Food - Nshima

Nshima at Packachele Orphanage School 

This is nshima and it looks like mashed potato. It's stodgier though and doesn't taste like it.. If people eat in the compound they eat eat nshima. It is made from mealie-meal or ground maize mixed with water, cooked outside upon charcoal fires and constitutes the staple food in Zambia and much of sub-Saharan Africa.

Zambian women cook it and discuss it, criticising each other's behind backs, or praising it to the face in the same way as Yorkshire puddings here. It is the subject of a thousand chit-chats and complements and an anchor of time, the eating of it a reference point for the day, each day. "What time do you eat nshima?" - can be asked of anyone and it's usually eaten around midday meal or later in the evening. The day is often structured around it. It is eaten sociably or alone.

Each maker, my self included, has a particular method of preparation and many proudly possess a traditional and secret mixing and kneading technique with a requisite level of salt an all important ingredient. You can buy little bags or  big sacks of it and the more lumps you can manage, the more of a man you sometimes are. It fills you up quickly, it does the job, but it's of little or no nutritional value and has only a suggestion of taste, depending on the quantity of salt used. What it lacks in goodness it makes up for in carbohydrates and Zambians, it could be said, like their carbohydrates. Cake is very popular, welcome at any time, those times supported by the frailest excuse.

I know what to look for, what is required, from nshima and can now tell the difference between good and bad. I have made good nshima, judged by trusted Zambians to be so and critisised my sisters attempts. To comment on the quality of a person's nshima is usually the main entrance into their good books. It should congeal and roll into a ball but not stick to the hands and be hot, steaming hot. It retains it's heat for ages once cooked, by being covered with a metal container until time to serve.

There are political issues surrounding mealie-meal and the subsistence farmers growing it although I am not au fait with the issues. They have to produce a certain amount and sell to the government at a certain price. To turn maize into mealie meal you need access to a grinder. People in the compound don't have grinders or the finances to obtain one and neither do a lot of the subsistence farmers. The mealie-meal end product often has to be bought back by the people who grew it in the first place at a price they struggle to afford. This leads to hunger.

Kelly, the Dynamic Stars Academy coach lives on one Kw70 (£7.50) bag of mealie meal a month with which to make nshima daily. He eats nshima with his family, auntie, cousins and nieces in the evening around seven o'clock. It is eaten with side portions of vegetables - Lusaka beans (the best beans in the whole of Zambia, apparently), rape leaves, groundnut or spinach - and is rolled into a ball in one hand and dipped into the accompanying dish. There are no knives and forks. Three varying sizes of Kapenta (little whole dried fish) are prepared as a treat and more occasionally, perhaps once a week, on special occasions like somebody's birthday, or when receiving visitors, meat, usually chicken, or high in protein caterpillars will be served, both of which are quite expensive.

There are loads of chickens in the compound, almost as many chickens as children. The eggs they lay are delicious at least the ones I've eaten. I never knew an egg could be that delicious and one evening I had double eggs on toast twice, straight after one another and the taste sensation overrode any guilt from gluttony. I don't know what the chickens eat and seeing them wandering around the paths of the compound pecking, I'm not sure they do either.

Perhaps the finest example of nshima that springs to mind is that prepared by the cooks at Packachele Orphanage School, N'gombe, Lusaka. It was so good the first time that I would unashamedly plan my subsequent visits there to coincide with school meal times. As with many places in Zambia and traditionally as part of the Bantu culture, meals and food is always shared with visitors or strangers or those needing refreshment and sustenance. This is one of the main reasons why the people living in extreme poverty in the compounds of Lusaka and else where in Zambia do not starve to death. Hunger is frequent and malnutrition a  widespread and common concern but tribal and family networks are such that if you are short of food or hungry you can approach to your neighbour and ask for food, a request that is unlikely to be questioned, let alone declined. In the compound food is shared.

Shika somewhat reluctantly sharing some culinary secrets