About once or twice a year I take a team to Africa to provide some specific humanitarian service. I love this country, the beautiful smiles of the people, their generosity in spite of their want, and the fresh food served. Because there is seldom any electricity where we work, the option of having refrigeration is non-existent for most women living in rural areas. Consequently, many women grow their own small gardens for vegetables. If there is more money, they may plant fruit trees of mangos, popo (papaya), pineapple and matooke, a small green banana. Whatever is not grown may be purchased fresh from open-air markets or along the road side where women stack their ripe tomatoes, potatoes, and oranges into pyramid shapes that defy the laws of gravity!

I have been privileged to visit with poor, rural women in their “kitchens” which are located just a few feet outside of their one or two room mud brick huts. Their “stove” is a small pit that will be filled with the wood coal or sticks they have collected and carried on their backs or heads to be used for cooking fires.

Using this one-burner “stove”, mothers and grannies prepare rice, beans, and/or chapati, an African flat-bread. Inside, a small wooden plank, propped up by thick sticks on the dirt floor, acts as cupboard for the one or two large wooden stirring spoons, and a well-worn pot and pan. Several bright yellow, plastic containers sit quietly on the ground, filled with the water the women have walked several miles to get, and carried back on their heads and in their well-worn and calloused hands.

When the food is ready, the women use the folds of their colorful skirts, to deftly lift the hot pots from the fire to cool, before spooning the day’s ration onto small plastic plates. Simple fare for the poor, but always served with a smile and a gesture to “eat”.

I like to tell my teams that traveling allows one to discover that people around the world are more alike than they are different. We all laugh, cry, love our families, desire peace, enjoy the company of friends, dream, eat, and look upon the same moon.

I read somewhere that when we have nothing tangible to give to someone, we must dig deeper to give something of ourselves. In Africa, where much of life is lived on a subsistence level, and meals may occur only once or twice a day, the “digging deeper” is quite often given with a smile, a gesture, and served on a cracked plastic plate filled with the rice that was meant for the woman who cooked it. Yes, it is humbling.

Chapati Recipe

• 2 cups white flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• oil
• water

Mix dry ingredients well. Add 1 tablespoon of oil to the flour mixture and mix in with your hands until flour feels a little bit like sand. Add enough water to form an elastic dough.

Divide the dough into 4 equal parts. Roll out 1 ball into a circle and spread 1/2 teaspoon oil over it. Roll the circle up, like a jelly roll, then roll it up again. It should resemble a snail shell.

Do the same for the other three balls.

Let the dough sit 20 minutes to 8 hours, depending on when you make them.

Roll out into circles 10 to 12 inches in diameter.

Melt a bit of shortening in a frying pan (I prefer a cast iron pan) and wait until it is hot to cook the chapati.

Cook rapidly and watch them bubble up.

Makes 4 chapatis.

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