When I moved from the teachers quarters at my school in Swaziland, out to a homestead that invited me to live with them, I was ecstatic. I was tired of living in a fishbowl. It was like that, living at school. Everybody knew your bidness. The homestead was about an hour’s walk from the school. Way out in the bush. And I could practice my poor siswati, and maybe get better with it.

I was given a hut to live in, and with the bed I had built, and a table I made, it was downright homey. The Father of the family was Musa, and my friend since I had started teaching at the school. He taught woodworking in the adult education center next to my school. The first thing that he did when I moved out to his homestead, was assign his 11 year old daughter, Ncamsile (Make the proper clicky sound, like “tsk” for the letter C in her name.) to me, to keep me from making a fool of myself with the neighbors, I guess, and to help me learn the ways of living with a Swazi family. She was a terrific, peaceful girl who loved to laugh.

She walked with me to and from school every day, as did another of her sisters, and two brothers. In the evenings, we got into the habit of her coming to my house about an hour before supper was to be served, and she would go over her homework with me. Then we would decide what to have for supper. Actually, she would decide.

I had a large cardboard box in the corner of my house, that contained a jumble of food things that my friends in the states would send me. They mostly thought that I was starving to death over here in Africa. and eating twigs and cow patties, so they would occasionally send me care packages. Stuff like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Kraft Tangy Italian Style Spaghetti, Ramen noodles, hamburger helper, instant pudding, cookies, m&m’s, canned tuna, spam, crackers, cereal, taco chips, Nestles Quick,stuff like that, so that I wouldn’t forget the delights of American food. I had saved much of what they sent, waiting for a rainy day, or a day that I was feeling far away. It was to this box that Ncamsile excitedly went every night, to choose what American food we would make that night.

She would root around, and come up with something to make. Whatever we made, we would take two servings, and put them on two plates, and Ncamsile would take the rest of it down to the kitchen, a stick walled hut with a firepit in the middle of the floor, where men were not welcome, and would give it to them, along with a story of what it was, I imagine, and in return, the mothers would send back two plates of whatever they were making for the family that night. Usually a blob of indengane, (white corn ground fine and rehydrated and cooked down until it was like a sticky blob of hominy grits. But stickier, and more glutenous) and whatever else they were having. Sometimes a piece of chicken, or beef when I ccasionally went by the butcher shop on the way home, or ligusha. Ncamsile would bring the plates back, and we would eat dinner together.

I didn’t go to the butcher shop often. I would walk in to the tiny shop, and there was a counter, and on a hook over the counter next to the scale, there would be some unknown part of the cow hanging there. It was incredibly rude in Swaziland to ask the butcher how long the meat had been hanging there, so I had to evaluate it on the fly, as I walked up.

Me: I would like a kilo. (you didn’t have to say of what. There was only the hunk of meat hanging there. That was all the store sold.)

The butcher would take his cleaver, and wave away the flies on the hunk of meat,, and would take a couple careful swings at it, and would hand me the chunk he had cut off. He never weighed it, I am not even sure if the scale worked. By then I had scrambled in my pack and found a piece of paper to wrap around the raw flesh he was handing me. And I would pay him and say goodbye.

When Ncamsile would take something out of the box, she would read every word on the package out loud, and look at and comment about the colorful pictures on the outside of the box. It was like a new mystery solved every night. She had never seen any of the food my friends sent me. Then she would read the directions again, and with a little coaching from me, make whatever the food was.

Tonight it was to be Royal Instant Chocolate Pudding. There is not a siswati word for pudding. It is not in the traditional diet. She asked me what pudding was, but I couldn’t think of a way to describe it. So, since it needs milk, she got out my Carnation Instant Milk that I bought at the Spar Market in town, where the ex-pats shopped, and which I always kept on hand. She mixed up the proper amount to add to the pudding powder.

Every time she or I took the familiar box of Carnation Instant Milk out, it brought back memories of Boy Scout campouts. When my dad was Scoutmaster, after  they fired the first one I had, for being drunk all the time, he made us drink Carnation Instant Milk with dinner. Ick. I hated it. It didn’t taste like the nice cold bottled milk that the milkman left on our doorstep in the milk case every tuesday and friday morning at 6am. Not even the least. It tasted like warm liquidy ick. But being the Scoutmasters kid, I had to choke it down. Fast forward to Swaziland, and, you know, it wasn’t that bad 26 years later. It was definitely better than no milk, and I needed milk for cereal, and for cakes and stuff I cooked, and the occasional glass of chocolate milk. I had grown accustomed to it.

Ncamsile was grinning, and mixing the pudding powder into the newly rehydrated instant milk. She always grinned when making dinner. She had a beautiful smile. After she mixed it for however long the directions had called for, it looked like chocolate milk in the bowl. She lifted the spoon, and tasted it.

Ncamsile: Maseko, this is just chocolate milk like we had last week. How does it become pudding?

Me: Oh, I forgot that part. I have to put some magic into it.

So I got up and walked over to the table, and held my hand over the bowl, and moved it back and forth, making a magic noise. I had learned this noise in Boy Scouts. I could sing a really low note, and purse my lips like when I was whistling, and it would come out this weird tone with a whistle. I did that for about 20 seconds, making the whistle go up and down, to make sure the magic got into the pudding.

Ncamsile was half grinning at me. She was a fairly modern girl. She knew that I didn’t really believe in magic per se, but was having fun anyway.

Me: Ok, it takes about ten minutes for the magic  to work, to change it into pudding, so let’s go over your math homework.

And we did that for ten or fifteen minutes. Then I looked at my watch, and told her to go and check if the milk had become pudding. She walked over and grabbed the spoon, expecting it to be sitting in liquid, but the spoon didn’t move. The pudding had gelled. The look on her face that the chocolate milk had been magically changed into pudding, was priceless. She took a little on the spoon, and tasted it. Her face lit up.

I had her get out two plates and put a blob of chocolate pudding on each one, and she took the rest of the bowl down to the mothers. She was gone for 15 minutes, to swap food, a thing that normally took 2 or 3 minutes. I imagined her telling the mothers about Maseko and his magic. It made me smile. She came back with the ubiquitous blobs of indengane, and tonight there were boiled carrots with it. Yum. I love carrots. We sat and supped and talked.

After dinner I told her I would teach her how to make the magic. It took practice, and she laughed a lot, but after 15 minutes, she could make the magic sound pretty well. It is hard to have your lips puckered up for the whistle, and not laugh.

Me: That is all there is to it. You make the pudding, and then wiggle your hand over it, and make the sound, and 10 minutes later it turns into pudding. Actually the sound isn’t necessary, but it makes it more fun.

Ncamsile: (laughing) Maseko, I saw another box of pudding in the big box. Do you think I could, maybe next week, take the box of pudding and the box of milk down to the kitchen, and make it in front of the mothers? It would be so fun to watch them when I make the magic sound.

Me: Yes, of course. But you must practice the magic sound, and do it where nobody can overhear you, so that it will be a surprise to the mothers.

And the next friday, she took the stuff down to the kitchen, Strawberry Pudding this time, and made it for the mothers. She returned with two plates with blobs of indengane and strawberry pudding on them, and was giggling while telling me how she performed for the mothers.

Ncamsile: I crunched my face up, and stood stiffly wiggling my fingers above the bowl, and made the magic sound. The mothers were beside themselves. They didn’t know what to think about the sound. But they loved the strawberry pudding so much, that I doubt any of it was left to put on the plates of the others.

Miss you Ncamsile    <3

Magic Happens     <3