A Comedy of Errors

I have been quite pampered during my few weeks here in Malawi. Sarah Eggert looked after me as if she were my own mother. She did my laundry, and put out fabulous meals night after night. Because of this, I have not had to cook at all. The weekend the Eggerts went to Lilongwe, I was going to make a lentil stew, but was invited to eat with the Jones family. And so, my debut as a gourmet Malawian chef was *supposed* to be two nights ago, on Sunday.

On Sunday afternoon, I got busy slicing and dicing myriads of veggies for a delectable vegetable chowder. All of the prep work done, I headed off to Sunday volleyball, only to find out that Josh MacDowell was in town and speaking at the university in 45 minutes. Ben and I rushed back to our respective houses, and my veggies stayed put in the fridge. Instead I plowed down a bowl Corn Flakes with milk that tasted like water - I haven't yet got the right ratio for the powdered milk. "I will cook the chowder tomorrow," I told myself, and hurriedly rushed off to the university with Ben and Mike B. As my old friend Chung would say, "Worth it!!"

And so, I got home after swinging by the Eggert house to pick up some donated food. I put all the veggies in the pot, along with chicken bouillon, water, rice, and seasoning. Everything was going just fine until - the power went out.

For those of you who have never been to Africa, the power goes out quite often here. In Zomba where I'm living, there are power outages mostly every day, sometimes twice. They usually last 1.5 hours and hit between 6-7 pm. If there is a second power outage, it is in the morning or around lunch, but those usually do not last as long.

So here I am with a partially cooked chowder, and a conundrum. What should I do? Wait a likely 2.5 more hours to eat? It was already 6 pm. Call the Jones family, and go there for dinner? Eat more bread and peanut butter?

No, I thought. I musn't be so weak and dependent. Most Malawians didn't even have power, and cooked all their food over a fire. Why not me?

And so [aha my friends, the power just switched on. Hurray!]

...now I am going to write this at the risk of sounding incredibly foolish, however at the time it seemed like a good idea...

I resolved to make scrambled eggs by frying them over a candle.

It didn't work as well as I thought.

The pan wasn't heating up, so I borrowed the pot cover from my chowder. About 10 minutes into the "egg-scapade", I heard a dripping noise. I walked over to my clay water filter, frying pan in hand. Nope, no water coming out of the spigot. Okay, back to business...holding my frying pan, holding my frying pan. More dripping? I walked over again to inspect the water filter. Indeed, water was seeping from where the filter portion and the bottom vessel contacted. The vessel had overflown, and there was a mini-flood on the floor. I turned around abruptly to put down the frying pan as the cover went flying off and onto the floor. Frantically, I picked it up and set the frying pan on the counter. I went over and grabbed the top portion of the filter and pored out its contents. This filter is extremely heavy, and not wanting to contaminate it, I could not put it down. And so, one-hand holding the 10-pound clay mass and the other rummaging for a pot and a ladle, I scooped out the excess water from the bottom vessel so that I could put the 10-pound clay top back on the bottom. I did damage control on the flood with my mop made out of a bamboo branch. That over with, I went back to my "frying", and twenty minutes later, decided that I was done (though the egg was not).

Still, I figured the egg was done enough, so I slapped it between two pieces of plain bread, and prayed a very thankful prayer, realizing what a struggle it is to prepare food without electricity, and grateful that I had any food at all.

Then it was time to clean up. All seemed well until I noticed a thick black residue all over the underside of the frying pan. I suppose it was carbon monoxide. I opened the windows and started to scrub. Even now [it is Monday night], I am letting the sink soak in bleach to remove black stains that I don't think will come off. My hands look like I've spent my day cleaning chimneys. At least I didn't set anything on fire with the candles as I walked around the house.

So that, in detail, was my first Malawian cooking experience.