End of a Long Month

John, our weekend 'relief' guard has been losing weight. Markedly. Not in a good way. I asked him if he was ok.
'Yes, yes, I'm fine.'
But Tom reminded me its the end of January, - a long month after Christmas and forking out for presents and maybe a trip up-country.
'He's probably not eating very much.'

Even in East African high summer and bright sunshine, away from UK grey skys and biting frosts, January is a hard month for many. That Christmas trip up-country and sodas bought for wayward cousins eating into January's options. Start of the school year, uniform, books and school fees for the kids.

But we give money for food for lunch for the staff, so he should be getting a good lunch at least.
'Oh but I don't get lunch at the weekend, they lock the food in the kitchen.'
'But you mainly work at the weekend. The money is for you too. For you to eat whenever you are here.'

I was furious. I didn't mince my words with Philip, our gardener cum handyman cum cook for the staff, who takes monthly receipt of the cash for the lunches.
'This is not your money. This is money for all the people who work here. Whenever they work.  Not just money to buy food when you are here, so they go hungry at the weekends.  You need to apologise to John. And to find a solution to put it right for him and for the future.'

What gets me so outraged is that they are friends. Chat together. Eat lunch together on a Monday, when John also works.  Philip knows that the guards don't earn well. Earn far less than him, and don't receive the extra benefits he gets from us. Must have seen John getting thinner too, and been quicker on the uptake as to why.  But has pocketed the money for the last three years. Or to put a better gloss on it, has diverted the money to better meals Monday to Friday.  Stealing food from friends who are hungry when you yourself aren't in dire need is for me a heinous crime.

I think Philip thinks we're fools that we use our money to support his kids to go to school. He is happy to pocket the money, to count it out infront of me, to attempt - once only - to bargain me up, when he felt I could contribute some more. That made me see red, and I gave him full measure next day.

'If we were from your village and were helping send your children to school, would you come and say we should give more? I don't think so. This is our charitable contribution not part of your wages. I know that there are many children in the orphanage who would love a chance to go to high school, and who don't have parents in work - or parents at all - to pay for them.   Your children's education is your responsibility not mine, so please don't ever try to bargain up my charitable contribution again, or you run the risk that it goes to children in greater need than yours.'

He didn't get why I got mad, but did - in that global way of some men when faced with an irate woman - shake his head and back off. And its about my hang-ups.  His attitudes and behaviour aren't off the spectrum here, though mine aren't either. It matters to me that people who work for us get a good meal while at work. It matters that we try to share our good fortune on things which matter to us and to them, wages, food, school fees.  Within limits.  I believe it builds community, models what we believe to be important, makes a difference, gives back, supports people who are almost part of our family.  But I hate that Philip takes, fails to thank, and further, grabs what isn't his.  Messes up the whole idealistic thing. Makes me feel shamed and a fool.  It's not a sacking offence, though I wish it were. It could have been a failure to think of the needs of others, though I know it isn't.

And John, when I asked him later how he thought it could be put right, was gracious beyond.
'The money for the meals in the past, is gone. I think we should forget that.  And my money for the future, I think we should put it with the money for the night guards, because they always leave their food where I can get it.'

And the lesson for me from this?  I don't see Philip in the same way anymore. I forgave him nicking the avocados from our tree. Almost. But diverting food from friends?  I won't forgive that.  But without inflating our tiny efforts for people inside our tent here, there are benefit cheats in the UK  too, but people don't let that undermine the welfare state.  And I really wouldn't want to live with myself, with enough food and more in our fridge, if a guard were losing weight at our gate and we were turning an official blind eye.

Other blogs on this theme:
http://www.onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2011/01/blind-ignorance.html

Shamefaced

It's the Christmas holidays. FirstBorn, SecondBorn and I had been to see a film - Johnny English Reborn - at our local mall, and to have a sly pizza afterwards.  And in typical Kenyan fashion, we'd taken a doggy bag of our left over pizza and cooling chips for sometime later.

Leaving the luxury mall at rushhour, we drove at snail's pace past the small children - aged around three, five and eight, - begging for money from the drivers.  SecondBorn gets it, that that's where they live, on the street. But was loth to part with his bit of the pizza, which is a rare and relished treat for us here.

But I passed over our doggy bag, and we all turned to look at the eight year old boy's face. And his little brother, bright shining cheeks, aged around four, racing as fast as his four year old legs could carry him, through the traffic towards the cooling chips. How it made me ashamed.  Children, younger than ours, who don't have enough to eat, in our bit of our town.

Food is domestic when you have it, yet political when its scarce.  Living in a land where there's hunger makes me far more conscious of this.  When we have leftovers from our evening meal we plate them up and pass them on to our guards. But if things get into the fridge, well they can linger there and be discovered a week later, wizened with traces of mould, a blight on our conscience when others around us would have welcomed them, but were too polite to ask. 

It's not simple.  My friends who grew up here handle it better. But we were at a dinner party recently, and I was chatting to an Ethiopian woman in her late twenties.
'I was in the butchers recently and saw the sign for 'staff meat'.  How awful.' she exclaimed. 'We'd never do that in my country.'
Staff meat is the really ropy old meat, which is sold to the middle classes who don't choose to feed their staff the same as they eat.  We give a food allowance so our staff can choose what they buy themselves. But intentionally buying for others worse than you'd buy for yourselves. Well that, to my mind, - and to that of my Ethiopian friend - is dire.
'In Ethiopia' she said, 'we lived rich and poor next to each other. We played together on the street. And the poorer family next door would come and eat with us each evening.  Eat the same food.'

But its what I close my mind to much of the time here. That most children here are less well fed than mine. That by prioritising how and when I give to others, I am part of the posse who buy good stuff for my nearest and dearest, and tolerate a regime of chance scraps from my table - staff meat - for the rest.


Other posts like this one:
http://onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2011/09/poverty-prison-visiting.html

http://onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2011/06/please-look-after-this-bear-thank-you.html

In praise of Tesco's Finest

It's not that I'm a Little Wales-er. I've lived abroad before, - 4 years in Brussels, 2 years in Germany, 8 months in Madagascar, 6 months in France, 4 months in Italy.  I eat adventurously. I don't stick solely to the known bits of the menu, or only to the caffs which have menus. I partake too from mysterious pots bubbling by the side of the road.  And yes, food in Kenya is for many about naked survival with fuller bellies. Sukuma wiki - the Swahili name for spinach - literally means 'push you through the week' - the food to be eaten from the side of the road when there's nothing else.   But I'm realising too, in my first extended stay abroad as a Mum, that food is about culture. Its about shared memories. Its about recipes and tastes handed down from parent to child, and about family solutions for different situations. 'You know Mum, the hazelnut meringue that Nain brings to shared lunches at Quaker meeting.' 'Those tortillas we used to have when friends came to tea, and you each choose what you want to put in and then wrap them up yourselves.' Chilli con carne after bonfires and fireworks.

And so this is a blog about times past, and in praise of the on-tap regimented consistency and variety of Tescos, Tesco's Finest, and for a special push-the-boat-out Sunday afternoon treat, Waitrose.  Less Proust's madeleine, than the chicken tikka masala from Taste of India in Hatfield. Delivered to your doorstep at 8pm on a Friday night by the same doleful deliveryman.  To the glory of the humble fish finger, (just stick it in the oven on a baking tray), Sunday afternoon treacle tarts with evaporated milk, oozing golden syrup in just the right consistency, corner shops open till late, hummus, pita bread and those refined ingredients recommended by Nigel & Nigella for which creative substitutes are needed in the Kenyan context. Thai lemon grass. Semolina. Gelatine. Marscapone. Dry sherry. Jelly.

Transition to life in a new country is always about The Unexpected. Unanticipated sights, world views, encounters and dilemmas.  When I worked in a German hospital with Protestant deaconesses I was roundly told off for washing my underwear by hand on a Sunday, breaking the Sabbath. In Belgium letters may only be sent in one consistent size of envelope. Truculent muttering & hasty repackaging at the post office. In Madagascar, where the ancestors are revered as co-decisionmakers in our lives and the source of all good things, I was berated for placing my trust (and finances) in a pension scheme rather than hosting a party for the dead ancestors to ensure they bestowed good fortune on me and mine.  And one year into life in Kenya, the unexpected is encountered predominantly at mealtimes, a trojan horse dish which LOOKS as anticipated, but tastes very different.

As with many situations in Kenya, we first stumbled into employing a part-time cook to generate employment for someone who needed it. And in this land without convenience foods, I did initially relish a new one night on, one night off arrangement. But cooking, you start to realise, is a complex task, and CookOne had not had much formal education. Cooking requires forward planning (Have you GOT all the ingredients before Catrin leaves for the school run? Last minute phonecalls demanding ingredients from three different shops, each miles from the other, are not welcome.) It draws on basic maths (ability to double recipe quantities. And then to double all recipe quanitities).  And builds on ability to forecast (if D is not home till 630, and this recipe takes 30 minutes in the oven, I shouldn't PUT it in the oven till 6pm). And yes, I work in training, and in developping critical thinking, and isn't capacity building all about what living in developping countries is about? But eventually, after much agonising, enough was enough and I sacked her. Family mealtimes reverted to my predictable & age-old Monday spaghetti bolognaise, Tuesday risotto model.

If you can't beat them, join them, I thought, and put effort into mastery of my favourites from the Tesco Finest range. Chicken and mushroom pie. Treacle tart. Steak and kidney pie.  Certainly not bad, tasty even. But lacking in the flowing ease of the original as I snarled at any family member unable to finish their portion of the steak and kidney (sourced in two shops, toiled over for four hours of patchy electricity), dispensing stress-related indigestion with liberal hand. 

Months later, disgruntled at spending two hours daily on a split time school run from the same school, I launched into recruitment of CookTwo with vim and vigour.  I tested on doubling and tripling ingredients at interview.  I probed on typical meals and ability to follow recipes. And we netted a paragon of virtue, B, cookshare with another family, cooker of pancake healthy snacks for ravening after school children, and willing babysitter so ChildTwo doesn't have to do the second school run of the day. Hurrah.

And B is a good cook. But it isn't easy cooking for a family of another culture. First we had far, far too much cooked each day, until D explained that many Kenyan families rarely have food left in the larder at the end of the day. If its there, you eat it, as who knows what tomorrow holds.  And then there isn't a culture of using leftovers. If its there, you've eaten it. And then meals were peppered to within an inch of their life. 'Add salt and pepper to taste'.  But not to Kenyan taste. Cultural difference number 472: you eat less of a peppery meal than a non peppered one. Use of pepper, now banned in our kitchen.

Amidst the vast majority of very acceptable meals there are the unanticipated complete clangers. Like the gap year student in a foreign clime, the unimaginable gaff which host families titter about for years to come. The fruit salad resplendent with a new red fruit. 'It looks like red pepper, I wonder what it is,' said D. 'It IS red pepper,' said K's friend, worldly-wise and better versed in the ways of Kenyan cooks.  Yesterday's pork and apple stew. Pungent aroma. Not a pleasant one. As we backtracked we realised that B, teetotal, had mistaken the 10 fluid oz of cider in the recipe for a generous cupful of cider vinegar (used to deworm our chickens if added to drinking water.) Oh dear.  Bananas all round then?

But best of the bunch, my American friend, K, was hankering for aioli, the garlic dip, after too long away from home. She showed her cook the recipe with pictures - any questions?  No, no, I've made this before, he said. Fantastic. Mouthwatering, she returned later, to some beautifully chopped crudites around a ceremonial dish of piping hot mashed potato. No need to read the recipe if you know what you're cooking.

Bon appetit!