Our team hosted two days of teacher training for the local care point workers. We taught the workers how to tech basic preschool material to the children who come the care points. Since the training was an all day event, we provided lunch for the teachers. Most days we eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but Swazi’s usually eat a hot meal for lunch. Candice and I were appointed to cook for them. The first morning of the teacher training, they presented everyone involved in the event. When they told the teachers that Candice and I were cooking for them, they laughed at us. The week before, one of the teachers had asked us how we ate. We told them that we use kettles to cook over the fire just like she does. She didn’t believe us.
We decided to prepare a stew for the teachers. We spent hours chopping our vegetables and brewing our broth. We had been told by our contacts that meat would be provided for our stew. We were actually told that a carcass would be provided for our stew, but foolishly we were still picturing a little slab of meat. About 45 minutes before lunch, we still didn’t have our meat. About 40 minutes before lunch, our entire Impala carcass arrived.
I had never eaten or prepared Impala before, but I decided that the quickest way to cook it would be to boil it before adding it to the stew when we served. This plan actually worked nicely. (I was told later that boiling impala meat is a very common way to cook it in Swaziland.)
The teachers like their meal! Who would have thought that two little American girls could cook over an open fire to make food that African women actually like? (Not I)
Later that afternoon, I was bent over the kettle cleaning it out with our only ladle when I decided that this felt very normal. I know how to cook over the fire and how to clean these kettles. That is when I became very grateful that we kettle cook every night. If we had been living in doors with a kitchen, I wouldn’t have ever learned the art of kettle cooking. God had given us a month of practice kettle cooking. He equipped us with the skills we needed to serve the women that day.
P.S. Usually meat is expensive, so we don’t it often. We had so much meat left over, that we decided to take it home and grill it for dinner. I spend most of the afternoon cutting the meat off of unusually body parts, so that it would look like meat that my teammates were use to eating. We enjoyed impala meat for days. God provides abundantly. Even in things as small as meat.
