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jane ward – issue #2: food, power, and powerlessness

Chop the red onions small. Don’t worry about cilantro stems; you can throw them in. Roll the limes hard to release the juice. Sea salt if you have it.


And yet.


If you hold that impossible plumpness in your hand,
if you tickle that leathery peel with a paring knife and
press firmly with your thumbs — oh, don’t let up!


There are worlds in here.
There’s golden fire, a moon and a sunset both, a dusky pasture, a sweet sweet rain.
There’s a farmer in a hat, loading his cart for the walk to a town you will never see.


You’ll take one quick taste, but next you’re swooped low over the bowl.
The pieces slip, make a run for it, but you’re faster,
and soon you’re gnawing the stones, the skins. Another. There must be another.


Forgive us.


Jane Ward is a poet, healthcare communications worker, and sometime adjunct writing professor who is delighted to be included in this important issue. Jane has been published once before in Green Briar Review. She holds an MPhil in Irish Literature from Trinity College, Dublin and lives in Northwest New Jersey with her husband. They have four children. She can be found on instagram at janesays6.

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patrice wilson – issue #2: food, power, and powerlessness

My body lies down

in muck and mire,

taunts me with its needs—

food, water, a place

to rest.

My body walks,

talks to people

asks for fifty cents

or a dollar, for a bus ride

to some place where it

can eat and drink.

I no longer know where this body

came from, ghosts

and signs from God telling me

I must keep moving

or the loud ugly crowd

will close in.

Sometimes other bodies blur

on the sidewalk,

they are me, too, or

they would not be here,

would they—?

Where my body lies down

is not a created space.

Sleep comes quick and hard.

I wonder why I still wake up,

every morning pushing hunger

upon me.

I don’t think about

an ending.  Every moment

is the end.  Every minute

dies in a luckless line

of unfed breaths.

Yet in faded dreams

I can almost see

green lands where yams

and plantains and children grow strong,

even though I’ve never been there.

Yes, my body breathes

wherever it wanders,

sits or lies, but because

in this city I can barely

see the sky, I no longer know

why.

Patrice Wilson is poetry editor at Decolonial Passage. She was born in Newark, NJ and has a PhD in English with concentrations in postcolonial theory and literature. She wrote a poetry thesis, “Between the Silence,” for her MA. She has three chapbooks with Finishing Line Press, and one full-length book, Hues of Darkness, Hues of Light, with eLectio Publishing. Her poetry has been published in several journals. Having been a professor and editor of the literary magazine at Hawaii Pacific University, Honolulu, HI, where she lived for many years, she is now retired and resides in Mililani, HI.

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robyn perros – issue #2: food, power, and powerlessness

When The Mannequin gets sad, she calls the lost children to her shop window. Carrying cardboard under their arms like teddy-bears, the lost children climb up onto their tippy-toes to reach the burglar bars. On empty stomachs, they slip The Mannequin the dreams they keep in discarded sweet wrappers. In exchange for their dreams, The Mannequin unbuckles her high-heels and throws them out the window onto the concrete where they land, a pile of bones. Sniffing glue out of Liqui Fruit juice boxes, the lost children stumble back out into the night, dreamless, in shoes they cannot walk in.

Starvation’s weekly planner

Yesterday, her wrists were as thin as serviette holders. Today, her skin is as thin as Rizla. Tomorrow, her spine will be as soft as a fishbone. On no particular day, her frame is carried off by the ants and their whispers.


Robyn Perros is a South African writer, researcher, and multimedia artist. She holds a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from Rhodes University where she is currently a PhD scholar and Teaching Assistant. Her work has been exhibited/published/presented in multiple spaces such as the KwaZulu Natal Society of the Arts (KZNSA), Open Plan Studio (Durban), Theotherroom (Durban), Nature is Louder Literary Project (Makhanda), Symposium for Artistic Research in Analog Photography (Helsinki 2022), Institutions & Death 2022 conference (University of Bath, UK), Mahala, Zigzag, Isele Magazine, and Ons Klyntji zine. She is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Connecticut. Her PhD research is looking at online death practices in South Africa. She lives in Makhanda. She can be found on Tumblr at robynperros.tumblr.com

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paul smith – issue #2: food, power, and powerlessness

The lemon is sour

from citric acid

in the sandy soil

the crowded branches

and the Mexican

that throws it into a

bushel basket

its face smashed into

those he got ripe with

 

The Mexican is sour

because he gets paid by the

bushel basket

and not the hour

his trailer is crowded

with the others

here for la pisca

already planning the trip to

North Carolina or Georgia

for the strawberries

until Christmas

when Ybor City calls them

to make cigars

paid by the box


Paul Smith writes poetry & fiction. He lives in Skokie, Illinois with his wife Flavia. Sometimes he performs poetry at an open mic in Chicago. He believes that brevity is the soul of something he read about once, and whatever that something is or was, it should be cut in half immediately.

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nancy l. meyer – issue #2: food, power, and powerlessness

As far as I know, we enslaved Joseph, Zebulon,

Cesar, Peg, her children Rose, Philis,

and her baby Philis. last was Joshua.  9 people,

1659-1808. Hard enough to admit,

and then

this summer, uncovered in the Phelps’ Barn—

stacks of receipts, bills of lading, “adventures”*

tied in six neat bundles. Signed Charles Phelps,

my 8th great grandmother Elizabeth’s only son,

who failed at law in Cambridge, ventured into

the export trade. One receipt reads

shipped in good order and condition

Phelps and Rand in ship called Great America

under master Jonathan W. in the harbour

of Boston and bound for Copenhagen

32 hogsheads of sugar weighing 15 tons 735 pounds.

Cane born of sweat, starvation, fingers sliced to shreds.

217,000 Africans in Cuba alone; few survived 7 years. 

Two crops a year, round-the-clock, sugar mills cannot stop.

By 1812, 600 U.S. ships sailed from Havana

with the sticky sweet, threading between

Napoleon’s dragoons, England’s navy

Every receipt stamped “citizen of United States”

to protect ships from seizure, sailors from capture.

Charles’ profit: $12.7 million in today’s dollars.

Untie another packet; receipts reveal

Georgia cotton, on the Rebecca.

What of the bent backs, families rent,

forced breeding, bruises?

No comments in his letters on the abolitionist

fervor bubbling in Boston. He worried about

his debts, cost of living, raising capital.

Records his 10 terms in the State Legislature,

wives who died, their 8 children. Says

he is “self-made.”

Not a nod to the lives whittled down

to sugar crystals, fingers that twisted

free each cotton boll, 200,000

to make a bale. No mention

of ships funneling millions of

Africans to plantations far from

the cool green of Hadley.

How the steel-blue Atlantic

laps against the unspoken

shores of our story.

Nancy L. Meyer (she/her) is a 2020 Pushcart nominee, avid cyclist, and grandmother of five from the unceded Raymatush Ohlone lands of San Francisco. Journals include: Gyroscope, BeZine, Book of Matches, Laurel Review, Colorado Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Sugar House Review, and Caesura, among others. Forthcoming writing will appear in International Human Rights Arts Festival, Outcast, and Kind of a Hurricane Press. She is published in eight anthologies, including Dang I Wish I Hadn’t Done That by Ageless Authors and Crossing Class by Wising Up Press.

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matthew johnson – issue #2: food, power, and powerlessness

The white children applaud and laugh 

When they catch you singing those songs of yours,

And they themselves recite some of the Spiritual verses

From when they found and heard you singing them before.


But their parents dislike how you all learned the songs

Of the Church, and then had to blacken them up,

So the music stops whenever they’re nearby in the big house,

And making their meals on an empty stomach 

Somehow feels even worse without the music of God or songs of hard luck. 


And after breakfast, when your apron and head rag

Have been disheveled by batter and sweat,

And your hunger and senses have been tempted to partake,

But you must always wait, they order you still for more; 


They tell you that you may eat after you dust off the parlor mirrors,

Knowing that in your present attire after a morning of household chores,

That the parlor mirrors are at their cruelest with their stares.

Matthew Johnson is a three-time Best of the Net Nominee and author of the poetry collection, Shadow Folks and Soul Songs (Kelsay Books), and a forthcoming title by NYQ Press. His poetry has appeared in Maudlin House, Roanoke Review, Northern New England Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, amongst others. A former sports journalist for USA Today College and the Daily Star (Oneonta, NY), he now lives in Greensboro, NC. Having earned his M.A. in English from UNC-Greensboro, he’s the managing editor of The Portrait of New England and poetry editor of The Twin Bill. He can be found on his website matthewjohnsonpoetry.com and on twitter @Matt_Johnson_D.

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fatima abdullahi – issue #2: food, power, and powerlessness

She had given up trying to stay away. It was a battle lost long before it had ever begun. Perhaps if it was anything else other than the kaleidoscope of colours in front of her, colours that tugged at her eyes and her heart and her soul, perhaps then. But no, here she was once again, face pressed to the glass, the beauty of the display on the other side making her almost shake with want.

“YOU! How many times have I told you not to come back here?!”

The voice startled her from her sugar-induced stupor, and she hurriedly wiped away the drool on her chin, rushing round the corner before the large baton, and its even larger wielder, caught up with her.

Amna had always had a sweet tooth, even as a child. Her father used to call her shazumami, after those tiny ants with the big heads that liked to drown themselves in sugar and were the bane of her mother’s existence.

So, it was no wonder that the perfection of the macaroon seemed to have her in a chokehold that would not let up. She wanted to taste one so badly. It was all she could think of. She woke up with it on her mind and went to bed with it still in her thoughts. It even followed her into her dreams, and the morning would find her once again sneaking uphill, past the run-down houses and porthole covered streets of her side of town, to the sprawling array of mansions on the other side of the rise.

The cafe that housed the objects of her desire was more glamorous than any building she’d ever entered. With its high arches and wooden panels, dim lights offsetting the pure white tablecloths covering the delicate tables, it evoked class and style. Walking amongst its bright flowers and shining crystal glassware, warping with the sunlight, was like walking into a whole new world. Not that she would ever truly know, having only seen it from the outside. No one would ever let her through the door.

“Where have you been, Amna?” her mother snapped the minute she walked into their house.

Amna blanched, trying to scoot past to the safety of her room. “Nowhere.”

Her mother grabbed her by the chin, squinting at her face. “You went to that shop again, didn’t you? Darling, you know we can’t afford any of the things they sell in that place. Why do you keep torturing yourself?”

Amna muttered something unsavoury, glaring at her feet, then hastily amended her expression when her mother frowned. Best not give her a reason to put me to work.

“I’d buy them for you if I could, you know I would.”

She did know. Her mother loved her, of course she did. As her only child Amna had a pride of place that no one could even come close to replicating. Mama would do anything for her. Would move mountains and burn cities if she had to. A macaroon was nothing in the face of that, even if she’d once had the audacity to call them “a waste of time”, laughing herself silly when Amna had almost expired on the spot.

She knew all this, so she only nodded to her mother and walked to her room, trying to get the bright colours of the little buggers to stop flashing in front of her eyes.

#

They came in a variety of eye-catching displays. Mint green, and mango yellow and cherry red, colours like strawberry pink and peppermint blue and lavender purple. There was even one in an off white colour the same shade as her mother’s old wedding dress, the one Amna had only ever seen when it was finally sold.

The names of the flavours on the tiny placards were even more exotic. Vanilla bean and chocolate hazelnut and something called pistachio. She did not know what eggnog was—or cappuccino or salted caramel—but she’d had cotton candy before, when there’d been a fair on the rise, and one of the sellers had taken pity on her wide eyes and wistful expression and offered her a small cloud on a stick. She’d never forgotten the bright pink colour of it and the way it had immediately melted in her mouth. So, she knew what cotton candy was like, and the macaroon on the furthest side of the display window labeled the same was the one she most wanted to try. Hidden in an alcove and seething with jealousy, she’d heard one of the wealthy patrons, a blogger of some sort, describing them once. The words a “crunchy exterior with a soft filling, made of buttercream”—or fruit apparently, or jam—had nearly sent her into raptures.

Amna had spent months staring at them whenever she had the chance, these little dimensions of colours and flavor, each with a story to share with her. She would fold herself into careful corners and vantage points where neither the cafe customers or employees could see her, and spend hours swaddled in a fantasy land where all she had to do was reach out — until a leaving customer inevitably spotted her and alerted the doorman, and she was angrily chased away.

So, it was a rather huge surprise a few weeks later, when instead of swatting at her with his stick the way he always did—like a particularly errant housefly—the doorman instead motioned her closer.

His eyes roved over her, or rather, her unbound hair. She’d worn it loose today instead of leaving it in its customary braids, wrapped several times around her head. Her hair was her crowning jewel, something both she and her mother were extremely proud of. Long and soft and silky, it was as black as the darkest night, rippling and shining like a waterfall and reaching all the way to her waist. It was a gift, Mama had said, passed down through generations from her Fulani ancestors to her, and Amna was pleased and honoured to carry on their legacy. She did not like the way this man was looking at her hair.

But she was curious, so she let him lead her to the alley behind the cafe and stood warily next to a garbage bin.

“Wait here sweet girl, eh?” he said, his eyes never leaving the cascade of her hair. There was a greed in there that made Amna uncomfortable.

He waited for her to nod before he slipped through the kitchen entrance, curling his large frame around the slightly opened door like a snake. The minute he was through, Amna took two steps back to the mouth of the alley, just in case.

When he returned some minutes later with extra company, he looked panicked for a moment before he spotted her. Scowling mightily in her direction, he said, “I told you to stay here.”

But Amna, refusing to answer, instead looked guardedly towards his companion. She was one of the waitresses of the cafe. Amna had seen her several times through the window carrying trays filled with tiny cakes and coffee mugs that hung on for dear life. She had a wig on her head that did nothing good for her sallow face. Amna wondered if perhaps she didn’t have any hair and suddenly felt bad.

“My God, it’s stunning!” the woman murmured, looking at Amna’s hair with the same hungry look as the man, like all her dreams had come true all at once. “Think of what we’ll get from this!”

The man nodded frantically.

The woman looked at Amna again, and probably noticing she was two seconds away from bolting, slipped smoothly to her knees, pasted on what she possibly thought was a kind smile, and held out her hand.

“My name is Maggie. I work part time at the salon down the way. And this is Chike,” she said sweetly, pointing at the man. “You have such lovely hair, love, won’t you let me feel it?”

Amna shuffled closer and let her run her thin fingers through her silky locks, pleased at the attention, but still wary.

“Chike tells me you like coming to see the macaroons. Is that true?”

Amna nodded shyly, her face filled with embarrassment. “I can’t afford them.”

“How would you like a whole macaroon to yourself then, just for you?” Maggie questioned, looking more than pleased with herself.

Amna looked up in shock. Her heart started an unsteady rhythm in her chest, and she felt suddenly weak. “You would do that, give me one for free? But why?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be for free of course. Nothing ever is. I want something in return.”

“What then?” Amna eagerly asked, already feeling the taste of her long-dreamt-of prize in her mouth, within reach at last.

Maggie gave a sharp smile and stroked a finger through Amna’s hair. “All in due time.”

#

When she walked through the door, her mother took one look at her and let out a wretched cry that shook the walls. “Oh Amna, how could you?!”

Amna lowered her eyes in shame, conscious of the tiny box with a single pink pastry hidden in her bag. She felt like a criminal on the execution platform, waiting for the swing of the axe.

“Why?” her mother asked tearfully. “What could possibly make you do such a thing?”

She shook her head and was momentarily stricken with the lack of weight attached to the motion. A sob caught in her throat. She had not wanted this, this ache in her chest that felt like it was choking her from the inside. She had only wanted a taste, had only wanted to be the person who could afford something she yearned for so dearly.

It’s just hair, she kept telling herself. It’ll grow back.

“I hope it was worth it,” her mother snarled, walking away.

#

It looked so delicate and tender, as if it would fall apart with the slightest of pressures, its perfect twin domes lovingly hugging the soft snowy filling between them.

Amna held it for a while, her back to the locked door as if something would come and snatch it from her hands, possessive in the way someone can be only of something they’ve owned for a short time and treasured for longer. She sat for a long time admiring the shape of it and its brilliant colour, cotton candy pink.

And then she raised it to her lips, holding it in one hand the way the cafe patrons did, and guided it into her mouth. Her teeth sank in, and she paused. At last.

A slight crunch followed the breaking of the crisp outer shell, followed by her teeth meeting the succulent middle—rich cream cheese filling Chike had said—a chewy texture that glided on her tongue and awakened her senses. It was both sweet and nutty and light as air. Amna felt like she was floating. She had never had anything so dreamy and decadent. So elegant. So ethereal.

She took another bite and moaned, eyes closing. After three full bites and nearly sobbing with pleasure as a result of them, she sought a fourth and met only her fingers.

Silence reigned in the room, and Amna suddenly felt empty. She spent a prolonged amount of time staring at the tiny box the macaroon had come in. When she finally moved to put it away, she instead caught her reflection in the small mirror on her pillow, fashioned by her mother’s own hands as a gift for her thirteenth birthday.

She picked it up and stared at herself for a long time. Then she started to cry.


Fatima Abdullahi is a Nigerian born writer, poet, and photographer with a
penchant for the dramatic. A graduate in mass communications and an animal
lover, she writes on heartfelt subjects including humanity, love, loss, and
depression. Her works have been published in Afristories and are
forthcoming in various publications, including Lunaris Review, The Shady Grove Literature, and The First Line Literary Journal. Find her on Instagram at @her_abstractions and on twitter at @ellisande_.

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rosanna rios-spicer – issue #2: food, power, and powerlessness

Every morning, as grandmother milked the cow while patting its ribs, my ten-year old brother, lanky with dark brown skin, held my tiny hand and walked us to the sugar cane fields. One day he hacked off a small piece of the cane for me to chew with a dull machete, the warm sweetness hurting my baby teeth. We ran around the stalks, digging into the dirt to bury treasures before the workers came. I remember my shoes, the leather dyed a raspberry red, were unbuckled, and so he hoisted me up on a wooden crate and fixed them for me and wiped the sugar stickiness off my cheeks with a spit-dampened bandana. This was the last time I saw him.

We had distant family near a place called New Orleans and a father with plans to kill us girls, so mama dug up the money she was hiding in a clay cup under the giant agave. She had sent my three older sisters one-by-one up north from Mexico, quietly, quickly, and we were the last to go. We got into the truck close to the border, where a stranger handed me a scratchy blanket. The bumps in the road felt like someone was kicking under the seat, but I knew we were taking a long trip and that I was supposed to be quiet for it.

For little girls, hours feel like weeks, but the truck stopped finally in a tiny dust-filled town. We stayed there to save money for the bus to New Orleans. The house we entered smelled of cinnamon and patchouli. We had some blankets spread out for us on the floor. In the evening, when everyone came back from working in the fields, after dinner was eaten and dishes washed, we sat around to watch I Love Lucy in English and eat blush-colored grapefruits and mangos the color of Mojave sunsets. Mama peeled the grapefruit for me, pulling the sections carefully away from the white fuzz. The sharp sweetness of the first juicy bite was replaced by a bitterness that lingered and stuck to the sides of my tongue. I preferred mangos when they became overripe, when the soft spots pooled with syrup that tasted like brown sugar.

My mother was quiet in her face only. I knew she had many sad thoughts swarming around inside her. It reminded me of the ants I once saw devouring a downed monarch butterfly. The bright orange, papery wings anchored to the dirt, becoming black and heavy with the weight of the colony gathering her up in morsels, pushing her towards the underground, a place which was foreign to her. How sad, I thought, to die in a place you’ve never seen before.

I remember hearing her crying at night. I heard her say to her sister before she left, “You know nothing. You know nothing until you’ve cut out two hearts that were once threaded together and burnt them over a pit. What would you know about loving a monster?” And I knew the monster was my father, but I didn’t know that love was involved at all.

Weeks, or maybe months, later she had saved enough money picking indigo grapes for us to take the bus to her cousin’s trailer. I was excited to go closer to the water, sad to leave behind the fruit cornucopia. I would be starting school as soon as we got there, and that also made me nervous as the only words I knew in English were Spice Girl lyrics and “Lucy! I’m home!”

We got our tickets at the station and a bag of chili-lime peanuts to share. We had many hours to talk about our new life in Louisiana. I had read about baby alligators that ate marshmallows, which I felt was a good place to start. My mother bent down to fix the straps of my sandals, much like my brother used to. I wondered then what was it that made boys like my brother and also made men like my father and why we had to leave both behind. I would ask her many years later, but for now we only spoke of baby alligators, wild banana trees, and all the gifts we might find in the dirt near our new home.  


Rosanna Rios-Spicer is a full-time nursing student, public health worker, and new mother living in California. She has spent the last few years exploring the role of geography, family history, and conflicting identities in her short fiction writing. She often draws from her experiences as a Chicana growing up in the Midwest.

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davina kawuma – issue #2: food, power, and powerlessness

The wedding procession will arrive shortly before three in the afternoon, by which time the women and girls that have been hired to prepare food for the day – mostly widows, orphans, and refugees (those who live on the fringes of this community, in short) – will have been on their feet for close to ten hours.

Yes, ten hours.

Since the point of cooking on days like this isn’t to preserve nutrients – surely no one comes to wedding receptions expecting to get the recommended daily dose of water-and-fat-soluble vitamins!

No.

The point of cooking on days like this is to present a feast so exotic and tasty that common people will have no choice but to remember and discuss it for years.

Today’s tasks have been assigned according to a well-established hierarchy. The refugees and orphans are ferrying firewood, water, fruit, honey, herbs, and fresh spices from the nearby forest. They will light and tend to the fires throughout the day – their main responsibility being to ensure that the stoves and ovens are constantly fed with charcoal and hot rocks.

The widows will manage all the baking, boiling, frying, grilling, roasting, simmering, and stewing of food (not just for the soul, but for the tissues as well). But only those who bore children for their dead husbands will be allowed to access the main kitchen and serve food – something about fruit rewarding fruit. Therefore, only they will have the privilege of watching the well-timed approach of the showy, angled cars in the wedding procession. They will crowd around the large bay windows, which overlook the large entrance and larger compound, jostling for space in the nooks until they are squeezed in – trapped like wingless grasshoppers in a bottle.

Until then, all the widows – childfree and otherwise – are putting up a united front. Or, at least, pretending to. As per Bellden’s instructions (Bellden, a small woman that’s rumoured to be related to the bride, is in charge of the cooks today), the widows are preparing two categories of food – one (mostly plant-based) for the bride’s entourage and another (mostly animal-based) for the bridegroom’s entourage. Per the common saying: women will be docile, and men will be virile.

Thus, the bride and her entourage will nibble daintily on sweet potato fries, sun-dried beetroots, glazed carrots, cucumber and yoghurt salad, roasted red cabbage, goat cheese-stuffed grilled peppers, honeyed lettuce wraps, aubèrgines and mushroom soup, black bean sauce, sweet and sour fried rice, green peas masala, and ash-baked cassava bread.

While the bridegroom and his entourage devour the following:

Guinea fowl baked in garlicky, ghee sauce

Creamy bacon pasta served with sweetcorn

Roast goose with soursop wine gravy

Grilled chicken kebabs

Barbecue-style beef ribs with gooseberry jelly

Smoked lungfish with spinach pancakes

Lamb chops with raisins, lemongrass, and parsley

Side dishes of chilled avocado soup (drizzled with sunflower seeds and hot pepper sauce)

For dessert, duck egg pie with caramelized onions, pan-fried cherry tomatoes, and stir-fried noodles

And then, for the invited guests, the usual:

Stewed plantain, spicy yam cakes, bitter tomatoes in sour milk, and groundnut sauce (with a side dish of stir-fried pumpkin leaves) for the women. And for the men, Irish potatoes, plantain and gizzard sauce, and cow feet soup (with a side dish of silverfish in groundnut sauce).

The cooks are without the advantages of modern cooking equipment and facilities. For the most part, they have to rely on clay pots, cast iron saucepans, rusty handheld grills, plastic sieves, wooden mortars and pestles, and short bamboo skewers. Nonetheless, Bellden is pleased with the progress they’ve made. Although you wouldn’t know this from the brusque way she moves about while she’s inspecting saucepans for leaks, punching through dough, dipping her fingers into bowls filled with purée, and inhaling flavoured steam from the meat dishes.

Because her face is set in a permanent scowl, and her upper lip seems in danger of disappearing into her nostrils, one’s initial impression of Bellden will likely be that she’s unimpressed. In truth, her stomach is churning with all kinds of digestive juices: the wonderful, pungent smell of seasonings – of spices she’d never smelt until today – is making her desperately hungry. Yet she can’t, under or above any circumstances, show that she’s moved. She can’t ask one of the cooks to save a few pieces of guinea fowl or beef for her, either. Imagine how it’ll look!

And so Bellden carries on dutifully, walking stiffly around the outdoor cooking areas, with her hands clasped behind her back, as if she were an invigilator overseeing an end-of-year exam. Because you can never be too careful with people from the fringes. God knows what they get up to when you’re not watching. If you’ll believe it, they’ve been known to put drops of their menstrual blood and urine, locks of their pubic and anal hair, and dashes of their faecal matter, into food!

Whenever, by some miracle, Bellden allows herself to be called away or distracted by other duties, she leaves someone else (usually one of the armed askaris) in charge. The cooks use the opportunities presented by Bellden’s absence to bribe the askaris with large pieces of meat. That way, they are able to take intermittent breaks – not so they can flavour the meat sauces with their blood or hair, but to creep along the sides until they find a good vantage point from which to stare lustfully at the furniture and lighting that’s spread out on the lawn in front of the main house.

Considering that this occasion marks the first time many of the cooks have seen salad plates and wine glasses, there’s very little that won’t impress them. Wherever they turn their eyes to, there’s yet another thing or couple of things to fill them with strange and surprising feelings.

To begin with, there are the tents, which are covered by transparent canopies and topped with flags. Forget salad plates. Who’d ever have thought that a tent could be transparent?

And what about those luxurious floral arrangements that run the length of each table? —or the tall pillars of star-shaped flowers? —or the chairs draped in garlands of handmade lace and silk ribbons? —or the boutonnières to match the day’s orange, gold, and blue colour palette? —which all look too perfect, too pretty, to be true?  

Most importantly, by what magic do round candles float in square, glass jars?

And all those children, dressed in their Sunday best, holding gold bowls, throwing fresh petals all over the snake-like driveway! —what bright futures they must have!

Yet all those things, magnificent as they are, are not what a wedding is about. As far as the cooks are concerned, wedding receptions are about the brides. So, although they are open-mouthed now, they are reserving their most amazed, most stupefied looks for when their eyes fall on the bride, who they’ve been reliably informed will arrive in the longest, shiniest car.

Soon after the bride steps onto the grass, which was carefully cut and watered this morning, she’ll raise a heavily jewelled hand to shade her eyes from the sun. Only after someone runs up to her with an umbrella will she fully emerge from the car. It’s all been carefully choreographed, beforehand, you see, for that is the way of rich people.

***

When the cooks finally catch a glimpse of the bride, well over three hours after the arrival of the wedding procession, they are so hungry and thirsty that they have to hold onto each other in order not to faint. Those that aren’t complaining of dizziness and nausea are making headachy sounds.

The oldest and frailest widows are practically shaking.

It doesn’t matter that these women have been up since five in the morning, or that their hands prepared the feast that will be unleashed on guests in a few minutes. The rules of well-established hierarchies exist for a reason: the cooks will eat last, if at all.

Be that as it may, the cooks are not without hope. If anything, looking at the bride is, in a way, very much like ingesting food.

The bride is seated quite far away, on the highest table, in a chair labelled “Wife.” Yet not even distance can dull the magnificence of her outfit, which is a cross between a mushanana and a sari. (The fabric of the mushanasari is hand-woven, a substantial brocade with gold and orange geometric designs.) Or the luxuriousness of her expensive jewellery – the thick, gold ferronnière encircling her forehead; the emerald jewels sewn into her hair; the snake charm bracelets clutching her wrists like frightened children.

The bridegroom, on the other hand, has failed to excite the cooks. The colour of his skin is much lighter than they expected. But what is even more surprising is his size. They’d assumed that, like most foreigners, he’d be slender. But, no, the man is so large that he looks like a small city.

His saving grace is his pleasant-looking face. That and how he keeps turning to look at the bride with what looks like love and longing.

After a few minutes of watching the bridegroom’s face, the cooks decide that his size isn’t such a bad thing, after all; that, perhaps, it is a representation of generosity, sympathy, and tolerance. His tight, ill-fitting suit, and the slanting M in the “Man” label affixed to his chair, start to seem like good-natured jokes.

***

What a happy coincidence that Bellden is so wise! If it wasn’t for her insistence that food is served before the speeches, there would probably be only a handful of guests left seated under the tents right now.

As things stand, even those who didn’t get official invitations are sated. Hence the general willingness to be patient with the bridegroom. For twenty minutes, guests have watched his slow and clumsy movement from the elevated platform on which the high table stands, down to the ground level, and then across the grass to where the microphone stand is mounted.

After another twenty minutes, when the bridegroom is finally as close to the microphone as he needs to be, there’s a collective sigh of relief.

“Invited guests, ladies and gentlemen, good night,” the bridegroom’s high-pitched voice echoes out of the microphone.   

Although “good night” is the appropriate greeting, since night fell a few hours ago, there’s some restrained laughter from the guests.

“With all protocol observed, I’d like to recognize the following people, who are very special to me,” the bridegroom continues, restrained laughter regardless. “Please stand up and wave when I mention you.”

The bride’s name isn’t the first, second, or third one that the bridegroom mentions.

Those who are present, those watching with their own eyes what’s happening, will say that long before the bridegroom mentioned the bride’s name, she’d started wheezing. But that it didn’t matter to him that she was having trouble breathing; that he insisted that she stand, wave, and walk toward him so that everyone could see what a lovely bride he chose.

“I have full confidence in her,” the bridegroom announces in a pinched voice, when he finally gets round to calling his bride by her given name. “She gets up while it’s still dark, and provides food for…”

The bride stands and waves, alright, but doesn’t get very far. She waddles to the edge of the platform and then stops as vomit erupts out of her in violent streams.

Since a first aid kid is the last thing people think anyone will need at a wedding, there isn’t one in the main house or nearby houses.

The bride collapses before a medic is found to check her pulse.

A few of those who are present, those watching with their own eyes what’s happening, will say the bride collapsed because of three reasons: one, she was heartbroken by the bridegroom’s failure to name her first. Two, the stress of wedding preparations got the best of her. Three, her marriage to the city-sized man was arranged by her parents; so, she swallowed rat poison to spite them.

But most guests will claim that everything, including the wheezing and collapsing, was carefully choreographed beforehand. For such is the way of rich people.

***

Let the record state that this is neither the first nor last time. The bride, Azza, has [almost] died many times before, and will [almost] die many times after. She has an undiscovered allergy to aubèrgines, you see, which is what triggers the wheezing, vomiting, and fainting spells. Like most allergies, it can be easily managed through vigilance and the proper medications.

But, in places like this, it is much easier to believe that Azza has been bewitched – perhaps by a stepmother or a malevolent, childless widow; witchcraft narratives are infinitely more interesting than tales of medical complications. Further, discussions about witchcraft tend to be democratic: you don’t have to have or be a PhD in witchcraft to speak boldly about its motivations or effects.

So, over the next few days, weeks, and months, community members will happily debate and weigh a variety of beliefs and judgments about who bewitched the bride, and why.

Meanwhile, Azza will slowly but surely recover in the ICU of the region’s only referral hospital. Lying in bed, she’ll think about the quiet, orthodox life she’s lived – a life which has culminated in a marriage to her father’s business partner, a man twice her age.

***

Although Azza has had many near-death experiences, there’s something about this one that promises to change her life. This is the first time she’s actually been afraid – the first time she’s ever allowed herself to consider the possibility of a different path.

All her life, she has done exactly what’s expected of her. But what if she doesn’t have to anymore? What if the most recent episode of her body’s hypersensitivity is the universe’s way of telling her to try a different track, beat her own path?

***

It’s unclear if the bridegroom believes in witchcraft. What’s clear, though, is that he intends to demand an investigation into “possible irregularities.”

The bridegroom will, of course, receive a detailed police report confirming that, yes, indeed, X number of “questionable activities” happened in the kitchen because of Bellden’s failure to perform the supervisory duties assigned to her.

Naturally, Bellden will be arrested (although she won’t spend more than a few days in the women’s wing of Murchison Bay Prison), and the widows will be heavily fined (as restitution to the bridegroom for “unplanned loss of honeymoon time”).

For that, interestingly, is the way of rich people.


Davina Kawuma is a Ugandan natural scientist, educator, administrator, editor, and storyteller. Her poetry has been published by platforms such as Brittle Paper, African Writers Trust, and FEMRITE. Her short stories have been shortlisted for the Afritondo, Gerald Kraak, and Short Story Day Africa Prizes. Her creative non-fiction, whose subject is racial justice trainer, community organizer, and systems change strategist April Michelle Jean, was published last year in a cross-cultural anthology by Ugandan and American women titled This Bridge Called Woman. Her flash fiction is forthcoming in the eco-literature and eco-art edition of the Global South Journal.

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favour iruoma chukwuemeka – issue #2: food, power, and powerlessness

Kelechi had never seen so many white walls in one house. In fact, she wondered how these people kept the place stainless. Kelechi was not someone to leave her questions unanswered, and that was why she came. The woman of the house, Madam Ibeneme, motioned one of the servant girls to bring Kelechi a drink. When the servant girl came, she asked, “Mummy, is it zobo or Ribena?”

Madam Ibeneme sized up Kelechi, and her eyes landed on her burgeoning stomach. “Bring her some zobo.”

Kelechi struggled to hide her displeasure. The zobo arrived – thank God it was cold because the air conditioning was barely touching her skin – and Kelechi found her answer. Since Madam Ibeneme’s boys were sent off to boarding houses since JSS 1, she must have repainted the walls white and never let the servant girls lean on them. Even when their five boys returned for holidays, they must have visited the sitting room for a few hours, and retired to their rooms to study. Kelechi had heard the rumours — how Madam Ibeneme and her husband never spared their boys. During the holidays when Kelechi and her sisters with their neighbours cooked in clay pots on the sand and caught lice in their hair, Madam Ibeneme’s boys were shut up in their rooms and forced to read for hours. No wonder they all secured fully funded scholarships abroad and became the only topic their Nigerian parents talked about. If her own parents had been that strict, Kelechi wouldn’t be sitting in this woman’s parlour, drinking her gingered zobo with caution.

“We will be going now, nne.” Mummy announced. “Sorry for the wait. My suppliers in the market must be waiting for me.”

“No problem ma.”

“Pauline, bring those market bags.” Mummy called out. “Tell Dairu to start the car.”

When the woman rose, Kelechi jerked up also. It was reflex, something she would regret doing later, because she never wanted this woman to feel she was doing her a favour. But inside this white house, Kelechi felt powerless, and that was a feeling she was desperate to shed. Inside the chauffeured car, Mummy held her phone out, punching the touch screen with her first finger, one step at a time.

“Do you know how to cook utazi soup?” Mummy eyed Kelechi.

“That is white soup, is it not?”

“The leaves are bitter. White soup doesn’t have leaves in it.”

“Oh.” Kelechi smiled sheepishly. Was she failing the test, already? If only she had paid attention while her own mother cooked. But they didn’t cook too many soups. All Kelechi knew was egusi, okro, ogbono, and ofe onugbu.

“White soup is the one we call ofe nsala.” Mummy continued, not lifting her eyes from the phone. “My husband loves it with catfish, but the boys prefer chicken.”

“Okay ma.” Kelechi nodded like this information was critical to passing the bar exam she had in a few weeks. The woman just hinted that her son, the one Kelechi would be getting married to, loved ofe nsala with chicken.

“I will teach you how to make the utazi, and I will watch you make ofe nsala. So, we will get fresh catfish and some kilos of chicken at the market. Let me see whether your barrister brain can still cook a pot of soup.” Mummy was laughing, but Kelechi looked away.

Kelechi dreaded markets. It reminded her so much of hardship because she never understood why people loved to make the trip to Sabo when they could go to the local street stalls to buy foodstuff. Sabo Market was hell, brimming with all kinds of people – Hausa load-pushers with their smelly bodies, little children shoving their wares in your faces, beggars clamouring for the money in your pockets, and even thieves trying to sell you spoilt foodstuff. She struggled to keep up with Mummy who was many steps ahead, despite her average height, and who seemed to know everyone in the market. They stopped in front of people’s stalls too many times because Mummy needed to greet and remind the market women to attend fellowship sometime. This was the Christian fellowship Mummy pioneered some fifteen years ago, the one Kelechi’s mother said she used to bring women in the neighbourhood to under subjection. Nobody who attended fellowship could defy Madam Ibeneme, and Kelechi noted when her own mother started avoiding the fellowship. Now that she would be marrying their son, her mother had no choice. She might not like the Ibeneme family, but she couldn’t deny that they were one of the most influential families in their neighbourhood. Kelechi would be joined to a dynasty – and her mother ought to be proud.

“Pack these ones for me. I don’t need anymore.” Mummy haggled with the sellers. The price of catfish was outrageous. Kelechi wondered why the woman bothered.

Soon, all the market bags were loaded on wheelbarrows owned by muscled Hausa boys. Mummy looked at her list and back at the market. She squinted at Kelechi. “I think we got everything.”

Kelechi smiled. She had no idea what was on the list.

“Oh, One more thing. Thank you, Jesus,” Mummy piped.

“What is it?” Kelechi’s legs were on fire. She wanted so badly to return home and return to her own house quick.

“Dog food. We need to get some dog food.”

Fortunately, Mummy haggled quickly this time. It was past two in the afternoon, and the sun was having a good time dealing with their skins. They bought two large bags of dog food and loaded them onto the carriers.

“Madam, your money na seven hundred oh.” One of the two Hausa boys spoke.

“Which kain seven hundred?” Mummy retorted. “Come on, carry this thing for me. Let’s go. See your black head like seven hundred.”

And that settled it. Mummy had this silencer effect on people. It was the reason she was so powerful. On the ride back home, Kelechi worried if this was going to be a problem in her marriage. She had not given this much thought. Yes, her fiancé, Mummy’s son, was the only son who moved back to Nigeria to reside, and that meant they would be closer to the family. Not that Mummy would make the trip to their home every week, but didn’t she control her son as well? So far, Mummy was the one who introduced both of them, who insisted that Kelechi was a perfectly good-natured fit for her son. Kelechi was not sure that her son cared for her, as much as he cared for his mother’s words, but after some months, he asked her to marry him.

“How does your mother make oha soup?” Mummy slashed through her thoughts. “Does she use uziza or what leaves?”

“She uses uziza and oha leaves. Both of them together.” Kelechi was happy the woman was smiling. So, she added, “Oha soup is my favourite soup.”

“Eh hehn! I thought all you children of nowadays only like egusi.”

“I am not an egusi person oh.” Kelechi chuckled. “It’s my sisters that will finish egusi soup in one sitting. Me, I like to eat it slowly. I think it’s too sweet.”

Mummy laughed. “It’s good. Not all these shawarma generation. The boys, when they were younger, they only wanted egusi and rice and bread. I had to force them to eat all kinds of soups.”

Madam Ibeneme only understood force. Kelechi noted this somewhere in her head. She must be prepared for moments when Mummy would attempt to force her son against her wishes. Right now, she was forcing him towards her, Kelechi knew it – she wasn’t stupid.

“Ezenduka will be coming this evening. Did he tell you?”

“Oh.” Kelechi went pink. She had not gotten comfortable with talking about one of Madam Ibeneme’s boys as her husband-to-be with anyone. Not even with his mother.

*

“Have you guys finalized the wedding date?” He asked.

That piece of information was the reason Kelechi wanted some time alone with Ezenduka. It wasn’t supposed to be a discussion between his parents and hers. But theirs. So, she asked him to come pick her up at the market – she was going to cook him dinner. She wanted him to look her in the eye and tell her he was as excited to get married to her, the same way she was. He was an accomplished and good-looking man, and she was lucky to have him. But Kelechi wasn’t roadside food herself – she was a full spec. She needed him to see this.

“We’re supposed to pick our wedding date. Both of us.” She looked at him, as he started to reverse out of Sabo market.

“Kele, I told you that I am fine with any date you choose.” He pushed up his glasses – one habit Kelechi found very charming. Was there anything she hated about him?

“Where do you want to spend the honeymoon?”

“Paris.” She said without thinking.

He chuckled. “Stereotypical. But I thought you’d have chosen Florence.”

“It’s Florence that’s more cliché. Why do we need to go to the city of love if we’ve already found love?”

“Fair point. So, you said you wanted to cook for me?”

“Yes. Let me be sure I know what I am doing.”

Ezenduka laughed some more. “I really don’t mind. I do all my cooking. But the gesture is nice. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Kelechi smiled. She looked out the window. Hawkers were brandishing kilishi, suya, drinks, and bread at her.

“You want to buy anything?”

He was being polite, too polite. Kelechi knew he was trying to be nice to her – but she was willing to be patient. She also planned to sleep over at his place today, something she didn’t discuss with Mummy.

“Not really. But this bread looks fresh. And maybe some kilishi too.”

Ezenduka tossed her his wallet and kept his eyes on the road. “I don’t trust Lagos kilishi but buy if you must.”

She had already wound down the windows and started selecting food. Impatient drivers honked from behind, forcing Ezenduka to move the car, and the hawkers started chasing their car. Kelechi threw some money at them, only after they’d given her the correct change.

“I can’t wait to see where you live. I’ve been curious,” she said when they were many miles on the highway.

“Really. It’s nothing special. If the space is not enough for us, we’ll move to a bigger place.”

“How many rooms?” Kelechi asked.

“Three.”

“Sounds okay to me.”

Ezenduka’s apartment smelled of lavender. The walls were stained white, and it was clean. Ezenduka moved all her market bags to the kitchen. She wanted to empty her bladder, so she found the restroom. She washed her face, ears, and hands before returning to the kitchen. She noticed how it was devoid of foodstuff, and she smiled at the opportunity. She wanted to make plantain porridge and some ofe nsala. If she had time in the morning, she would make some egusi.

“Your kitchen is naked.” Kelechi remarked.

He shrugged. The space in the kitchen suddenly felt small. “I cook all my meals; I told you that.”

“Oh. I imagined you ate mostly takeouts in school.”

His phone buzzed. He looked at it and ignored it.

“My brother was my flat mate, and he insisted we cook on weekends. It was our way of keeping up with African food. Courtesy of my mum who loaded us with supplies.”

Kelechi laughed. “I can imagine her transporting produce from Sabo to Europe.”

“Yes, she went to those lengths. At first, it was annoying, But I soon started to appreciate it. Because we ate Nigerian food, well, it was easy for me to come back here. I really missed the culture here.”

“Won’t you take the call?” Kelechi was already poised like a proper wife, peeling the plantains and arranging spices for the porridge.

“Oh, it’s work stuff. How can I help?”

Kelechi smiled. “As if you can.”

“Yes oh. Look at this woman, I can cook.”

“Okay. Peel some onions. Later you’ll pound fresh peppers.”

“Tough job for the tough man, right? Give me a minute. We need some music here.”

He left the kitchen, and soon, The Cavemen boomed from the speakers in the living room.

When he came inside the kitchen, he was swinging to the Afrocentric highlife fusion. Kelechi watched him move this way and that – he had some moves. She started laughing, cheering him as he moved. He stretched his hands to her, and Kelechi dropped the plantain, and planted her hands in his. They moved in rhythm, their bodies syncing into the highlife beats, as if The Cavemen were a private band playing in Ezenduka’s kitchen.

“Wow. You are a dancer,” Ezenduka commented, with sweat soaking his face and shirt.

“If the mood is right, yes.” Kelechi was ecstatic – she never wanted the moment to end.

But it did end, because someone appeared in the hallway and screamed. The strange woman was taller than Kelechi, with fuller breasts. She must have had a house key, because Kelechi was sure that Ezenduka locked the house when they came in. The intruder kept screaming, “this is why you didn’t take my calls?” And she had a heavy British accent.

Kelechi felt the walls closing in on her, the plantains, and her foodstuff bags, so she left the kitchen and disappeared into the bathroom. The Cavemen was still playing, yet it was easy for Kelechi to hear their brawling. He was asking her to leave, pleading that he would call her tomorrow, but the woman wouldn’t budge.

Kelechi tried to forgive herself for being stupid. Of course, she didn’t expect him to be single. That was too high an expectation for a successful man living in Lagos. But she expected him to be cutting off his side girlfriends since he was soon to be married. She paced in the bathroom and was tempted to call Mummy. But she thought against it – and then she remembered her cooking. She would go out there and enter her husband-to-be’s kitchen and cook him dinner. If the bloody woman decided to stay, she was welcome. But Kelechi would not exchange words with a prostitute. At the end of the day, Ezenduka would be indebted to her. Perhaps, Kelechi could finally have some of that power that Mummy had acquired for herself.


Favour Iruoma Chukwuemeka is a creative writer from Eastern Nigeria. Her writing has appeared in Afritondo, Conscio, Cypress Journal, Lolwe, The Shallow Tales Review, Kalahari Review, and African Writer. She is an alumnus of the 2021 Creative Writing Cohort with Chigozie Obioma. She can be found on twitter at @heeruomah.

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mungai mwangi – Issue #2: Food, power, and powerlessness

General Kamiti could smell a nice aroma coming from a distance. Before joining the liberation movement in the forest, he was a chef to the colonial settler. Immediately he smelt the nice aroma, he flashed back to how he used to cook nice food for the colonial settler. So tasty was his food that the settler decided to increase his salary. He used to cook delicious food for his bosses like fish and chips, Sunday roast, cottage pie, steak, kidney pie, English breakfast, and more. Since he never learned to prepare British cuisine from school, he taught himself how to cook them. When he served his boss in the dining room, his boss was very happy and asked for more. Kamiti could not disappoint, and he made sure that his boss ate to his satisfaction. This made the White settler very happy, and he decided to increase his salary. One day, Kamiti had prepared very delicious food such that Peterson, his boss, had ordered a second and third helping.

Once Kamiti smelt the aroma, he decided to follow it to see what made his saliva come out uncontrollably. He decided to follow a footpath hidden in a deep forest to conceal his footsteps from British soldiers who were hunting the Mau Mau fighters like wild goats. Kamiti had been sent as a spy by his seniors back in the forest to go and look for food supplies back in the village. The freedom fighters had gone without food for several days and had to rely on wild fruits to survive. After the imperialist government learned that the fighters were getting food supplies from villages, they forced the villagers to dig deep trenches to surround the villages and cut off the food supply from reaching the forest. So, after this trench boundary, Kamiti and his seniors knew that if things went on like this, the freedom fighters would starve to death.

He tried to hurry up while following the food scent for he knew he had to return to his deep forest hideout before dusk. Therefore, he followed the sweet smell carefully without losing it; he knew he was on the right track. The experience he had in food production could not let him err in something important like this. Apart from preparing European foods, he was an expert in preparing his community’s traditional foods. Most of the time, when there was an occasion in the village, he was the one who was assigned the duty of guiding the cooks on how to prepare important foods like meat. As he hurried towards the village, he felt bitter about the colonial rulers in the country.

He could remember very carefully that this was not the first time they were using food as a weapon to suppress the Africans. When they were coming to colonize the country, they brought in soldiers from Europe to come and fight the Africans. The Africans fought the battle tooth and nail, and when the imperialists realized that they were not easily defeated, they decided to use a tactic called the scorched earth policy. This was where they burned down crops and killed animals that might be used by the Africans as a source of food. This policy affected Africans so much that finally, they succumbed to brutal colonial rule. When this happened, Kamiti was in his early teens. He had experienced the brutality of colonial rule, and so he had vowed to use all powers at his disposal to see that they succeeded in the fight for African liberation and freedom.

It was approaching around five o’clock in the evening, and Kamiti took bigger steps towards where the aroma was coming from. He reached a large, cleared area with no bushes or trees. He stopped abruptly and peered while hiding in a bush. From where he was looking, it was very clear that the colonial administration might have told the village to clear a large section of trees so that they could spot any freedom fighter coming out of the forest for food. At a distance, he heard a crowd of people talking and laughing loudly. At this level, he knew that any wrong move would see him dead or rotting in detention camps. When he listened carefully, he heard that the people were talking in English. Immediately he heard this, he knew that those were colonial settlers or police officers. He decided to go no further but look for another plan. In his pocket, there was a binocular he had been given by one of the visitors who used to come to Peterson’s home. This binocular was awarded as the visitors were happy with his cooking. Without wasting any other minute, he climbed a big tree that was nearby, and when he was at the topmost part, he took out his binocular and looked through it. The binocular was single-lens, and he could see the whole village. He remembered the book he had read about Egyptian history where a certain Egyptian god called Horus had an all-seeing eye where he saw the whole of Egypt kingdom.

 Looking carefully, he noticed that a group of White police officers stood guard over scores of African trench diggers. Standing on their side was an African chef roasting meat for them, the police officers were laughing at an African worker who lay on the ground and looked very exhausted. One of the police officers kicked the guy hard on the stomach and exclaimed, “This stupid African thinks we are fools. How can he claim that he can no longer dig the trench because he is very exhausted?”

Kamiti felt sorry for the young man, but he could do nothing. He knew that despite his carrying his gun with him, he could not manage to fight the ten officers who were mistreating his tribesmen. All the same, his mind turned back to the roasted meat that was being barbecued near the trench. He had not eaten for two days, only surviving on wild fruits and water. The best he could do was to go back to the forest and inform the other liberation fighters what he had seen. They would then lay a plan on how to find food because they knew that they could not fight or survive without it. Without the food supply, the fight for freedom would not succeed. Once he surveyed the area skillfully, he climbed down the tree and sat on the ground holding his chin. From what he had seen, it was almost impossible for any human to cross the other side of the trench to get food for the fighters. The trench was so wide and deep that anyone who would try to reach the other end would find himself or herself breaking their limbs.

Kamiti regretted the colonialists coming to his country. He remembered his family he had left alone back in the village and felt sad. At that time of the year, he could have been planting cassava and arrowroots on his farm. His farm was big, and many people came to buy foodstuffs from there. Right now, he had been demoted from being a farmer and chef to a gunslinger, but he never regretted it because he had to fight for the freedom of his motherland.

The sizzling sound of the roasting meat continued to meet his ear as he left the scene. He hurried towards the hideout where he had left the other freedom fighters. It took him about an hour and a half to get there. When General Wachuka and the other fighters saw him, they all stood and looked at him anxiously. General Wachuka was the head of the battalion. They respected him for his leadership and combat fighting.  They were very anxious to know what message he had brought to them. At this time, the hunger pangs were biting them seriously. Many of them had no energy left to fight the enemy. Immediately Kamiti arrived at the scene, he ordered everyone to gather at one point so that he could tell them what he saw.

“I had the honor of being sent to look at what we could do to get food supplies for our soldiers,” he began. “The works of emissaries belong to younger scouts, but the nature of the work required a more experienced person. Therefore, I was the one who was chosen to take this noble task,” he continued as others listened.

“I went to where the trench is being dug, and to say the truth, the trenches are very deep and wide for any human being to cross. Even our best cliffhangers I guess cannot cross the other side of these trenches. Hence, I think we have to know what to do to get food supply from the village other than crossing this dangerous trench,” he concluded. And at this point, the fighters became astonished.

 Everyone looked disappointed and hopeless; it was only General Wachuka who shot up and suggested that anyone who had got an idea of what they could do should stand up and say it before it was too late. There was one young man in his early twenties who stood up and said he had a suggestion. He was given a chance to speak.

“When I was attending a Sunday school with missionaries, we were told about how a young boy called David in the Bible used a sling to kill an enemy soldier by the name of Goliath. I would suggest we write a letter and tie it on a stone. One emissary will go to where we take our letter and fling the letter to the village using a sling. The letter would advise the villages to also bundle food in small packages. They would then fling the food using the same slings to the place where we used to collect it before,” he said.

After he finished his statement, everybody clapped, and they looked excited. They almost forgot that they were in a hideout in the forest. As the young man suggested, the letter was written and given to an emissary. As the letter described, the freedom fighters would be waiting for the food the next day very early in the morning at the designated scene. As the young emissary disappeared at a distance, the fighters wished the hours could fly off so that they could go and look whether there was any food to eat.

It was almost two hours since the fighters arrived at the suggested scene. They wondered whether they were the ones who had arrived earlier, or if the people designated to bring the foodstuffs might have forgotten. General Kamiti kept on moving from one place to another looking at his scratched wristwatch. When he looked at the watch again, it was four o’clock in the morning; he started to get worried but never told anyone about it. Another twenty minutes elapsed, and he was about to open his mouth to order his troops back in their hideout when a big lump of something soft hit him hard on his forehead.  At first, he thought it was British soldiers who had ambushed them. But when he came back to his senses, he thought he had smelt the sweet aroma of fried meat and potatoes.

After the first lump landed, others followed and within a duration of fifteen minutes, the whole place was awash with foodstuffs. A few minutes later, the food bundles stopped coming and everything was silent. General Wachuka and Kamiti ordered his troops to gather the food quickly and head back to their hideouts before the dawn light came out. Some of the fighters were very hungry, and they secretly went back into the hideout while eating what they were carrying. Soon the fighters reached their destination, and Wachuka told them to keep what they had gathered at the front.

“Today we are very lucky. We have managed to get food supply, but there is one issue that I would like to raise. We have seen how we have struggled to get food again after the enemy ordered the trenches to be dug. We need discipline when using our foodstuffs. Please eat only what is enough and keep the rest safe for next time,” Wachuka said.

The fighters did as they were told, and the rest of the food was kept safe in a cool dry place. That night, both General Wachuka and Kamiti told the fighters that they had to resume back fighting the enemy. So, when night came, they prepared their guns and other weapons. Before they could embark on the mission that night, Kamiti said he wanted to talk to them.

“Gallant soldiers, there is one thing I would like to request of you when carrying your guns, remember to carry slings and stones. This weapon has helped us a lot, and it may help us again. We can dismiss now,” he said as the fighters cocked their guns with much strength showing that they had regained the energy to fight the colonialist until they got their freedom.


Mungai Mwangi is a prolific writer. After high school, he attended college for an information technology course. He studied creative writing through correspondence. He has written articles for newspapers and blogging sites as well as a novel titled The Godly Merchant. He has received awards such as The Reading Ambassador from the the Start A Library Trust Organization and Story Moja Publishers. Currently he is working on novels and short stories. He can be found on Facebook at Mungai Mwangi.

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TRACY YOUNGBLOM – ISSUE #2: FOOD, POWER, AND POWERLESSNESS

I never need to open my refrigerator to know what produce it houses; I keep a mental file of what I have purchased. For instance, I know that right now nestled next to the long-lived carrots and celery are a single red pepper and a package of cremini mushrooms.

These vegetables nag at my memory because they must be used soon, or they will spoil.  Fruit is easier to track; it mounds in changing patterns, visibly, in a bowl on the counter.  I bought a bowl from a Signals and Wireless catalog warehouse sale nearly twenty years ago, and since then it has been a focal point of my kitchen.  Today I removed a large cantaloupe from it and cut it up; I peeled an orange yesterday, and as I bit each section in half, its sweet, sticky juice ran down my fingers.   I will keep eyeing the lemons this week, pondering—muffins? lemon-sauced chicken?

Somehow, I have become a person who plans meals around produce—around a deep-seated fear of wasting.  It should not be surprising to anyone that fear leads to oversight—to order. For me, this particular fear manifests as a steady anxiety as I move through each week—even before that, as I shop, agonizing over the amount of fresh goods to buy. Often, I place three apples in a bag, then return one to the display, calculating: how many days will I cut one up for lunch? I weigh a bag of hearts of Romaine in one hand and a bundle of Brussels sprouts in the other—too much for a single week? 

I used to plan meals enthusiastically for my three boys and myself, the years we were alone, especially as they reached high school, and I had to maintain a budget.  They could eat enormous amounts of food. It was my job to make sure there was enough, that it was affordable, and that it was relatively healthy. I always went to the store with a list of dinner ideas for that week—hearty meals, often pasta-based, that would feed these young men who ate like a crowd — chicken lasagna, spaghetti pie, brown rice hotdish. Buying extra ingredients, especially fresh ones, was a burden I avoided.  I could succeed only if I avoided waste.

I made up rules in those days, too, allowing myself permission to buy certain items that were stocked in abundance—say, cereal—only when they were both on sale and I had a coupon.  It was never onerous to remember the parameters I set for myself; I was proud of my frugality and practicality.

Now, things have shifted; I have shifted. I go to the store with a list and some vague ideas, but I prefer to plan as I cook. This week, I will make a pinto-bean and vegetable casserole on Monday that will use peppers, zucchini, loads of onions; chicken drumsticks and a potato kugel on Thursday that will incorporate one package of mushrooms hiding in the crisper drawer and the remnants of a carton of sour cream. As the week progresses, I will worry more and more, scour through cookbooks to find the recipe that will allow me to use what I have before it goes bad.

When I wake in the middle of the night, I wonder: What will I do with that red pepper? An egg bake? I experience a strange mixture of triumph and relief as I figure it out, plot to avoid my shame — letting food spoil.

*                *                      *                      *                      *

The kitchen of my childhood was not always a happy place. My mother stayed at home with my two sisters, my brother, and me for many years, filling our table with hearty meals she had grown up with on the farm — fried chicken, pot roast, meat loaf. She served what my father wanted, always—never scrambled eggs because he preferred them fried; bacon that was limp rather than crisp.  We begged her to make our Sunday frozen orange juice in the blender; we craved the light froth at the top of our glass and, as we kept sipping, the cold tart taste of orange that followed. Though she made it that way sometimes, she seemed annoyed that we would constantly ask.

She did some canning in those days, too. I remember standing next to her, my nose just above the cupboard’s edge, watching her pour hot paraffin onto jars of chokecherry jelly. I sensed she did not like this work; she spoke sharply to me when I asked to have a jelly sandwich for lunch.  I knew even then she was trying to be frugal, having watched her peel a sink full of the tiny apples that grew on the tree right outside the kitchen window for a measly pie or two. The thin spirals of peel mounded in the sink, as she turned each fruit in her hand, boring out the bruises, their sweet, cidery odor filling the kitchen. She did the work because she knew she ought to and because she had helped my grandmother on their farm do it as she grew up, but it didn’t seem to give her much joy.

Then, my parents divorced (my father was an alcoholic and a philanderer), and my only brother died — twin tragedies that would change the whole trajectory of our childhoods and family life. My mother had to take multiple jobs to support us, since at the time she had no marketable skills. She’d gotten married at 19, having given up a decent secretarial job and independence, as did many women in the early 1960’s. She had four children in quick succession and had to use her energy to clean and cook and keep us out of her hair. What spare energy she had was spent to defend my father against bosses made angry when he missed work or came in hung over. She had little energy left over to hold my father accountable for his dalliances; the lipstick collars (the worst clichés) slid by with little fuss, until he confessed to my mother that he had carried on an affair with the next-door neighbor couple. That was enough for her, and the Catholic faith she treasured, to permit divorce.

After the divorce, my father rarely paid child support (which we discovered only years later), and so my mother shouldered the entire burden of feeding us on a very strict budget.  I wonder if she was as proud of her efforts as I am of mine now.

The divorce changed the way we ate, of course. Dinner was whatever could be made quickly — Kraft macaroni and cheese, Dinty Moore beef stew, spaghetti with Ragu sauce, fried Spam sandwiches.  I assumed some of the responsibility for cooking—really, heating—those simple meals because I was interested and because I knew it would help my mother.  The mood in our kitchen, not surprisingly, was often lighter without my father and the tension his drinking had brought to the family. But there was still a hint of tension underneath.

We were not destitute, but we were poor.  We had enough. Mostly. Sitting around the kitchen table on Sunday mornings, we scoured the newspaper—together, all of us, my mother, my two sisters, and I—for grocery coupons and sale items. Eventually, I shouldered this task of meal planning for the entire family. Trips to the grocery store would be as purposeful and efficient as I could design them—there was no extra money for frivolous food we didn’t explicitly need for meals.  I relished the task, took pride in making sure we ate well on our skimpy budget.

Toward the end of the month, inevitably, money dwindled. No more shopping could be done.  We ate generic canned chicken noodle soup (with its salty, slightly rancid broth) or oatmeal, sometimes bread and gravy — a dish I despised. I understood that using up leftovers was our only choice, but I swallowed my mouthfuls grudgingly.

Once the beginning of the month came, my mother got paid, and the welfare check came, we’d have a full cupboard — beginning again a cycle of abundance and want that became a familiar element of the landscape of my childhood.

We were not unhappy.  Dinners were full of conversation; we cleared the kitchen table and did homework there.  A single box of Chef Boyardee pizza mix, embellished with a bit of hamburger, fostered a celebratory mood. We picked up slices speckled with small mounds of meat, bit off greasy mouthfuls, tangy with the flavor of the sauce.  A simple bowl of Dinty Moore beef stew over a toasted English muffin satisfied; its gravy scent was overlaid with the sweet, earthy smell of carrots. The glory was not that the food tasted good; it was that we were together, fighting—though we wouldn’t have said it at the time—for our place in the world, in spite of setbacks.

The older I got, the easier it got; my mother gained job experience. She moved into accounts payable and then into credit — work that was both higher paying and more satisfying.  It took less effort to make ends meet.  She eventually began cooking again, as she transitioned from multiple jobs to just one.  She cooked for pleasure now: rich manicotti, affordable sirloin steak — seasoned and broiled –, mashed potatoes, baby peas.

When we three girls were in high school, she bought a dishwasher and had my uncle install it, though that did mean no more nights when my two sisters and I stood at our separate stations—washing, rinsing, drying and putting away the dishes—with music and good-natured bickering our soundtrack for this simple work.

*                *                      *                      *                      *

The kitchen of my present is a perfect room. It is large and square, painted recently a pale gray green with one wall—the one above the windows that face the front yard (with its bird feeders, hosting cardinals and chickadees)—painted a rich lavender-blue for contrast. Cupboards line three walls, including a tall pantry cupboard.

This is the room that sold the house to me. I spend most of my time here—it’s where the music is, where guests gather.  It’s where I scan cookbooks and magazines, looking for creative ways to use the vegetables in my crisper drawer.

This morning, as I diced that red pepper I was so worried about for scrambled eggs, I smelled its sweet acidity and felt a deep satisfaction with my life; I did not know I would end up here, in such abundance. I lead a life of privilege, one that still takes me by surprise. As a child, we rarely had fresh vegetables, except for potatoes and carrots from our garden. As I chop, I feel enduringly grateful for what I have.

Out of abundance comes vigilance.  I must not waste what I am lucky to have. To have enough also enables me to give, to extend my good fortune to others.

My son Nate stopped by yesterday because he was sick and needed to borrow a thermometer.  He took his temperature in my kitchen, then pocketed the thermometer because he needs to make sure he’s fever-free for work. Before he left, I also managed to place in his hands a few bottles of non-alcoholic beer I bought for him for a recent family gathering. I offered packets of tea for his cold, and a lemon — too good in the tea — for the vitamin C.

On rare occasions, a stalk of celery browns and wilts, or a bowl of leftover gravy or spaghetti sauce (always homemade) molds in its dark corner of the refrigerator.  I throw the celery into the compost bucket—a good save since most food that goes bad in my house can be saved in some way.  If I had a dog, I’d save even more:  I’d feed him whatever I couldn’t eat, as my grandmother did on the farm. 

I have wrestled my demons and won, warded off the certain shame that comes with failure. The reward is the wrestling.  I keep my convictions in a world of ease and waste, with muscular effort.


Tracy Youngblom earned her MFA in Poetry from the Warren Wilson College Program for Writers. She has published two chapbooks of poems and two full-length collections, including her most recent, Boy, set to release in February 2023. Her work has appeared in journals such as Shenandoah, Big Muddy, Cortland Review, New York Quarterly, Potomac Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and many other places. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry, most recently in 2017.

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bret anne serbin – issue #2: food, power, and powerlessness

We pronounce them “luckies,” which always made sense growing up because we felt so lucky to eat them. It was their salty richness, their fluffy potato innards, their cascade of oil soaking the paper towels ensconcing them on the dinner table.

There were other delights at Hanukah every year, from sweet gelt munched far too early in the day, to strips of corned beef I adorably termed “Hanukah bacon,” to the classic gefilte fish only the adults looked forward to. But latkes, for our ever-secularizing family, were the reason for the season.

It was my aunt, Sherri, who guarded the latke recipe. As a teenager and young adult, Sherri had been a wayward rebel, eschewing her parents’ warnings as she threw herself from one reckless adventure to the next. But in her mellow middle age, she had come to adopt a respect for tradition that even Tevya from Fiddler on the Roof would have been proud to see.

Sherri diligently grated potatoes every winter, carefully sprinkled matzo meal into the gloopy mess, and unfailingly watched for the telltale browning on the little pancakes. Her partner, Ron, stood by her side at the stove, piling the sizzling latkes on the paper-towel-laden plates. Early on, I learned that if I helped dish out the spoonfuls of batter into the boiling oil, I might be able to snag a latke or two fresh off the stove.

And as the years went by, I also gradually learned the family recipe for latkes. I learned the delicate but entirely unscientific proportions—one to two potatoes per person, two onions per ten potatoes. I learned how to identify just the right consistency of the mush—it should be gloppy, but not runny. And I learned how to navigate the all-important oil that brought the whole ceremony together, turning spoonfuls of lifeless goop into morsels no one could put down—it had to be sizzling, but not popping. That was the key.

While my three younger siblings washed their hands as soon as potato-peeling duty was over, I, like my aunt before me and who knows how many eldest daughters before us, hovered in the kitchen learning the family lessons.

But would it be enough to make latkes on my own?

I wouldn’t have a choice, moving from Pittsburgh and its rich multicultural heritage, to a Montana town with just over 20,000 people and no synagogue.

I wrung my hands as I drove from outlying town to outlying town, scouring each small grocery store for the crucial Manischewitz ingredient. I eventually thought to google matzo meal, and my kind Jewish forebears directed me to the exact aisle where a tub of the essential item could be found.

I carted my treasure back to my studio apartment, along with my eggs, onions, potatoes, salt and, of course, oil. I bought a cheese grater and sat down to work, pulling the trash can beneath me like we had always done at home. I sawed with a small knife and missed my aunt’s Rotato device.

My fingers bled, potato chunks flew, and I found myself missing the camaraderie of peeling — the familiar arguments over music and the competitions over potatoes peeled. I glanced at my new menorah, still gleaming and free of wax. It had been a gift from my mom when I moved to Montana.

I wrung my fingers out after the unending chore of grating. I mixed in all of the ingredients and, with more than a little trepidation, began to pour the oil.

My first spoonful sizzled sharply, and I winced. Hot oil splashed out of the pan at me. I reached for another dollop, and then the fire alarm started blaring.

I panicked and grabbed the entire pan, yanking it off the burner and running with it out onto the apartment lawn. I threw the hot pan into the snow and fanned at the smoky air with the door. Eventually, the alarm stopped sounding, and I gingerly picked up the pan.

With a fan blaring and the door propped open to the cold December air, I carefully ladled out the rest of my batter. I let the latkes cool in the soaked paper towels and seasoned them generously with salt before I dared try one.

They looked like my aunt’s, they smelled like my aunt’s, but after six hours of nonstop work in the kitchen, I couldn’t bear it if they didn’t taste like my aunt’s. I selected a cooling latke from the top of my pile. And there it was. The salty flavor. The flaky texture. As good as I had tasted in my grandmother’s small apartment in Pittsburgh.

Glowing, I eagerly wrapped up the rest and piled Tupperware upon Tupperware into my green VW Beetle. I careened into my office, my arms laden with latkes, ecstatic to share my triumph with my coworkers.

“Latkes,” I called out breathlessly. “I made latkes, everybody.”

The newsroom stared at me. No one made a move to get out of a chair. I remembered how my family always pronounced Yiddish and Hebrew words differently, from latke, to kebosh, to l’chaim.

“Lat-kuhs,” I deliberately enunciated. “There are lat-kuhs here.”

Still, no commotion.

I wasn’t deterred. I picked up one of the Tupperware containers and carried it to my nearest coworker. He just looked at me blankly. Then the next just stared, and the next, until I found that not a single Montanan in my forty-person newsroom had ever heard of a latke.

Bewildered, I tried to explain their potato-filled flavor without dumbing them down to simple potato pancakes. I couldn’t help but start to panic as I saw the steam on the sides of the Tupperware begin to vanish, signifying the beloved latkes were cooling at an alarming rate.

“Try one!” I insisted.

My friend Jake, a blonde-haired Idaho transplant, lumbered his way over to me and my sprawling latke collection. I babbled about applesauce and sour cream as he took his first bite.

“A little oily,” he noted as he chewed.

I grinned and grabbed one for myself. “I know.”


Bret Anne Serbin is a journalist in Montana. Her nonfiction has been featured in Deep Wild Journal and is forthcoming in Archer Magazine. She graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in English. She’s originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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Kathy watson – issue #2: Food, power, and powerlessness

We have crossed the Big Island of Hawaii to the western Kohala shore in search of a sandy beach and surf. It is raining hard on the eastern shore, in Hilo, where we are staying for two weeks. We haven’t come this way – over seventy miles of two-lane roads – because of the rain. No, the rain is agreeable to us: the rain is warm, the air is warm, the rain comes and goes like a Top Ten Hit every twenty minutes on the AM dial. Our condo on the eastern shore is on the third floor of an old concrete building, and our generous lanai is perched over Carlsmith Park, where the flowering jungle is kept back by the pool wall. Beyond the wall, tiny, clear, blue inlets weave in among the palms and acacias, and turtles break all the state’s laws about staying ten feet away from tourists. This is what I imagine when someone says “paradise.”

We have come this way, west over the saddle road, because paradise and all its rocky cliffs, all its turquoise and white water, waves humping unyielding lava flows, are not the best place to take a dip, to boogie board, or to stroll along the sand. Hapuna Beach is one of the island’s few sandy beaches, over on the western, older shores of the island where time and water have tamed the lava. And so, we have driven over in an old, faded, dirty Honda Civic rented from a local boy named Tony who surely knows his wrecks. We are standing under a shade tree with round, shiny, dark green leaves the size of lunch plates. Stu is holding a boogie board and scanning the sea.

But there are no waves on Hapuna Beach today. Stu shrugs and tosses the boogie board on the picnic table under the tree, and we walk out across the beach. For the afternoon, we read and walk and read and swim. Stu sits at the picnic table after a swim, sees something in the sand, and wiggles loose a piece of flotsam with his toe. It’s a teaspoon, dropped by some recent picnicker. He sets it on the bench and wanders back to the sea.

The sandy teaspoon is upside down on the bench. Something about its shape is familiar to me, and as I reach to turn it over, I know what I will see: a few curlicues and a small flower stamped into the cheap stainless. The very same pattern on the flatware my parents bought with Green Stamps in California and that I used every day of my childhood. A few pieces even came with me when I left home and are still somewhere in our camping equipment in Oregon, sixty-three years after my parents handed those Green Stamps over to the gas station attendant and took home the service for eight, serving spoon and butter knife included. 

The spoon, like so much else in Hawaii, is not from around these parts. The spoon is an example of what’s thwarting me in my Don Quixote-like search for the local and the real – the people, the food – on this big, fecund island. Which, oddly enough, I’ve been thinking about a lot on this particular afternoon, sitting under the tree with the lunch plate leaves, reading MFK Fisher’s Serve it Forth. When I travel, I come full of expectations. Not that I will shop in boutiques or put on a tan. I come looking for local food and local people I can talk to about the food they eat. Just as Fisher in her book is traveling the centuries, looking to make sense of how and why we eat what we do, I want to understand the food of Hawaii, and why and how Hawaiians eat it. I want to experience it from the inside out.

When we arrived at the condo in Hilo, I opened a cupboard to find two boxes of Jell-O left by the previous renters. Not an abomination exactly, but a curious purchase in the land of papaya, passion fruit, and macadamia nuts. Why did they buy Jell-O? And why didn’t they eat it? Maybe they visited the big Hilo Farmer’s Market one morning and brought home a papaya, which made them forget entirely about the strawberry banana Jell-O in the cupboard. 

It is hard to override our baser tastes, driven by convenience and habit. Our condo Jell-O eaters, the spoon in the sand, they’re why I am tilting unsuccessfully at this windmill, searching for local food, and the old ways of eating it. All 1.5 million Hawaiians and the eight-to nine-million tourists who visit here each year are consuming mostly imported food. Only about twenty percent of what Hawaiians eat is actually produced in the islands. In 2013, food imports here were almost $7 billion of Jell-O and other pantry staples, $8 million in bread, pastry, and cakes, $16 million in beer, $19 million in frozen beef, and $23 million in tuna. The number-one fruit import? Oranges. Yet nearly every neatly trimmed yard we pass is home to a tree that groans under a canopy of oranges. So many oranges that paper bags full of oranges are often left at park entrances for our pleasure. 

 As I sit thinking about the power of local food for local people, I watch the Hapuna Beach gardeners raking up the fallen leaves and the larger-than-life, almond-like seeds that have fallen from the trees with the big green leaves. Could these be the Malabar chestnuts I’ve read about? After we return to Hilo, I read up on Hawaiian trees and discover I have spent the afternoon under a Sea Almond, and that its seeds are a prized nut in India. Here in Hawaii, where they import eighty percent of their food across thousands of miles of ocean, they are swept up and tossed away.

There are farmers’ markets here on the Big Island every day of the week. This is a positive sign, no? Farmers, coming together, selling local food. But I had been warned before we ever arrived that most of the food sold there was bought wholesale by the vendors from large produce suppliers, much of which is not even grown on this island or any of its brothers here on this chain of lonely isles, the farthest from other land masses of any islands in the world. Some vendors offer a backyard papaya or long beans from their garden, but the rest of the items on their tables come right out of Dole boxes, sitting in plain sight, and are parceled up into convenient tourist-size bags, meant to go back into that tiny fridge in the resort hotel.

Yes, there were passion fruit, lychee and rambutan. And I was happy for them, and even for the common, familiar things like eggplant and peppers. A banana grown here, or a fresh pineapple is full of the flavor we never taste on the continent, 2,500 miles away, after a long ocean voyage en route to mainland cold storage.

But I wanted more, things I had read about and longed to taste: tree tomatoes, egg fruit, ice cream beans, Malabar chestnuts, ohelo berries from atop the volcanoes. I asked about them, or about particular things I did not know or understand, and a veil came down over the seller’s eyes. They pointed out that papaya was five for $3. What else did I need to know? A busy market is not the time or place for history and cooking lessons. I left, a few somewhat familiar items in my bag, but an ache in my heart to know more, taste more, to be for a moment not a haole, a cracker, a gringo, a honky. But for just a few days, a part of the āina.

Āina. It’s what Hawaiians call the land, but it is more than that.  It is more than the Italian notion of terroir, which is merely all the physical things — land, earth, soil, sun — that impart flavor to a particular wine. To Hawaiians, the land is alive in a very human sort of way: “… it can do things, want things, and know things. [Hawaiians] are the offspring of a union between the earth and sky, making the āina a direct relative,” writes Judy Rohrer in her book, Haoles in Hawaii.

All Hawaiians needed, the āina provided, and then Captain Cook showed up in 1778. Suddenly, āina was not enough. In less than one-hundred years, ninety-five percent of native Hawaiians had disappeared, ravaged by diseases and our ways. “This powerfully demonstrates” writes Rohrer, “how colonialism can be seen as a form of genocide in Hawaii.”

Now the islands are dependent on the mainland and foreign markets (mainly Indonesia and Thailand) for mattresses, cars, the oil to fire their electric generating plants. And yes, stainless steel flatware, oranges and Jell-O.

Maybe I want what is inappropriate for a haole to desire. Or for a honky to want in New Orleans, a gringo to crave in Oaxaca. My own whiteness means I am forever shackled to the only food culture most of my kind can experience and most of it does not interest me: processed fast food and the diminution of the world’s cuisine. Think French cassoulet recreated as franks ‘n beans in a can. I can never make rabbit as a Frenchman, or gumbo as a Cajun, or poke as a Hawaiian. And yet, I want to go deep, make it part of my marrow. I, who am a symbol of another kind to Hawaiians. I am the spoon, I am the Jell-O. I am the descendant of Captain Cook.

So, I bash along against the tide. I arrive. I observe, I ask questions, and I teach myself. I paw through Hawaiian cookbooks in the Hilo bookstore, and set aside in a stack on the floor, unwanted, the books by celebrity Hawaiian chefs and the recipe collections by haoles much like myself. Where is the good stuff, the original ways? There is nothing else left on the shelf.            

I come home to the condo from the Maku’u Farmer’s Market on Sunday with taro and pumpkin blossoms. I dice the unfamiliar pale purple taro and boil it until tender. Is this the way? I don’t know, but I know tubers, and this seems right. When the taro is fork-tender, I drain it, let it cool, mix it with local goat cheese, and stuff the mixture inside the pumpkin blossoms. I dredge them in flour and egg and flour again, and fry them, and serve them up on a salsa of peppers, avocado, papaya, shallots, and cilantro. They are not Hawaiian, but they are very good, out on the lanai, near the turtles.


Kathy Watson is a chef and writer. She is the lead chef of the Chefs Collective at Ruby June Inn in Husum, WA. and was the owner and chef of Nora’s Table in Hood River, OR. She recently completed her first novel, Orphans of the Living, and is searching for an agent. Her earlier journalism career included six years as editor-in-chief of Oregon Business magazine. She lives with her husband, writer Stu Watson, and wonder dog, Satchel, in Hood River. When she is not cooking or writing, she runs the hills. She can be found on her website, Hunger Chronicles, and on twitter at @KathyisHungry1 .

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Decolonial Passage is honored to announce the nominations for next year’s Pushcart Prize Anthology.  This list includes writing published from February to October 2022.  Congratulations to the nominees!

Fiction

“The Trenchcoats” by Ngumi Kibera

“Don’t Come Looking for Me, Father” by Joao Melo

Poetry

“Certify this Land” by Abdulmueed Balogun

“Climbing Walls” by Eaton Jackson

“Southern Report from Amy Jacques Garvey” by Geoffrey Philp

“song for mashombela” by Zama Madinana