This morning I was out in the vegetable garden looking for signs of sprouting cabbage and spinach that we had sown a week ago. Among the weeds, I did find the tiny seedlings pushing through bravely, but I had a surprise coming. The young Zulu gardener drew my attention to an abundance of ready food growing in the ruins of the tiny stone cottage only meters away: Umbido, a type of wild spinach, and a staple food in the rural areas. I grew up with much the same in the northern parts of the country, but called Marogo in the Sotho language.
Enter my new helper and friend, Winnie Nkosi. She lives on the edge of the Zaaihoekdam in a traditional mud house with no electricity. Twice a week she walks the four odd kilometres to help me with all things domestic. She has also taken it upon herself to teach me the Zulu language and culture with optimistic determination. The planned lunch menu was immediately ditched in favour of a lesson in local cooking and Winnie showed me the difference between weeds and Umbido and how to pick only the young shoots as the older ones taste bitter.
Come lunchtime we each had a bowl of steaming Phuthu (mealie meal porridge) smothered in Umbido with braised onion and a hint of curry added to it.
She came and stood next to me as I was loading the photographs below onto my laptop. "My daughter gave me one of those," she motioned to the laptop, " but I don't know how to use it much. And we have no internet."
"You must bring it along and I will show you what you want to know," I said, trying to hide my surprise and thinking how George has been browsing through computer catalogues lately, very much in need of a laptop to keep up to date.
In this new way of life, you never can tell.
Matilda
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