El Messelemiya Higher Secondary School for Boys: # 3
-3-
After the school day
The school day ends at 1.50pm and I walk the short distance to my home where I rest until dinner arrives at 2.30pm. Dinner, like any other meal here, is one to be shared and enjoyed. We stand in a circle around the table, right hands ready to dip into the meat, salad, the beans or whatever happens to be the dish of the day. Bread is used to scoop up the food from the brightly coloured plastic bowls and in a very few minutes the food is gone. Six or seven hungry teachers don’t take long to demolish a bowl or two of dura (beans) or laham (meat) and the bottom of the bowl appears all too quickly.
On some occasions, the other teachers will join us for our meal; I counted twelve men at our table the other day. Just as you get to thinking that the food won’t get very far, a stack of shiny aluminium saucepans mysteriously appears and the choice immediately trebles. Some of the dishes are served with a somewhat monotonous regularity whist others are served only rarely.
Most of the food is al but unrecognizable but the batatis (potatoes) and laham (meat) are familiar enough and I enjoy them. One of the regular dishes very much resembles baked beans of that famous variety that is a particular favourite with some of the junior members of my family. Salaata aswaad (aubergine salad) is a regular side dish and consists of a well baked eggplant, peeled, and mashed with peanut butter, lemon juice, salt and shaata, which is a Sudanese version of chilli powder, added to taste, of course.
The resulting mash is eaten by itself, or more usually with meat: mutton or liver. Kibda (liver) is chopped and left to marinate with spices such as cumin, ginger and garlic, all mixed with sweet and hot peppers, the ubiquitous peanut butter and some seasoning before being fried in hot oil until the liver is browned. It is delicious and cheap.
Green salads are cheap and plentiful and equally delicious, cucumbers tomatoes and onions being plentiful. Salads here are usually covered in lemon juice making them at once a refreshing and tasty meal. For dessert, there may be tahnea which is a sweet, dry, powdery sort of cake, or else basta, a soft, flaky pastry dripping in syrup, all washed down with hot chi bi laban (tea with milk) or without milk (chi saada), both served piping hot with lots of sugar.
Robert L. Fielding
After the school day
The school day ends at 1.50pm and I walk the short distance to my home where I rest until dinner arrives at 2.30pm. Dinner, like any other meal here, is one to be shared and enjoyed. We stand in a circle around the table, right hands ready to dip into the meat, salad, the beans or whatever happens to be the dish of the day. Bread is used to scoop up the food from the brightly coloured plastic bowls and in a very few minutes the food is gone. Six or seven hungry teachers don’t take long to demolish a bowl or two of dura (beans) or laham (meat) and the bottom of the bowl appears all too quickly.
On some occasions, the other teachers will join us for our meal; I counted twelve men at our table the other day. Just as you get to thinking that the food won’t get very far, a stack of shiny aluminium saucepans mysteriously appears and the choice immediately trebles. Some of the dishes are served with a somewhat monotonous regularity whist others are served only rarely.
Most of the food is al but unrecognizable but the batatis (potatoes) and laham (meat) are familiar enough and I enjoy them. One of the regular dishes very much resembles baked beans of that famous variety that is a particular favourite with some of the junior members of my family. Salaata aswaad (aubergine salad) is a regular side dish and consists of a well baked eggplant, peeled, and mashed with peanut butter, lemon juice, salt and shaata, which is a Sudanese version of chilli powder, added to taste, of course.
The resulting mash is eaten by itself, or more usually with meat: mutton or liver. Kibda (liver) is chopped and left to marinate with spices such as cumin, ginger and garlic, all mixed with sweet and hot peppers, the ubiquitous peanut butter and some seasoning before being fried in hot oil until the liver is browned. It is delicious and cheap.
Green salads are cheap and plentiful and equally delicious, cucumbers tomatoes and onions being plentiful. Salads here are usually covered in lemon juice making them at once a refreshing and tasty meal. For dessert, there may be tahnea which is a sweet, dry, powdery sort of cake, or else basta, a soft, flaky pastry dripping in syrup, all washed down with hot chi bi laban (tea with milk) or without milk (chi saada), both served piping hot with lots of sugar.
Robert L. Fielding
posted by Justice @ 1:41 AM
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