Recently, my brilliant Managing Editor, Ms Maggie Bale, for our Botswana PCV Newsletter came up with the idea to do a Readers Write. If you don’t know what that is (which I am ashamed to say as a proud English Literature Degree-holder, I didn’t) look it up immediately!
This is my submission for our first Readers Write, last month. The topic was “Homestay”.
“Umm, I guess you can’t make hard boiled eggs by putting them in the microwave…”
Apparently that was obvious to everyone except my fearless cooking buddy, Kutlwano, and me. I had only been in Kanye for 2 weeks and I was already head chef at the Sentle house. Some volunteers in my group complained about having to cook food that had so much oil and mayo in it; they craved the healthier meals they used to make back home. I was happy to put as much oil and mayo as my family wanted in our meals, my problem had more to do with the fact that I couldn’t cook. You know those people who say they’re really bad at something even though they’re awesome at it? You know, that obnoxious person who says “Yeah, I’m really bad at volleyball.” But then when you start playing each other, she unveils the uncanny ability to spike it in your face each time she touches the ball.
Yeah, I’m not one of those people.
If I’m bad at something, I say it straight away. So when my host family told me they wanted me to be head chef, I tried to explain to them how my mom actually wanted to submit my name for the reality show “Worst Cooks in America.” That was until she saw that for their first challenge they had to make their best dish and she realized mine would be store bought Mac ‘N Cheese or putting together a sandwich. Maybe it was the language barrier, or maybe they just didn’t believe a grown adult couldn’t cook, but they still elected me head chef.
Luckily, my 10-year-old host brother, Kutlwano, loved cooking. The unfortunate part was that he also had no idea how to do it. Our first attempts at any type of salad were disastrous. I can barely handle a peeler, and I was expected to peel carrots with just a knife. Instead of shredded cabbage and carrots, it was chunks of cabbage and carrots. Kutlwano tried to teach me how to debone a chicken, which almost led to both of us having fewer fingers. I tried to teach him some good ol’ American recipes, like marinara sauce. However, I forgot the important ingredient of tomato paste, so it was a bit watery. Luckily, Kutlwano knew that if something is too watery, you put flour in it. Half a bag of flour later, we had some very thick reddish paste. Let’s just say our household was lucky they kept fish fingers stocked in the fridge, or else that night we would have just eaten noodles with butter.
Then came the day when Kutlwano wanted to try egg salad. He saw it on a cooking show on SABC and was convinced we could make it. Unfortunately, all we had were eggs, onions, and mayo, but I figured it would still be delicious. We stood in the kitchen, staring at the eggs when it occurred to us that neither of us knew how to boil an egg. Using my quick brainpower, I remembered how you can make all kinds of things in the microwave, like brownies! So I figured we could just put the eggs into the microwave and then we wouldn’t have to worry about silly things like hot water and timers. We were pretty stoked by this idea, as we were pretty sure we were making food history. In hindsight, I should have known that if a 10-year-old thinks it’s an awesome idea, I should probably check for flaws.
It only took 10 seconds for the eggs to explode.
The sad part is…we still attempted the egg salad. After scraping the cooked bits of egg off the microwave, and adding in the mayo and onions, it looked more like mayo porridge. That night we had fish sticks.
I’d like to say that over the couple of months I spent as head chef, I became the brilliant cook I am today, as in a person who can follow a recipe successfully. Sadly, that isn’t true. While Kutlwano and I kept trying, we eventually gave in to the fact that our specialty was fish sticks, noodles, and chunks of vegetables. So after a month, we stuck with what we were good at. Partially because we were sick of having to spend more time cleaning the kitchen after an experiment than it took to actually cook.
I learned countless lessons during homestay: how to bathe and wash my clothes and dishes without running water, how to kill gigantic bugs, a bit of Setswana, and my love of Korean soap operas (once again Kutlwano’s doing), but there’s one lesson I’ve kept near and dear for those days when cooking disasters strike:
Always keep your freezer stocked with fish sticks, just in case.
Ke ole: My Life In Botswana 