Tuesday 21st September
Day 153
Finding myself alone today I stretch my shopping hours to way past lunchtime.
At 3 pm I sit in warm sunshine on the patio with a plate of leftovers - borlotti beans, garlic mayonnaise, lettuce leaves. My second course bubbles away on the stove - a long fat cob of sweet corn, snapped in two to fit in the pan.
We call them mealies in Zambia where they are a staple food. The cobs are left to dry out in high mounds, like ant hills in the sun, and then the kernels are stripped and pounded - usually by the women - into a fine powder called nshima. When this is boiled with water it turns into a soft, tasteless mush which the Africans scoop up with fingers and sometimes dip into a relish of tomatoes and spinach. Or it’s served with kapenta - another staple - tiny fishes from the Kafue River, dried and salty.
This afternoon when I bite into my sweet kernels, grown on an organic farm in Devon and slathered in butter I realise that to me they are a luxury - to be relished for a short lived season till it’s over. To someone in an African village that maybe all there is to eat - day in and day out.
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