It Was Worth A Try

We’re on the lookout for some house help here in Ouaga, someone to clean our place, do dishes and wash clothes, and maybe even cook some meals. With all our current responsibilities, we have neither the time nor energy to do all this stuff. With the harmattan wind blowing, our place needs cleaning at least twice a week. And dish washing, clothes washing, and meal preparation generally take longer than they do back home. After being at work all day, we just want to crash when we get home.

So far, we’ve been employing a guy part-time to do some of this. He’s an older guy who’s had some experience working for expatriates. Unfortunately, he can neither read nor write, which makes it hard to send him to the market or a store a shopping list. Nevertheless, after several weeks of just cleaning the house and occasionally doing the dishes, Kathy decided to ask him to make us a meal.

After telling her that he was planning to make a salad and scalloped potatoes with ground beef, he headed off to the market to get the ingredients. He returned with leaf lettuce, cabbage, and green beans. Are you thinking what we were thinking? Right. What kind of salad would that make? Upon questioning, he admitted that he might have forgotten a thing or two.

Kathy sent him back to the market to get some tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots. He used those along with the leaf lettuce he’d bought to make the salad. The cabbage and beans are still in the fridge.

The scalloped potatoes with ground beef was good. So was the salad, modified as it was from its original concept. But the planning and purchasing aspects of the task need some work...