St Patrick's Day na nyama choma

The GOM has threatened to throw a barbecue over the last year, and me being around was the perfect excuse. That it was on St Patrick's Day was coincidental. The Irish diaspora was represented by me and our neighbour - both 2nd generation - and one born and bred Irish woman, who has been to and from Tz for the last 20 odd years. She recalled her first Paddy's night in 1983 when she had been billeted to learn Kiswahili in a convent in Tabora headed by a formiddable Dutch Mother Superior. Rose was quickly marked as heading for eternal damnation mainly because she preferred to spend her evenings with the male volunteers living in the priests' house half a mile away; the bar and the snooker tablethere being the main attraction. Rev Mother imposed a requirement that for safety reasons Rose had to have a male escort, the volunteers volunteered, and on second thoughts there had to be two, "to prevent scandal"... But on this St Patrick's night an American missionary asked Rose to come to dinner, and Rev Mother was satisfied that she could come to no harm in the company of a man of God. She might have been less complacent if she had heard the crates rattling in the back of Fr Chuck's vehicle. He had been asked by President Nyerere to stay on to develop the Tabora honey industry, and his bright wheeze was to create honey based alcoholic drinks. Rose was to be his captive tasting panel. He had honey aperitifs, champagne, wine, liquers - any and every possible bevvy which could be made from honey. She swore that the chicken they were to eventually eat was not even killed until she'd been there two hours, and by that time all was lost. On arriving back at the convent at 4am she was smuggled in by a young Indian nun, whom she thinks became drunk on the fumes, but who covered for her "illness" later that day. I don't think this made her a fan of Tabora booze.
Whilst preparing the food, I heard on the World Service that NY firemen had been demoted from pole position in the NY St Patrick's Day parade because of last year's drunken behaviour. Now, I'd always thought that was obligatory.
People naturally behaved far more soberly at our do, or perhaps they can hold their liquor! We had made the usual Tz calculation, only half the people you invite, and two thirds of those who accept, will actually come. However this time we got it wrong: they came bringing their sisters in law, or their nieces, and whereas previously wives would never turn up, for this one they came even when their husbands were out of Dar. So it was a rather more crowded than we anticipated, but luckily I had done my usual party food planning -work out how much you need, panic, and double it, just in case, God forbid, there isn't enough to go round. Some people I hadn't seen since 2001/2, so I had good times catching up.
It could have been disastrous though. Jeroam went down with malaria on the Friday, very tough for him, but difficult for us too, as this really was a three man job.With the number of people coming, the GOM should have been full time mpishi ministering to the meat, and try as we might, we have never been able to get Tanzanians to just help themselves to drinks, so there has to be someone doing that, and then someone has actually got to talk to people.
Getting it ready was just a matter of working out which supermarket was likely to have which things, - the GOM in his semi-batchelor existance is pretty well stocked, but with some odd gaps: he hasn't a single tray for example, and I don't know where all the teatowels have gone. I had to become pretty inventive in finding alternative uses for kitchen implements.
However the most important lack - given that this was a barbecue - was the barbecue itself. Harking back to our days in Zambia we call it by the South African name - braii - which in those days was an oil drum cut in half and placed on welded X legs. The Tanzanian jiko, -not the little charcoal burners, but a real biggie - does bear a resemblance to a barbecue you could buy at B&Q, but looks as if it is made out of meccano. Now, buying food here, given the heat, the fridge and freezer capacity, and the liklihood of electricity outages, should be left to the last minute, but it might have been wise to have thought of getting a jiko rather earlier than the day before. The show room par excellence for jikos was on the patch of grass opposite the massively ugly prison/fortress which is the new US Embassy, (built to replace the one destroyed in the 98 Nairobi and Dar bombing). Here, you could buy them in all shapes and sizes. The GOM drives past the embassy each day to work, but had failed to notice that the majiko emporium had been cleared off some months ago in the roadside clearup I mentioned in a previous post. He eventually located an alternative supplier but who only had a few, and only one decent size one, which rather hampered his bargaining position. We borrowed a second small jiko for cooking boerwors (thick South African sausage) so we could separate out the meat for Muslims and non Muslims. The chicken I wasn't taking a chance with on a barbecue and I cooked it in the oven. Mind you, they were the most anorexic birds I have seen in a long time, even here. All the result of a tactical decision (not mine) not to go to the only decent butcher in the city just because he was over an hour's drive away.
These houses were never designed with the convenience of cooks in mind, but then the occupants were always expected to have someone to cook for them. Even with all the doors and windows open, and the fans and extractor going full blast, it was like the Black Hole of Calcutta.
At the end it was the usual performance, gliding like swans on the surface, paddling wildly under water. It seemed to go well, but I think it was 11pm before I was able to raise the first (alcoholic ) glass to St Paddy. Over the next few hours I managed to sink a bottleful. In the early hours the GOM was looking forward to his bed, and started clearing up, and complained to me the next morning that the last hard cases failed to take the hint and leave. He clearly missed that I had got to the garroulous stage and was urging them to stay! I got to bed after 4am, sometime after he'd stumped off to bed in true GOM fashion. Not before, in expansive mood, I'd decided the night guards might like the leftover meat and chicken (but not the pork sausage) and taken it out to them. Not a sign could I find, even when I knocked on the annexe where they cook and change. As usual - we pay people to sleep at our compound, rather than their own homes.