The World in My Kitchen

by Colette Rossant

  By now, times were difficult. New York was in the throes of a serious recession and Jimmy’s office had lost several important projects. Marianne was starting her first year in college; Juliette was a senior in high school and applying to colleges. Cecile was a junior and Thomas was about to enter the fifth grade. In a year we would have two children in college, and we were both quite worried. Money would be scarce, and the colleges my children were applying to were very expensive. I looked for more freelance work and Jimmy, hoping to sell some of his drawings, searched for a gallery that would show his work.

  The following year, Juliette was accepted at Dartmouth College, and Marianne transferred to New York University. Our fears were realized, we now had two children in private universities. This time fate was on our side and help came in a very unusual way.

  One evening, two years later, while we were having dinner, Jimmy announced that Habitat, an arm of the United Nations, wanted an architect to go to Tanzania and review the design for the central part of the planned new capital, called Dodoma. The plan, prepared by a Canadian firm, had pleased no one. The President of Tanzania did not like it, nor did the UN experts who reviewed its design. Tanzania? Where was Tanzania? We rushed to an atlas. Tanzania, Thomas read with awe, was far away in East Africa, near Zanzibar and between Kenya and Uganda. Thomas read that Swahili was the national language, although everyone in school had to learn English, and that Tanzania had a Socialist government with a leader called Julius Nyerere. We all looked at Jimmy. Would he apply for the job? Jimmy looked at me. He saw in my face that I was worried. This was a winter trip, I worked, and the children were in school. “It is only for three months,” he said. We had never been separated for more than a week in almost twenty years! Three months? “Of course you must apply,” I said, trying to be a good wife. “It sounds so exciting.” I was petrified.

  In early September, Jimmy left for Tanzania. I heard from him at least once a week.

  “Are you happy? How is the work?”

  “Difficult. The country is fascinating and very beautiful. There are lots of problems with the Canadians. Food is terrible, English, bland, and very little of it.”

  “What problems? Are you OK?”

  “Can’t explain on the phone, I will write and…”

  The telephone would go dead. This happened again and again and was very frustrating. On the phone, I could never tell Jimmy what was happening here in New York. He hadn’t asked how I was or about the children, nor did he answer pressing questions, such as “the bathroom on the top floor is leaking; what do I do; who do I call?”

  In late October, I received a letter from Jimmy saying that the job was exciting; the plan they were reviewing was, as predicted, not very good. He was drawing a lot; he had befriended some of the Tanzanian planners and was working hard.

  A few days later he called. “Listen, I met the president. We got along; he is a very interesting man. He has gray hair like me. By the way, I don’t think I will be able to be back for Christmas.”

  “What, what did you say?”

  “There is too much work.”

  And once again the telephone went dead.

  Not back for Christmas? Had I heard correctly? I was crushed; Christmas was a very important holiday for me. As a child in Cairo, I always dreamt of spending Christmas with my mother, but it never happened. When Marianne was born, I promised myself to always be there for Christmas, and to have a tree with lots of presents under it. Up to that day, I had kept that promise. But now without Jimmy, Christmas would not be the same. I was very upset.

  Suddenly, a week before Christmas, Jimmy called and asked me to join him. He had a few days off, and he would love it if I came. Leave New York and the children? Who would take care of Cecile and Thomas? Could I really go and leave them alone for ten days? When I asked my oldest daughter, Marianne, who was home from college for the holidays, what she thought, she said, “Don’t be ridiculous! I will be here, and there is Lucy. Juliette and I will take care of everything. We can celebrate Christmas a couple of days before, and then you can go.” A few days before Christmas, as soon as school let out, we bought a tree and decorated it. On the evening of the twenty-second, I placed all the presents under the tree, and we all opened them the next morning. At night, bundled up in my winter clothes and heavy boots, carrying a suitcase filled with summer clothes and food, and after many speeches, hugs, and good-byes to the children and Lucy, I left via London for Tanzania. I arrived in Dar es Salaam on Christmas morning, laden with gifts that Jimmy had requested—canned pates, tuna, sardines, packages of cookies and cakes, and a bra for the wife of one of the officials in Dodoma. I had roamed New York City looking for that bra—a size 44 DD!

  The Dar es Salaam airport seemed primitive; a large wooden structure, open on all sides. Luggage was carried by hand to and from the planes. After going through customs and a passport check, I looked for my luggage and Jimmy. I found neither. Women in brightly colored wraps and men in khaki-colored safari suits were moving around seemingly without purpose, unaffected by the confusion, the damp heat, the noise. In my winter coat and boots, I felt faint from the heat. What should I do if he did not show up? I knew no one here. Finally, I saw Jimmy running to greet me. “Sorry, sorry…I was in a meeting…forgot the time,” he panted. His embrace soothed me, but I had to tell him the bad news. “No luggage…it’s lost.” Jimmy looked around, found an airline official, and displaying his UN credentials, he asked for help. “No problem, Mzee Jim, we will find it soon and bring it to the hotel. No problem!” No problem was an expression I would hear time and time again in Tanzania.

  We were informed that our cookie-cutter hotel, ten stories high with balconies overlooking a boulevard, had no hot water until late afternoon. I needed a shower desperately, but I had to wait, so Jimmy took me for a walk around town. The streets smelled vaguely of gasoline and fried food, but my hunger overcame my slight nausea. Jimmy said that the best food in Dar was Indian. As we sat down in an open-air Indian café, I looked at him. In the past three months, he had changed a lot. In New York, he was often tense, nervous, and worried. Today, he seemed relaxed, joyful and smiling. He looked so comfortable, so at home in this little Indian restaurant. He had lost weight and looked at least ten years younger. I smiled at him, happy to see him so well, and as I munched on tiny delicious samosas, fried dough filled with spicy meat and potatoes, I listened to his chatter. He explained that a very large Indian population had been imported to Tanzania when the English were building the East African railroad system. He had many Indian friends in Dodoma. While he ordered the next dish, a highly seasoned chicken curry, more sauce than chicken, and an excellent ice-cold Tanzanian beer, bottled in unlabeled brown glass, he told me that the calculators he had asked me to bring were for them. The Indians in Dodoma were Sikhs and were in the construction business. I learned that trouble was brewing between the Canadian team, who had developed the plan, and the Tanzanians. “Let’s have some dessert, la specialité de la maison,” he said mockingly. It was something that I had never seen before, bright orange twirls of deep-fried dough soaking in honey. More beer please…this was pure sugar!

  Back at the hotel, there was no suitcase and no hot water. I removed my boots and my pantyhose full of runs and rinsed my swollen feet in cool water. We were going to have dinner with George Kahama, Director of the CDA (Capital Development Authority) and his wife. What about shoes? Could I at least buy some shoes? Out again, down to the main shopping street. As I looked at the shoe stores, I realized that all the shoes had five- to six-inch heels, most of them platform. I tried several pairs and finally settled on one that didn’t seem as high, and out I went, tottering as if I were walking on eggs, but certainly better off than in heavy winter boots. Kahama arrived on time, a small, charming, and rotund man, with an easy laugh, wearing an elegant safari suit. His wife was twice his size, beautiful, with a regal bearing. I realized then that the bra was for her. She was wearing a long flowing white dress, and around her s
houlders was draped a yellow and green kente cloth with political slogans all over it. The effect was stunning. I told my sad story: no suitcase, no clothes. She smiled and said it would come back to me, “No problem!”

  The next morning a package for me arrived at the hotel. Inside was a long, blue dress, much like the one Kahama’s wife wore. A hand-written note said that her dressmaker had made it that night for me and that she hoped it would fit me. She hoped I would find my suitcase soon. I am sure I did not look as beautiful as she did, but I was thankful for being able to change into clean clothes.

  The city’s dilapidated houses, the broken sidewalks, the children walking barefoot, and the beggars all disturbed me. But I was in awe of the fish market, sprawled on a sandy beach near the harbor. Thin, shirtless men were calling out to shoppers to view their enormous kingfish, prawns, and sharks. One vendor was cooking prawns in a huge wok-like pan over an open fire. Jimmy walked by my side, at ease with the scene, explaining that President Nyerere, a Socialist leader, had transformed the country by making education mandatory and by regrouping the population into new villages, each built around a central square with a clinic, party headquarters, and a school. But the country was still very poor, and corruption in Dar es Salaam, he told me solemnly, was rampant. Nyerere hoped to change this by moving the capital to Dodoma, now a village in the country’s interior, without Dar’s constant physical reminders of Tanzania’s colonial past. Nyerere felt that setting the capital in the center would help the poorest areas in the country develop.

  Back at the hotel, I called the airline for my suitcase. “No problem,” said the man who answered. “We’ll send it to Dodoma on the next plane.” That afternoon we flew to Dodoma.

  Dodoma had once been a railway junction between Dar es Salaam and Uganda’s capital, Kampala. The Germans had built the railroad and Dodoma, which was then just a small junction town. Much later, the English had enlarged the station and built the hotel where we were staying. The hotel was lovely with low-lying buildings surrounding a magnificent, arcaded courtyard with flowering trees and exotic plants. There were little tables in the shade for afternoon tea and drinks. I felt as if I were part of a Masterpiece Theater series about colonial East Africa.

  Jimmy told me what was happening with the new capital plans and his job. Over the past two months, Jimmy had analyzed the plans for the future capital, pointing out all its mistakes. He had also drawn a preliminary plan of his own, which had impressed Kahama, his team of young Tanzanian planners, and even the president. “Now,” Jimmy explained, “I have to resign from the job, go back to New York, and reapply as the planner for the city downtown. I will then be able to bring my own team.” What about me? “Well,” Jimmy said with excitement in his voice, “you could come with Thomas for three months in the summer and stay here with him in Dodoma. The government would give us a large house with a servant, and it would be a marvelous vacation for both of you.”

  The next day, while Jimmy was in meetings, I roamed around the small town. Low-lying buildings and arcades that housed small shops surrounded Dodoma’s main square: a restaurant here and there, a tire place, a garage, and two Indian grocery stores. I went into one of the grocery stores; most of the shelves were almost empty, with just a few cans, some vegetables, soap, and sprays for cockroaches. Beyond the grocery was a beauty salon. As I looked through the glass, I saw women who had their hair done in very intricate braids, a fashion that would hit New York years later. Their hair was beautiful; each woman seemed to have a different design. What patience they had!

  Next to the beauty salon was an Indian sweet shop offering desserts much like the one I had in Dar es Salaam; further down was a small store, a hole in the wall, selling fried samosas and other Indian dishes. At one corner of the square was a stand selling tiny pieces of liver on skewers and roasted tiny bananas. I tried a couple of bananas and was quite surprised; they were so sweet, and their strong aroma was intoxicating. Near the center of town were large villas built by the English after World War I. They now housed expatriates working on the new capital. A little further from the center were simple, one-story stucco houses with red tiled roofs that Tanzanians and Indians lived in—those, of course, who owned businesses. Several villages of Wagogo (Dodoma’s local tribe, Kahama’s people who lived in sunken mud houses), surrounded Dodoma. When I recounted what I had done during the day, Jimmy told me that about ten miles out of town were encampments of Masai, a tribe who raised large herds of goats and cows. The town had a country club, left over from the British colonials, with a swimming pool and tennis courts. Today the club’s members were Tanzanians who had come from Dar es Salaam to work on the capital project and wealthy Indians and expats who came from Scandinavia, England, France, and Germany.

  That night we ate in a garden restaurant with an enormous grill. Small, scrawny chickens, marinated for an entire day in lime juice, hot peppers, ginger, and cloves, were broiled and served with grilled bananas and beer. I was famished and gobbled the moist, lean chicken flesh. I can say now, without a doubt, that the Tanzanian way of preparing fowl is the best I’ve ever discovered in all my travels. I was so enchanted by the way they cooked the chicken, that later on I used that recipe in one of my cookbooks.

  A few days later, I flew back to Dar es Salam. Jimmy told me he would resign in a few weeks and fly back to New York to wait for the president and Kahama to apply to the UN for his return. As I boarded the plane to New York, “No problem” were the last words I heard. The suitcase turned up two months later after a wonderful vacation.

  Once back in New York, Jimmy waited impatiently for a word from the UN. Would he go back to Dodoma and design the center of the new capital? Six months went by before he received the hoped-for answer. Jimmy and Thomas were jubilant. Thomas insisted that we all take Swahili lessons before the summer.

  For the next three weeks, I saw little of Jimmy. He had to choose a team to go with him, and he worked day and night on the preliminary design of the capital. He selected two young architects: John Diebboll, a soulful, quiet twenty-three-year-old who seemed almost to worship his boss, and Tom Anderson, more experienced than John, and quite ambitious, and a few others as well. They all left at the end of March with the promise that I would follow with Thomas in June. Marianne, home from college, would hold the fort in New York, along with my intrepid Lucy. The end of June arrived very quickly, and now it was our turn to suffer a slew of shots and quinine pills. Jimmy’s letters were full of requests: bring food (there was very little in Dodoma) like canned beans, sugar, flour, powdered milk, and spices. Don’t forget makeup, lots of it, cheap calculators, utility candles, and over-the-counter medicines. Stop in Paris and buy a bicycle for Thomas, along with fresh butter, cheese, cookies, and crackers. A letter would arrive every week with new requests. I ordered a food processor with a transformer and stocked up on shampoo. At the airport, we looked like refugees leaving New York forever.

  The plane from Paris to Dodoma stopped in Ethiopia for a couple of hours. As we left the plane, I was told by an airline official that Thomas and I could not go back on the plane because they needed our seats for a Chinese delegation. I stood there dumbfounded. We would have to stay in Addis Ababa for two to three days until another plane came. Sitting on a hard plastic airport chair, I looked at Thomas, whose lanky legs were drawn up to his chin, patiently waiting. I suddenly had an idea. I whispered to him, “Throw yourself on the floor and start moaning. Say you are very sick and try to throw up.” Thomas was so convincing that the manager of the airline, fearing that something terrible would happen to my son, decided to put us back on the plane in first class!

  The house in Dodoma was spare, airy, and large, with two bedrooms, a living/dining room, and a simple kitchen with an electric range and a refrigerator. The sink had only one faucet for cold water. The bathroom was rudimentary, but the house was bright and very breezy. There was a lovely garden with an avocado tree and a papaya tree. Jimmy had chosen a young Tanzanian in his early twenties to h
elp us with the house. Simon (many Tanzanians have two names, one English and one Swahili) would clean, take care of the garden, and help me in any way I wanted. He lived two hours away and walked to our house every morning. I stored the butter and cheeses from Paris and the bread and vegetables from the Dar market in the refrigerator. Our first night there, we took Thomas to the chicken restaurant for dinner. Thomas loved it and decided that Dodoma was a great place to be until we returned home and found the house in darkness. No more electricity! The butter had already melted in the late afternoon heat; we had to find a cool place for the cheeses and the vegetables. We lit candles and undressed in semi-darkness.

  “When will electricity come back?” I asked.

  Jimmy smiled. “I don’t know. The roads from Dar es Salaam are flooded, and the new electric generator is stuck in the harbor. This is a poor country, but don’t worry we will manage quite well.”

  I lay next to Jimmy on our thin mattress, somewhat incredulous that we were living in this tiny African village. Suddenly, I heard a light thud on our bed, as if something had fallen from the ceiling. I screamed, Jimmy lit a candle, and we looked down. On the sheet were two small lizards, light green and about four-inches long; six more were still clinging to the ceiling. Jimmy tried to reassure me.

  “Don’t be afraid…relax, Colette…they’re harmless.”

  “I hate lizards and large bugs.”

  “But these are very friendly; in fact, they eat the bugs that would hurt you.”

  With this statement, he swept our new friends off our blanket.

  For the next few weeks, I would count the lizards on the ceiling before I closed my eyes. If they were only a few—three or four—I’d fall asleep, but if there were more, I had a hard time. A few days later, when I admitted to Simon that I was afraid of lizards, he made a point of removing most of the lizards with a broom just before he left the house. I was grateful for this.