A little homecookin'

My Japanese neighbour, Tomoko, and I hooked up to do a bit of home cookin’ this past Saturday. Pooling together her big salary (to by gross quantities of meat) and my little salary (to chip in for beer), we bbq-ed (or brai-ed, as it’s said in Malawi) and drank our way from mid-afternoon into the evening with the company of good friends and the luxury of Tomoko’s veranda. 

A highlight for me was seeing our landlord and landlady make it out to our little party. Mr. and Mrs. Kwanjani own my bachelor pad, and Tomoko’s house, along with a few other flats, and it’s to them that we pay our monthly rent. They’re both retired—and both sweethearts—so to see them stop in for a bit of chicken and some chickpea salad made our day.

Two days before our brai, Tomoko returned from a work trip out to Mchinji (on the Zambian border) with a live chicken. Giving a chicken to a visitor is standard practice in Malawi to a visitor of sufficient importance, but receiving a chicken isn’t quite so common for us non-Malawians. So, Tomoko stopped at the Kwanjani’s place and asked if they’d like to have the chicken for themselves. Being the kind folks they are (and realizing a non-Malawian was a bit out of her depth) Mrs. Kwanjani told us she’d keep the chicken inside tonight, and we’d all have chicken and nsima for dinner tomorrow.

Helping Mrs. Kwanjani with dinner preparations, I was quite sure I had never seen an animal go from “living” to “on-my-plate” quite so quickly. Can’t say that it diminished my appetite, though. Maybe it was how she cooked it, but that chicken was particularly tasty. (Here’s some pictures showing Mrs. Kwanjani doing her butcher work.) Though, at the end of it all, I was still glad we could just buy our chicken at the supermarket and skip the plucking and gutting.