A kitchen in Malawi

When Juliet asked me if I’d like to help out in the kitchen, I didn’t hesitate to say yes. I motioned to Matt, who was headed into the field with our team to learn about agriculture and irrigation projects. “Hey, I’m going to hang out with Juliet. You okay with that?” He wrinkled up his face and said, “Yah, sure. Have fun, cute woman.” He jogged after our group to catch up, and I worried for a moment about his worry.

But no way was I going to miss this.

We’d been in Malawi for four days, days packed with staff development and get-to-know-you dinners, plus a single home visit, a phrase that doesn’t begin to describe the world-rocking moment when Matt and I met Mr. and Mrs. Salimoyo outside their mudhut, a hundred or so children pressed around us to see what white people looked like, as we shared warm handshakes, stories, and gifts.

Today, Saturday, was our first full day of field education. We started out in a pre-school. Eventually, I stopped asking questions and playing clapping games and moved on with the rest of our team to this next stop, the place Matt had been looking forward to visiting for months. Here he’d see a windmill. And irrigation troughs. He’d get to ask questions about farming techniques and crop yields and fertilizer. He might even get to plant some maize. And I was willing to throw away the chance to see that in favor of cooking?

But this was about so much more than cooking.

This was about friendship. And trust.

Earlier that morning, Juliet and I rode the bus together into the village. She set aside her shyness to share bits about herself: her complex relationship with her mother, her dreams for children, her homemade yogurt recipe. I talked a bit about marriage and step-parenting and, mostly, how much I hoped Matt would fall in love with Africa.

I want all my loves to merge into one big happy love-fest.

When Juliet asked me to come meet her friends and help cook lunch, the invitation felt heavy with promise and with some other thing, a thing I couldn’t name in that moment. Almost (but not quite) like a test.

The kitchen, as it turns out, was a collection of cooking fires situated near a tree. Six or so women bustled about, their hair and skirts wrapped in chintenjes. Juliet approached them and spoke a few words in Chichewa. A woman named Mavis took off her wrap and motioned for me to put it on. I thanked her with a smile—no smile in return—and sat down in the dirt where Julie pointed.

It was quiet. I listened to the snap of the fires and chickens rustling in the dirt for cooking scraps. The women spoke little, mostly concentrating on their tasks.

Eventually, Juliet came to me with a knife as long as a machete. She motioned to a five-gallon bucket of greens and asked me if I could help chop them. I thought, “Oh! Yes! I can chop greens all day long. I know how to do this! I’m in!” But then I looked for a cutting surface. There wasn’t one. Thoko, another World Relief friend, gestured for me to copy her. She tightly held several lengths of greens in her left hand and then used her right hand to cut ribbons off the end in a maneuver I still don’t quite get, one that was precise, consistent, and didn’t make her hand bleed.

I tried it once. No ribbons of greens. No blood, either, so I tried again. I hesitated because I genuinely worried I would filet my knuckles as the knife grazed by.

Juliet frowned and said, “May-leesa, let me just check your knife.” I started to laugh. “Oh, Juliet,” I said. “The knife is fine. The greens are fine. The bucket is fine. Melissa is not fine. I don’t know how to cut vegetables without a cutting board.”

She tipped a pile of tomatoes out of a nearby flat basket and demonstrated how I could use it as a chopping surface. Eureka. My ribbons were not as uniform as Thoko’s, but I deftly worked my way through the bucket. We chatted easily about kids and our jobs, gazing often at the hills rolling away down to the maize fields below.

We fell silent. Eventually, an elderly woman stopped by to greet her friends. I wiped my hands on my skirt so I could clasp hers and greet her. “Muli bwanji,” I enthused. In about ten seconds, we’d plumbed the depths of my Chichewa, so I resumed cutting greens.

Juliet squatted next to me moments later. “May-leesa,” she said. “It is our custom for newcomers to wait to be greeted. You must be silent.”

Crap, I thought. I’m failing Malawi 101. I need a cutting board, and I’ve offended some old lady. I bet these women think I’m completely incompetent.

I thought longingly of my Wüstofs and my food processor. I wanted to transport these women to my kitchen, where I could show them how to peel garlic and make homemade pesto. “Who am I kidding?” I thought. I’m incompetent. Take away my tools and recipes, and I’m nothing.

Juliet brought me the pile of tomatoes, freshly rinsed and ready for chopping. Thoko and I set to work on them, she using her hand as a cutting surface, and me chopping into a bright blue plastic bowl.

We moved on to tiny red onions. I kept my head down and my thoughts to myself, determined not to commit any more faux pas.

Finally, Juliet motioned me to join her over one of the fires. She had a large pot of water boiling, balanced precariously over a stack of bricks. I used my knife and a long wooden stick, one end rounded just enough to function as a spoon, to scoop piles of greens into the boiling water. Together, we incorporated the greens into the pot, wilting them one clump at a time. The sharp smell of mustard greens filled the air and mixed with the aroma of chicken and goat stews simmering on the other fires.

And then the time came to redeem myself. “May-leesa,” Julie asked. “Do you think you can cook the tomatoes and onions by yourself?” I sensed the other women watching me. The moment wasn’t about friendship, really, but about something else. Like equality and mutual respect—characteristics that should precede friendship, really, if I want real ones.

Juliet removed the greens and balanced a clean pot over a fire. She poured in the remains of cooking oil from the bottom of a plastic bottle, and it began to sizzle. There’s no way to adjust the heat over an open fire, other than pulling the pot off, and since I didn’t have a potholder or even a rag, I started spooning in the onions and prayed they wouldn’t scorch.

“Keep them moving, May-leesa,” Julie urged. But, dear God, the pot kept threatening to topple off the bricks. I scooped and stirred, scooped and stirred, and hoped to high heaven I wasn’t about to dump lunch into the dirt. Eventually I was happy with the onions’ color, so I added the tomatoes, and begged the kitchen gods to help.

Stir, stir, stir. Don’t dump the pot over. Keep the vegetables moving.

And when the time was right, I told Juliet we could add the tomatoes and onions to the greens. She squinted at them and nodded, and we tossed the whole mess together.

I stepped back, happy. My eyes were stinging from the smoke, but I knew the relish would taste fine.

A few feet away, the women who had been cooking all along, the ones who had not spoken to me, began to make the nsima. Nsima is the heart of a Malawian table, a starch made from corn flour and briskly boiling water. Getting it to thicken is no less tricky than making gravy from corn starch and turkey drippings on Thanksgiving day, but nsima takes far more muscle.

Using a pot big enough to bathe a couple of toddlers, the women set to work. I stepped back to give them space. “Watch them,” Julie whispered. One cook wielded a wooden spoon that was about five feet long, while two other women took turns dumping corn flour into the pot. The spoon-lady attacked the mixture with both hands and her upper body to keep the ingredients moving. More flour, more flour, more flour. More brutal stirring, until the first woman, shining with sweat, backed away and another stepped in to take her place.

I nodded at Juliet. “This is pretty amazing,” I said.

A stack of plastic plates appeared, and the women moved into production mode. Mavis used one plate to scoop out a patty of nsmima and then the bottom of another to shape it. The oldest woman handed me two plates and motioned to the pot.

Julie looked impressed. “They want your help,” she said. She nodded and said, “You must.”

So I did. I scooped and pressed and passed my patties to the grandmother. They were not perfect.

But I was invited to help.

As we carried the food down to the church where we’d share our meal with villagers, Julie tapped my shoulder. “You are a good student, May-leesa. You see? We in Malawi have something to teach.”

There are moments in this life of mine I want to cling to. I think maybe I can if I just memorize the details: the sting of the smoke in my eyes, the tight warmth of Mavis’s chintenje around my hips, the sun baking into the bricks of the tiny church where we carefully set bowls of stewed chicken and goat, a great big pot of relish, and bright blue plates of nsima around the altar.

We washed our hands in an orange bucket just outside the door. And like every church supper I’ve ever been to, everyone jockeyed for seats and plates and conversation. I watched folks eat, on the lookout for satisfied nods.

I sat with a plate of food in my lap and my back against a warm wall. I tried to explain to Matt how I felt.

I had not made deep friendships. I had not really cooked the meal, and I had not learned a thing about the women I worked with.

Except for these things: They are serious and brave and tired and perfectionists and at their best when they work together.

I realized that, actually, I know these women well. They are my friends and my sisters and my girls. They are the women at my church. They are the women I stand in line with at the grocery store.

They are my students, and they are my teachers.

These women taught me about quiet, innovation, and trust. They asked me to set down my pride and pick up a spoon. They invited me to join them around their fires and their altar.

In ways both ancient and new, we shared work, and we shared a meal.

I left that place full.