What Am I Up To

A different sort of challenge

The next day, Saturday morning, presented a whole new challenge.

The Lesotho Network for the Development of the Blind (LNDB), an NGO I have worked with almost since my very first days in Lesotho, had asked if I would cook a meal for the participants attending a youth empowerment workshop they were organising.

How many people?

"Oh, no problem Peter, around 40 to 45!"

Flattered that they enjoyed my cooking so much, and rather relishing the challenge, I set about making preparations a few days beforehand and provided LNDB with a shopping list.

Naturally, I wanted to keep things as simple as possible. My initial suggestion was bean chilli, easy enough to prepare and serve with rice or pap (a local staple made from maize) and some salads.

Nope. Apparently, meat was mandatory!

So, we settled on two options: beef and chicken stews. I was told that around half the people wouldn't eat red meat, but chicken was fine, so we agreed on both. I prepared a revised shopping list and was assured that all the initial food preparation – cleaning and chopping the vegetables – would be done before I arrived at the venue. "Sharp", as they say here. Meaning good, agreed, sorted, done!

And so I arrived at the venue, the Workers Camp Union. It consisted of a collection of old brick buildings, with no kitchen. The cooking facilities? A metal rack with four gas burners on which to balance the cooking pots.

Things, however, weren't quite as sharp as promised.

Apart from the food being there, no other preparations had been made. Bags of carrots, tomatoes, onions, beef, peppers, beetroot and potatoes were piled on a table, alongside a rather intimidating large bowl containing 70 chicken legs.

Could it get any worse? Well, obviously!

On arrival, I was given one assistant, one rather blunt knife and no chopping board. An impossible task? You might think so.

But this is Africa, and if there's one thing I've learnt from all my travels here, it's that things can sometimes look chaotic and impossible, but somehow they have a habit of working out in the end. It might not be perfect or particularly precise, but somehow things come together.

Fortunately, the venue's caretaker was on hand. She provided another knife and, more importantly, a chopping board. And so we got cracking.

We chopped all the main ingredients, got the beef cooking and started bringing the stew together. Thinking on my feet, we decided to fry the chicken legs separately. As the morning progressed, more helpers appeared, and by the end I had around five sous chefs working alongside me.

Between us, in just three hours, we served 50 generous plates of food: beef stew, a chicken leg, mashed potato, rice, and beetroot and carrot salads. By the way, there was only one person who didn't want beef. 

It went brilliantly. People came back for seconds, and by the end there wasn't a scrap of food left.

As I said, it may not always be perfect, and things don't necessarily go according to plan, but with a bit of flexibility, some teamwork and a willingness to get stuck in, things have a way of coming together.

And that's rather a good description of life in Lesotho!