It's only hunger.

Politicians blame suffering on the political party they don’t belong to. Economists measure suffering by GDP. Buddhists teach that suffering is an inside job. Basotho people say, “I’m fine, it’s only hunger.” 

The cuisine of Lesotho begins (and often ends) with papa: cornmeal and water cooked down to a sludge, as stiff as three-day-old polenta. Every cook’s hope is to have something to eat with the papa, though sometimes the hope’s in vain. “We ate papa with salt,” a child will joke with a laugh, meaning papa with nothing at all. In better times the poor gather and chop weeds, grill field mice (I’m told it tastes like chicken), maybe boil up a few spoonfuls of soy protein from a bag stamped OxFam or UNESCO.  

In the homes of domestic workers and gardeners, papa can come with a spoonful of stew made with mystery meat chopped fine and dusted with curry powder to mask the taste. Everyone has a cat or two to keep rodents in check, but sometimes a fat cat disappears into the stew. On the tables of government workers, teachers, or medical assistants, papa is served with chicken, mutton, even occasionally beef. Special occasions warrant a side-dish of the luxury starch, rice. (M’e Mpho first saw rice when she was eight years old; she thought it was maggots and was afraid of it.) All fair-sized towns have bakeries that produce daily loaves of fresh brown bread that middle-class people can afford most of the time. For feasts on special occasions, there are diced potatoes and a side dish of chard, and maybe a bag of crisps (potato chips) or biscuits (cookies) made in South Africa.  

On the University compound every house is wired for electricity, though for hours every day, the electricity will flicker and go out. We bought tanks of propane for our gas stoves, and we kept our fridges closed during the power outages. Fridges kept food relatively cool and kept rats and mice from eating it. In the village across the street, no one had electricity. Most villagers cooked over open fires, using wood the children gathered. A few had kerosene stoves. 

Before European settler colonies infested southern Africa, Lesotho was uninhabited. The altitude is daunting; the rocky, arid land has never been fertile; only rodents and birds of prey lived in the highlands by choice. A few hardy clans took their animals up into the mountains for summer pasture. But when Europeans claimed what is now South Africa, they forced native people off the fertile plains and up into the mountains. Basotho proudly say, “We were never subject to Apartheid, we have our own king, we keep our own language alive. We love papa; it is our national dish.” But maize, from which the meal for papa is ground, is not native to southern Africa. 

I learned to recognize that areas of skin that appear to be burnt are in fact a symptom of pellagra, a nutritional disease that results from eating maize and little else. Many of the village children had yellow hair, another sign of malnutrition. Seriously malnourished children are listless. Their noses run, and they haven’t the energy to bat flies away from their eyes. 

I lived, for most of my two years in Lesotho, on peanut butter, bread, long-life milk, and eggs. I drank strong black tea at breakfast and Rooibos tea at night. In spring and summer there were peaches and apricots. In winter, cabbage and onions. I was lucky to have so much when so many around me had less, and I seldom ate alone. 

Note: this is a continuation of a memoir begun here, continuing here, the most recent preceding episode here. 

Photo from a rally and march held today in Portland, in solidarity with striking prisoners.