Fire – check. Pot – check. Semi-rotten meat – check. Wood hatchet – check. Let the Cooking class begin!

For several months now, I have been spending most of my Wednesday evenings with my friend Isatu, learning how to cook like a Yalunka woman.  It has been an incredible learning experience.  She loves it, because she gets to be the teacher.  The village loves it because they get to see me make a fool out of myself and it pleases them immensely that I am learning more about their lives.  

I love it for several reasons:

1.        It gives me a MUCH better appreciation for what women here in this culture go through.

2.       It allows me to help a struggling family with food – when I go and cook, I usually take most of the ingredient with me.  I say it is so I can learn, but mostly it is to help relieve some of the burden on them without hurting their pride.

3.       It puts me in a learner role in the eyes of the village- who seem to feel (very falsely) that I know everything – especially about medical things.

4.       I get such an interesting picture of real life when I sit for hours in Isatu’s back yard and listen to people talk, laugh, argue, discuss, etc.

So last week, Isatu showed up on my porch early in the morning with a bag of meat.  Someone had brought it the night before to offer to her to buy. However, she didn’t have any money (though she desperately wanted the meat), and didn’t want to come and offer it to me that late at night, so she came the next day.  By the time she reached me, the meat smelled quite ripe.  She explained the situation and I said, “Hey, I haven’t learned how to cook meat yet.  Why don’t I buy it and I will bring it tonight and you can teach me?”  I was rewarded with a big smile and I suspect that was the plan all along.  I took it, wrapped it in more plastic bags, and threw it in the freezer – to at least prevent any further decay.

The evening, I took off with my supplies and my meat swinging in a bag beside me.  I was really hoping not to meet up with any dogs, because I knew they would smell me coming.  Isatu was there when I arrived, sweeping the dirt in the cooking area.  As strange as it sounds, it really does look better when people sweep the dirt – probably a little like raking leaves.  She had already chopped up the firewood that we would use.

She needed water still so I went to the well and balanced precariously over the opening with a fraying, rough rope and lowered the 5 gallon water jug down into it.  

 The rope is not attached to anything at the top and it always scares me that I am going to drop it down into the deep well and then someone is going to have to try to fish it out.  I try to stand on the end so that doesn’t happen, but standing on the end of a rope, balancing so you don’t fall in, watching the jug fill with water and hauling it back out without falling is a lot to do at one time, even for someone like me who is fairly good at multitasking.  Alas, success!  I filled up the buckets and we started.

We needed to divide the meat because I wanted to share some with my other friend who works for me.  But first we needed to wash it.  I pulled it out of the bag – trying not to get nauseous.   Actually, though the smell was so strong, the meat good pretty good – not green or anything.  I washed it off in some water and then I held it while she cut off some chunks for me to send over to Kanko’s house.  At first, it looked like quite a bit of meat – but there was a big chunk of bone in there.  (Thankfully, there was no stomach or other nasty stuff.)   

There was quite a bit of meat between the bones, and she was not about to waste it.  The knife we had was too small, so she looked around.  Finally she got up, went over and brushed off a big slab of wood that sits in the yard, grabbed the hatchet that she uses to chop up firewood (she wiped that off with a cloth), threw the meat down on the slab and started chopping.  She was done in no time and we continued.

We got oil heating in the pot that was sitting on the blazing fire we had started by stealing coals from someone else’s fire.  All of the kids were gathered around in anticipation of getting meat.  (It is a real treat in the village to get anything other than dried, pounded fish.)  While the oil was heating, I chopped up onions and put those, along with some salt and tomato paste, in with the meat.  By this time, after washing the meat and putting in the seasonings, it was looking pretty good.  The oil was hot, so I dropped the meat in and stirred it up.

We moved on to the rice.  Because rice is hand harvested and dried, it usually has lots of stones in it.  To get rid of the stones, you have to use 2 dried out gourds.  You put the rice and water in one of the calabashes (the dried out gourd) and swirl it “just so”, little by little spinning it into the other calabash.  You do this over and over and at the end, the gourd has trapped the stones (in theory) and you throw them out.  You have to repeat the process several times to get most of the stones.  Many a person had cracked a tooth eating rice.   

This is a process that I have finally mastered and actually enjoy doing.  (Mind you, I would hate to do it on a daily basis – but once a week, at someone else’s house, it is a challenge to see how many stones I can get.)

I got the rice cleaned and put into a pot.  Then we moved on to the sauce.  I put a big slab of peanut butter into hot water and used a special stick that looks like an arrow on the end to mix it in.  You have to put it between your two hands and twirl it back and forth.  It works great!  

 I added some bouillon and pepper and got it boiling.  By this time, the meat had been cooking for nearly an hour, so we took it and put it into the sauce.  I washed up some of the dishes we had used and sat down by the fire to tend my food.  Isatu was in and out.  She loves to go off and do things while I am cooking.  I told her I thought it was a bad idea – not wanting to screw up her food, but she says she isn’t worried.  I visited with the other ladies and kids that wandered in to see what I was up to.

Finally it was all done.  It was dark by this time and I was quite anxious to get home to my family.  But there was still work to do.  She brought me all of the different plates and I divided out the rice and sauce, putting meat in her container, and also her husband’s plate.  (Families don’t usually eat together – dads usually eat separately from the wife and kids).  When we got to the big bowl that feeds all the little kids, I noticed that she only put sauce on it and left the meat in the pot.  I asked why. She explained that, because there wasn’t a whole lot of meat, it was better to let the kids fill up in rice first and then she would divvy out the meat – that way there was less fighting over who got what.  That sounded about right to me.

She also followed her tradition of setting aside some for me to take home for Jim.  I hate it when she does that, knowing how many mouths they have to see.  I usually just take a little.  She insisted on putting some meat in there too.  Now, the meat had been cooking for a very long time in very hot oil, but I was still a little nervous to have him eat it.  On top of that, we get meat WAY more often than they do.  So, when she went inside the house, I tried to sneak it into the bowl where the kids were eating.  Two of them grabbed it at the same time and started fighting.  So much for being inconspicuous!   

 She came out of the house and asked what they were fighting about.  I told her I had given them a little meat – not mentioning where it came from.  She walked me home –balancing the little pot of rice and sauce for Jim on her head.  I had called him on the little radio I had to let him know we were coming, so he came out and ate some, declaring it very good.  She raved on and on about what a good cook I was and how much I had learned.  And then she walked home.

I love my cooking lessons with Isatu.  While I am fairly certain that I will not learn much that will help me in my cooking at home, I learn a host of other things.  I learn to be thankful for the conveniences that I have in my kitchen – like running water, instant fire, ovens, food that I need.  I learn how hard the women work here. I learn to be thankful that we have food to eat and never go hungry.  And I learn about being part of a community.  So the cost of my weekly cooking class is some bouillon cubes, onions, peanut butter, pepper, and sometime rotten meat.  But the pay-off – PRICELESS.