Saturday, September 25, 2010

Kitchens

Last week, I also attended an agricultural field. Admittedly, I did little actual work since my agricultural knowledge is quite limited, but I did get the chance to talk to the villagers. We talked of many things, including cabbages and kings, but I want to focus on one particular moment. At first, the villagers told me to sit down. However, I've never been very good at sitting around watching people work around me.

So, like any good prairie girl, I found my way into the kitchen hoping to be helpful. But this kitchen looked very little like a Canadian kitchen, meaning I was basically no help at all. The kitchen was in a round, mud-brick hut with a thatched roof. The women were cooking over an open fire with massive pots. The mudbrick hut design seemed a little flawed to me because it had no chimney so the smoke could only go out some tiny windows, making it understandably quite smokey. The first portion of my help consisted of cutting one onion before having it taken away. At this point, I also witnessed freshly slaughtered chickens being plucked. I have to admit that I've never been quite that close to my food.

In fact, I'd carried one of those chickens to the car myself. I tried not to think of animal rights as I put the chicken in the trunk of the car. It actually gets worse. Not only were the chickens in the trunk, but we (yes, I need to implicate myself) put a bunch of bread on top of them. I wish I could say I heard hurt chicken noises from the trunk, but they seemed to come through the ordeal just fine. All the chickens here are free range so I guess I should not worry if their last hours of life were couped up in a trunk since they'd spent the rest of their lives roaming the streets of Bungoma.

The second time I came into the cooking hut, one of the women told me, "We're hard working. We should be paid." To which, I replied, "You should. I'll tell Iddi." Iddi was one of the community members running the show. Of course, all the women laughed.
The highlight of my kitchen experience was shoveling chicken into a pot with frying onions. I took a big metal paddle to move chicken bits from one large pot into another. Of course, this was done in a crouched position since the fire is in the ground. A lot of cooking here occurs bent over your pot whether you live in the city or country. My own gas burner is on the ground. Jikos, which are little charcoal burning stoves, also sit on the ground. People usually use jikos to cook anything requiring a lot of time, such as beans.

Strangely, shoveling chicken was not in itself the amusing part of the experience, but one of the village women's picture taking skills. I gave my camera to a villager to document my village cooking experience, but she didn't know to hold a camera. She kept turning it backwards with the lenses pointing at herself. With a little teaching though, she got the hang of it. As always happens when I bring out the camera, everyone then wants a picture. Often they want to have their picture taken with me. So I now have action shots of me cooking chicken and several with random village ladies.

Even though I learned a lot about agricultural and our programs, those ladies laughing with me while cooking are what I will remember. Kitchens are often my favourite part of the house so it's no surprise this village kitchen turned out to be my favourite part of the village. And whether the kitchen has an electric fridge and stove or just an open fire, there will always be women sharing laughter and stories. Oh and talking about their men, of course.

No comments: