The Big Bang!

This week we had a GREAT group of ladies from GA here to help us out. One of the ladies, Debbie, is a trained chef! She taught the girls at the girls home how to cook crepes and then taught the ladies out in the village how to make "White Bean Chicken Chili". This was quite the experience.  Of course, Because we had food, our class was a little larger than usual!! When they first came in they just seemed to be so unsure of  what all was going on and many of them were laughing and carrying on at us as we tried to teach "them" how to cook. You have to remember that these women have been cooking for a LONG time, many of them starting as young girls, and they know how to make some tagine! They spend a majority of their lives in the kitchen working hard over ONE gas grill, not a four burner stove and over.  As the afternoon went on, there were several funny things that happened including several nursing mothers and hungry babies, Chatty Cathy's, and weird faces to new foods. My favorite moment however was when we had an EXPLOSION from the gas tank. Apparently, you can't lay a lighter close to a gas tank/flame or it will explode!?! So this is how it all played out... Debbie was showing them what to put in their chili and she had stepped away to start showing them how to make a "special" salad. As she was talking, a friend of ours was translating for her. All of a sudden from the back of the room I saw this huge flash of light and a LOUD boom! I looked around and saw all these women running for the door, which by the way was blocked by more women and the table we were cooking on (next time, we'll set the room differently).  I saw our friend reach to make sure she still had her hair and I watched the women sitting in front of me (on the back row!) jump over rows to get out of there! At the time I thought to myself, I might die here in Africa! I watched and waited to see if my friend Shari was making a move or not and she seemed pretty calm, so I sat there. After a few minutes of craziness we got all the ladies to settle down and we gathered ourselves back together. After a few more minutes I then began to laugh a WHOLE lot about the situation.  It was scary and funny, all at the same time! 

It was such a GREAT afternoon despite the lighter that blew up and I am so thankful for a lady like Debbie who came and shared her life, her story, and her talents with these women. It will hopefully open up the doors for future "cooking" lessons! Maybe next time we won't blow up anything!