Cooking in Kigali

Sadly, I didn’t take pictures during this time, but this is a picture of another time I briefly cooked at someone’s house. This will give you an idea of the open fires and pots for cooking.

Friday, March 04, 2011

At the end of January, Blake invited all of our District Superintends on the mainland of our field to participate in a technology meeting for the computer labs. It has been 1 year since we have been in Rwanda, and he wanted to have a discussion about the computer labs, how they are working, what are some of the biggest challenges, how else can the computer labs be utilized, a sort of evaluation system of the technology on the field. Blake had informed all of the leaders, that if they can pay for their transport to and from Kigali, Blake and I would provide them with food and housing during the meeting.

That idea seemed like a great idea to Blake, but…to me, I said, who will provide the food? His answer, well you of course! Deep breath in…ok, I handle this. In fact there is no reason I shouldn’t learn to cook for 20 people, right? After discussing the possible number of people that would be in Kigali, and discussing my repertoire of (or lack thereof) foods I know how to make, for large numbers of people, as well as the finances for feeding that many people, we decided I should stick with traditional African foods. Traditional African foods that I do not know how to make that is! Problem solved, we will call Bernadette.

Bernadette, is a widow that we have met and gotten close to in the last year. She is one of the first nine Nazarene’s to join the Church of the Nazarene in Rwanda. She was glad to come and help. Now, first problem solved, I have someone to help me cook, that knows how to cook on African stoves (open flames, outside)! Next problem, I do not have African stoves, or pots to cook in! After talking to Bernadette (through translation – since her English is small and my Kinyarwanda is small) – can you see where this experience is heading, we have the menu prepared, we have the pots borrowed, stoves purchased, and the food purchased!

This is a side note to the rest of the cooking story, but we purchased a 25 kilo (or 55 pound) bag of rice and a 50 kilo (or 110 pound) bag of potatoes to start! Now back to the story, food is purchased, and we are now ready to prepare food. The meeting was scheduled to begin on Saturday morning at 8am, so we asked people to please show up on Friday night, which would become the first, of what ended up being a total of 10 days of cooking. Now for the sake of not becoming too wordy in my blog, I am going to just share certain experiences along the way:

1. Thursday night, was the night to begin cooking our 5 kilos (or 11 pounds) of beans. Bernadette, showed me how to look for rotten beans, and pull out bean shells, that were not supposed to be there. This was my first time trying to light my new stove (but must admit it wasn’t a disaster)! After about 6 hours of cooking beans, I was thinking it was time to go to bed (about 11pm), and was told the beans would be done at 11:30pm, I went inside to change and start getting ready for bed, thinking that when I came back out someone would show me what to do with the beans, to then put them in my refrigerator. Instead, no one was around (my guards family and Bernadette had all disappeared to bed)! Now what am I supposed to do? I ended up bringing my GIGANTIC pot of cooked beans in the house, into the refrigerator. To this day, I still have no idea if the beans were actually ready, but we ended up cooking them in smaller batches with sauces before actually serving them, so I guess it all turned out ok!
2. On Friday, we began peeling our 50 kilos of potatoes (of course not all at one time), and first thing that Bernadette noticed was that I was using a potato peeler, instead of course the common knife! She asked why I use that instead of a knife, my response, it’s a potato peeler! Although, I was using the “luxurious” kitchen items; my precious potato peeler, garlic press and can opener, everything that I did Bernadette did about twice or three times faster. You know the song, “everything you can do I can do better?” I was quietly singing to myself, all while laughing about the experiences!
3. Ok, now time to cook rice. Bernadette sent me inside to get 3 kilos of rice for our first meal. Inside I got to thinking about it and said, I have no idea how much rice is 3 kilos, nor how heavy 3 kilos felt, so instead I just filled a large bowl with rice, and took it to her. She dumped the rice into our large pot of boiling water. About halfway through, she asked me how many kilos I brought her! My response, I really don’t know I just brought you some. In the end, our rice started boiling outside of the pot and we had to transfer rice into 2 other pots! Yes, your math is correct; we ended up with 3 LARGE pots of rice!
4. After a few days in, I was given the task of cutting the cabbage into small pieces, like the size of shredded cheese, and after I had gotten maybe ¼ of the way through (maybe a little less), she realized that I was not cutting the cabbage small enough, and had to re-show me how to cut the cabbage! What happened to the large pieces of cabbage, well they didn’t make it into the salad! She said we couldn’t feed the large cabbage, because it was too large! Of course my reaction was, but it will still taste the same. Nope, apparently not, she said we couldn’t use it!
5. Just too briefly talk about how we communicated, Bernadette would ask me for something, and I would just bring a bunch of things outside to her, until I finally got it right! She and I kept laughing the whole time; it was quite a funny experience. After 10 days, I finally knew exactly what she wanted, the first time she asked!

The day that I found out I was going to be cooking for up to 20 people, I was worried as to how the experience would turn out. I was terrified, I wouldn’t enjoy the time, and I was afraid I would get very run down and really tired. I woke up every day at about 5:30am to start on breakfast, and every day I had rested well the night before and felt very refreshed. My time spent with Bernadette was very rewarding, and I have gotten much closer to her in that short time. During part of the time, my guard and his family (wife, 2 daughters, and 1 son), helped us prepare some food. At the end of the 10 days, I told Blake, that I was sad that it had taken me a full year to build the kind of lasting relationship I built with both Bernadette and my guard and his family, during this time. It was such an experience, and it is an experience, I would gladly repeat! Anyone want to come for a visit? I can cook for up to 20 visitors at one time; feel free to pop in anytime!

P.S. We used all of the 110 pounds of potatoes, but I still have probably 45 pounds of rice, so if you have any recipes calling for rice, let me know!