West Africa Journal

Here in Sierra Leone we are used to ‘having make do’ and substituting for  a lot of items that most of you would take for granted.
One day Kelsey and I desperately wanted some gingerbread cake. Our mouths were watering for it.  We checked the baking cupboard and, sure enough, there was a half a jar of molasses there.  Great!  We started mixing the ingredients together and then got to the ginger…..we emptied the cupboard but the only ginger to be found was a tiny bag of very mouldy ginger powder.  Now we fretted because we had wasted other precious baking ingredients, like the rarely found molasses and we still wouldn’t have our gingerbread.
Suddenly Kelsey turned to me with a smile.  What? I asked, not feeling particularly smiley myself.  She dashed off to her room and returned a second later with ginger capsules, used for stomach upsets and motion sickness.  Now I shared her enthusiasm.  We grabbed some scissors and began snipping the top off the capsules, measuring out enough ginger to make our cake.  I know you are wondering how many capsules it took to get a tablespoon of ginger.  In order to let you get a feel for how we live, next time you want gingerbread, pick up some ginger capsules, your scissors and see for yourself…

Filed under: Uncategorized on April 4th, 2009