The Cookbook Writer: Rhoda Omosunlola Johnston-Smith (nee. Williams)
In an interview, Rhoda Johnston-Smith said, “I believe that by putting things down, you don’t forget.” With the many books she authored—over thirty, and her contribution to women’s education, as well as her impassioned promotion of Yoruba culture and traditions in Nigeria, Rhoda Johnston-Smith, who died at the age of 92 in 2017, will never be forgotten.
Mrs. Johnston-Smith was born in Lagos, Nigeria, but she moved around a lot in her lifetime. She was the only female member of her class at the Lagos Baptist Academy and the first female Nigerian student to pass the Cambridge Certificate exam which earned her a scholarship to Gloucestershire Training College in the United Kingdom, where she was the only black student. It was here she studied Domestic Science. After her return to Nigeria, Rhoda was assigned to various regions around the country on short-term work assignments where she was a facilitator of women’s education. Her other roles included: overseer of women’s education in Warri, Sapele, Benin & Asaba, women’s education officer in Ibadan, first principal of Government Teachers' Occupational Training College in Abeokuta (1958), Deputy Chief Inspector of Education at the Ministry of Education in Lagos (1967). She chronicles her career in her book, Never a Dull Moment.
Rhoda Johnston-Smith’s work spans a range of topics. Some of her earlier books are college-level texts for students of Domestic Science. Miss Williams’ Cookery Book, published by Longman Nigeria in 1957, might be the first comprehensive Nigerian cookery books and it explored staple foods, diets and contained recipes from all over the country, including adapted recipes of foreign meals. In her time in Abeokuta, she became even more enamored by, and steeped in, Yoruba culture and so she wrote books about these. Iyabo of Nigeria (1973) is the first in a fiction series about a Yoruba girl. Ise Awon Iya Ati Baba Nla (1982), a children’s picture book that focuses on some indigenous occupations of the Yoruba forefathers, won Johnston-Smith’s publishers, Longman, the NOMA Award for Children’s Literature in 1983. She also wrote books on home management; she wrote short stories, hymns and songs. Her later books were autobiographical reflections on her life.
Rhoda Johnston-Smith’s exaltation of the Yoruba culture and traditions was a well-known aspect to her figure alongside her role of educator and prolific writer. She advocated for the inclusion of traditional culture in schools’ curricula. A confessed enjoyer of music, she collaborated with Mrs. Folake Ademiluyi, an educationist, in 2014 to document Yoruba folksongs and Ewi in an audio collection titled Odu Orin, for the younger generation to have access to this heritage. As a representative of Nigeria, she spent a year at the New York State Department of Education in Albany as a curriculum consultant. It was important to her that in her presentations of Nigerians’ diet, dressing, education and customs, she challenged whatever negative impressions there were about Africa.
“Mine is a life of cheer,” Rhoda Johnston-Smith said in another interview in her later years, and this is how she will be remembered: animated about writing, advocacy and culture.
