Chili

Cuisine is so often a topic of conversation these days, stimulated largely by cooking-related television programmes – on and on they go, bla, bla, bla. Maybe that’s why I have often been asked what my favourite Tanzanian dish was. I find it difficult to give a straight answer, for example, high up on the rain shadow side of Mt. Meru, a woman fried an egg for me, and she flipped it over so it was moderately hard. That egg, that day, certainly hit the spot for me! But there are several dishes that for reasons of frugality, are reserved for special occasions and for western people, cooked green bananas might seem strange. Stews which comprise bananas much like dumplings, are among my favourites.  The staple, especially in rural areas, ugali is simply maize flour with a little salt added, mixed slowly into boiling water to make a stiff porridge. Bland of taste perhaps, and good or bad, depending who cooks it, Tanzanians living here in New Zealand yearn to have some good ugali with mchicha a bitter spinach.  

For a Sunday lunch Vai taught me to cook red kidney beans and rice. Her late mother had showed me that rice is never just plain rice. Like a good wine, good rice is grown in good soils and the best locally for us was from Magugu. Many times I accompanied Mama into the rice market, and although it was labelled Magugu, she still felt it and smelled it in case it was stale. The downside was there were stone chips in Magugu rice, so someone needed to pick through it – a job for the girls.

We didn’t use those new-fangled rice cookers, I preferred a double boiler. Oil and salt added to the boiling water first and when the rice was nearly ready, I tipped it into the top pot of the double boiler to finish it off with steam. We soaked the dry, red kidney beans the night before – there are toxins in the colour that can cause stomach ulcers so we removed those by draining off the red water and rinsing. Canned red kidney beans are ok too if there are no dry ones. Anyway, first brown an onion in the pot. Because the beans have been soaked, they will cook fairly quickly. Into the pot of browed onions the beans go with enough clean water to cover them. Add a small can of tomato paste concentrate. The paste is strong and tart. Once the beans are soft, they are piled atop a bed of rice. Simple.

Sometimes I added a little chili powder. Not much, just enough to give it a bite, even so, I found it took away the subtle flavour of the rice. As a matter of fact, I never had to buy chili powder. Locals used fresh chilies all the time and plenty were available in the markets but at the end of the road was a farm that produced vegetable seed. They grew a lot of chillies of various breeds and dried them for seed extraction. When I asked, they allowed me to take the residue free of charge because by adding a mixture of the powder, a little cooking oil and liquid soap to a bucket of water it was effective as a control for the termites that attack tree seedlings. The plant takes up the hot stuff and termites don’t like it. I used to take the mixture out to rural schools to protect their tree plantings. Never breathe in the dust though! It clears the sinuses and tubes in your head a little too well! Anyway, from time to time I used the dust-cum-powder in my cooking.

But y’know, I have noticed there is this thing about chili and its use in traditional foods outside their country of origin. There’s a sort of bravado and puffing-of-chest attitude where folk will say they can eat the really hot stuff without any effect! Ok some school girls who passed the fence surrounding my nursery, used to pick stinging nettle to test who could put up with the nettle on their upper lip for the longest time. Sure they could withstand it, but that didn’t mean they enjoyed it! The bravado with chili and other hot spices seems to me to be a bit similar. Your senses become numbed by the chili, so my question is, can they actually taste the food? Does the heat spoil the enjoyment of the actual food? I know for some it does, on the other hand, some get a perverse joy from pain – akin to self-flagellation. If you have to use yoghurt or juices to mitigate the heat, isn’t there something wrong with the food?

Before we had a refrigerator, my mother used to rub pepper into any meat that was not fresh to mask the taste of sour, perhaps even green meat! Cooks did the same thing on sailing ships, she told me one day as I watched her rubbing the stuff in. I find if I roast or fry meat in some nice clean fat or oil, the cooked meat is succulent and tastes like the meat-type it is. But if you add those strong spices or chili, I for one can’t actually taste the meat! And yes, yes, I’ve heard that leaving the bone on meat is supposed to make the meat sweeter, but in my experience, that too is pie in the sky!

  

Similar to what my mum did, traditionally, where these spices were used, there were no refrigerators, so meat had a very short fresh-life. Ancient peoples found that those hot spices contain compounds that help to mitigate the pathogens that meat will quickly pick up in the hot and sometimes humid climates - especially if the meat is dead hen or dead pig! So of course the hot spices protected the health of the consumer.

So there we are, just one of those little conundrums that from time to time sparks those cogs between my ears into action.

The Witch of Valley Road

There were several rubbish tips worth scavenging around where Henry and the James boys lived and much to their mothers’ chagrin they brought all manner of items home that they thought might be useful. Not much ever was, but they did find bicycle parts that could be reused so the four managed to keep their rickety, hand-me-down machines going. They were therefore mobile, although they couldn’t venture too far without one or other breaking down, making teamwork necessary for the homeward journey.

The Heathcote River was a good place to check out and under the Fairview Street Bridge they caught cockabullies and fished for ‘crawlies’ with a safety pins and bread. Seldom did they manage to bring one above the surface and never did they land one! They knew they were actually fresh water crayfish, which nowadays is a delicacy. Sadly, no longer do crawlies survive in the now turgid water. But had they realized they were edible…

The rubble from the remains of Ballantyne’s department store, which burnt down late 1947 was dumped across the river, the site where they were going to build the new Princess Margaret Hospital. The area became their playground too. Y’know they say the hospital is past its use-by date and they intend to pull it down? At first they hoped to find body parts of the ‘missing’ amongst the rubble but when they found nothing, they built their own version of a cycle course. It proved a challenge; the other challenge was avoiding old Mr. Anderson who had taken on the role of ‘guardian of the relics and chief booter-offer’! 

Hackthorn Road, which climbs up the Cashmere Hills was also a part of their territory. They climbed the hill, pushing their bikes until they were puffed and then they free-wheeled down like the wind, at breakneck speed! Indeed they were lucky not to break their necks! There were tram tracks in the middle of the road, and it was easy for a wheel to become wedged, which would tip them off, resulting in grazed knees and elbows, not to mention the ripped clothing! None of them had brakes, except Henry who had a back-pedal brake – although it never actually worked, nevertheless he was proud of it! Mr. James, finally put a stop to the nonsense when he spotted them one day careering down the hill! He undid his belt making them scatter!

The boys knew where all the fruit trees were and they paid regular visits to them. There was a choice plumb tree in the property that is now Cashmere High School. The boys were expert climbers and it seemed nobody owned the tree so they were just ‘harvesting’, not raiding. Along Valley Road they found a cherry plumb tree in the grounds of the tennis courts. This tree produced the earliest fruit in the season, they considered it risky because they thought the tennis players might catch them. They were cautious. Once Jessie fell out of the tree and the racket he made caused the rest to make a run for it, but disappointing when they looked around, none the tennis players had taken the slightest notice!

A little further up Valley Road was a narrow, bush-line track the boys knew as ‘the wiggly-woggly track’, so named because of the way it wound its way up to Dyers Pass Road. The track was steep and the boys liked to push their bikes up as far as their wind and leg muscles would allow, and then they tried to negotiate the bends while racing down. They never fully mastered it and the occasional pedestrian was forced to take sanctuary in the bushes!

From their vantage point high on the track, among the trees below, they could see an old weatherboard house that looked to be deserted, in particular there was an apricot tree with golden fruit! Tony was the smallest of the four so Wayne, the oldest among them, pushed him onto the green and untended lawn. He was ordered to check if the house was indeed deserted. He quickly returned to say that the room he looked into had books along one wall and paintings on the other. They discussed the possibility of crossing the lawn, when Henry spotted a dark shape, possibly a person with white hair, pass another window! The boys retreated.

On their way back down Valley Road, they met Violet, the girl Henry had to sit next to in class! He didn’t much like the smell of her, but actually it wasn’t so bad sitting next to her because she could talk about tadpoles and frogs. In reply to his question about the house, he received a warning. A mysterious, grey-haired witch lives there! She seemed to come and go but nobody ever sees her. The kids on the street are all scared of her because Stuart, the curly headed boy, was walking past the house just on dusk one day when she appeared like magic, out of the bushes! He took fright and ran home but the next day he was taken to hospital with an asthma attack and has never completely recovered!

The brave boys planned to go back. Well they had never seen a proper witch! Young Tony abstained, so only the three went the next afternoon. It was a dismal, foggy day and the long grass was damp but it would muffle any sound of a footfall. It was Henry who was pushed forward this time and what Tony had said was correct. The first room was a library of sorts, but gloomy. He looked into another timber lined room with a fireplace, above the fireplace was a painting of a woman in dark clothing and to the right of the fireplace there was a rack with plates on it. He heard a noise and peeped around the corner of the house.

There was a tall, grey-haired woman standing in the doorway holding a broom, a birch broom! She wasn’t dressed in black as Henry would have assumed, he only noticed her light blue twinset top. She wore several strings of pearls and her hair was not quite white, as in the image they had of her, but grey and rather wavy. No pointy hat. For Henry those things were a fuzzy periphery, he focused on her face, which was serious, with no warts or scars, squarish and her eyes were brown. He would never forget that face! Their eyes locked for a second, or was that half an eternity? Anyway Henry ran! Apricots or not, they never went back!

Nine years later, Queens Birthday 1966, Henry was home for the long weekend and opened The Press to see if he was included in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list. Not this year again, maybe next year. His eyes settled on the photo of a brand new Dame! Dame Ngaio Marsh, the famous crime writer. She had received the honour for her contribution to theatre in New Zealand. He recognised the face, how could he ever forget it? It was none other than the Witch of Valley Road!

Diary Snippets

Out of the blue, from time to time I heard stories that seemed on the incredible side, too good to be true or loaded with fiction, but I tried to write in my diary what I was told or what I saw as accurately as possible. Sometimes I still reflect on the odd things and shake my head, wondering about it all.

Big E, (I called him that behind his back) my boss, the director of Hifadhi, never ceased to amaze me! He did things that showed he might have been powerful, cheeky or plain stupid. How he wangled things and the way some of those things turned out often baffled me! He came to me one day to ask me to participate in a special meeting. I never knew ahead of time what these meetings were going to involve, and what I might be roped into doing or paying for, but I threw on a tidy shirt and a clean pair of trousers and padded off to Big E's quarters.

I was required to introduce myself to the six men he sat with at the table and I shook their hands, they then in turn introduced themselves. Next to me sat a young man in western clothing, his name was Emanuel. Next to him was this big, booming fellow, who was a local radio announcer, he was dressed in copious, flowing white robes. He was an advocate, to be best man, for the next man who was dressed in smart western clothes. He worked for TANAPA, the National Parks and as far as I could fathom, he was from Nigeria. Next to him sat a big, broad-nosed man who wore a ref fez and robes of red, and black edged with gold, this guy was an accountant with the National Parks. Then sat John, Big E's brother, who I already knew well. The other man I also knew, he was a retired vet. Both he and John wore smart western clothes. I felt somewhat under-dressed. They were unconcerned and asked me to tell them a little about New Zealand.

Big E then told me that he had been elected head of the wider family and that this Nigerian man wanted to marry into it. They were lobbying and negotiating the bride price and who would pay for what towards the wedding arrangements. The wedding was to take place in Dar es Salaam. Each side had their spokesperson who did the talking, while being whispered to. There was soon apparent agreement indicating that the negotiations went smoothly. Food was brought out and I noticed that there were pork chops. Obviously of some of the men were of the Islam faith and I knew that the vet was. I heard him ask Big E what the meat was and his bland reply was 'mutton'. No issue was made although most avoided it, the vet muttered something like, ‘If I’m told it is mutton, then it is mutton!’ Surely Big E must have known the implications of serving pork, but got away with it.

After the meal, Big E announced that the formalities were over, beer and soda was brought out - the bride emerged with Mama Baraka and Mags arrived as well so we toasted the happy, engaged couple. But the whole thing had me confused. These guys were obviously wealthy, while Big E and his family lived modestly. The groom had arrived in a flash, new Mercedes – they don’t come cheap! The radio announcer guy whispered to me that the groom will be a tribal chief someday, that chieftainship runs in his family.  The groom, according to the radio announcer, remembers his grandfather's death, when as per tradition, he was buried sitting in his favourite chair! His grandfather was stiff with rigor mortise so they could not sit him properly so he would not have fitted into the grave properly, so they chopped off his legs with an axe to make him fit! Then with him they buried - alive - three or four young, fit, bright people of the village to keep him company! Apparently it is a great honour to be buried with your chief! This practice continues today (according to him).

Next, Mr. Wide-nose with his neat hat and gold braided robe sidled up to me to continue the marriage theme. He told me that the King of Sudan became king at the age of 17 while he was still at Oxford University. He is now (then) in his 20's and is proud of his tribal traditions. He takes a new wife each year and all the eligible young women dance naked before him in the hope they will be chosen. Well that’s what he told me, but I had never heard of any King of Sudan, nevertheless I nodded sagely, thinking maybe the word his word ‘king’ was misinterpreted. Only later did I realise, for all his flash robes and smart looks Mr. Wide-nose must have been out of kilter with his history, he was probably referring to the King of Swaziland whose life has been somewhat similar.

It turned out that other than being a sort of witness to proceedings, my role was merely a presence to keep the discussions ‘orderly’. But even then I don’t think I was required, it’s more likely Big E, in his was just adding to my Tanzania experience. I remain grateful for that.