as time went on, my family, my friends, my followers and the general public that came, they sort of became part of the dream and the journey. Even when I wanted to give up and I saw how invested people were, it dawned on me that I wasn’t doing this just for myself. At that moment, it was more about the people that were there and I could not have completed those 100 hours without the people. So I could not have said, I have done 100 hours so I am going. I had to thank them. I had to talk to them because it’s important to me that they know how their support, their impact and their presence there online, in line and offline kept me through those hours and helped me get through those very, very difficult times. I would say I truly drew a lot of strength from God.
Honestly speaking, my body did fail me. My body failed me so many times. Every single time that my body failed me, especially the first day, I cried to God and I begged for a miracle. I remembered the second day; we had an entire worship session under the rain. I wasn’t under the rain but the people that came there, my brother, my friends, my followers, people that were there were under the rain, not a care in the world about pneumonia or sickness. They stayed there and they cried with me at least for three hours, just begging God for strength because honestly my body had told me, ‘I’m gone; I’m not doing this with you anymore. If you are going to continue, you are on your own.’ I could not have done this without God. I told you I worked out. So working out got me there, but what kept me there was God. And I honestly drew strength from every single person that was there. People were standing under the sun, under the rain.
At a point, the food I was making wasn’t enough to go around. The small chops we had made provision for, the cocktail, when everything was gone, they were still there. They don’t have to be there; they would have gone home to rest. I heard there was so much traffic. The road was blocked and people were literally going through the fence to come in. It’s not as if they took selfies with me, got merchandise or money. Honestly, I feel it was purely Nigerians seeing a dream that is viable and they just wanted to be a part of it. Honestly, there’s so much negative press about Nigeria. We are such amazing people, just give us a chance. We strive in the most difficult conditions. People were there singing, chanting, wanting to see me get to the end. Nothing beats that feeling that people that don’t know you from Adam, they don’t know your mother or your father, but decided to come and fight for a cause because they believe in you. It was, honestly, so amazing.