Making Guava Jelly

This week, my women’s group decided to make guava jelly, so while the guavas and water boil, I’m sitting under a mango tree on a rock- I tried to find one that was moderately clean because I’m wearing a light colored skirt, but even so, I know that Saturday afternoon, I’ll be crouched over a water basin scrubbing stains out of it with Sunlight soap while I listen to the BBC.

I remember buying this skirt the summer before I went away to college, that was a better time for business, and I spent most of my summer steaming wrinkles out of clothes at a little store until my friends picked me up after dark, when we would inevitably head to a late night coffee shop, where they would smoke cigarettes and I would drink coffee until past midnight. I returned home every night with my eyes stinging, unable to sleep, and I would sit up filled with nervous excitement for the fall to begin. About once a week at the store we cleaned the steamer out with vinegar, and to this day I can’t smell vinegar without thinking of that store. Sometimes my mom sends me packages here with clothes from there, and they all have that same faint familiar smell, which always makes me feel homesick. I remember trying on that skirt one afternoon before the evening rush- my coworker wrinkled my nose when I tried it on, but I bought it anyway because I liked the way it moved when I walked. That August when I moved into my dorm, I wore that skirt to go meet a friend, and walking around campus trying to remember everything so that I wouldn’t get lost on my way home, and I felt like everything I needed was right there, and that I was exactly who I needed to be.

Margaret is telling a story to the other women in Chitonga, I can only understand about every third word, but I can still tell that it is a funny story, and she is telling it well. The other women are all sitting on the exposed roots of the mango tree, looking up at Margaret as she dances along with the story in front of all of us. They all had the good sense to wrap a chitenge around their waists to protect their skirts, so the soot and dirt don’t bother them. From the way Margaret is telling her story, and the other women are watching her, it is easy to tell why they joined the group, which was Margaret’s idea in the first place. She came to my door one day when I first moved here and stated that she wanted to be my friend, and wanted to invite me to see her house. I didn’t know it at the time, but even then she had a plan. A week later, after she had taken me to her house and fed me eggs with rice, she revealed her motives, and the Umoza* women’s group of Chifumu was born, but we didn’t have a name then. We decided to meet on Thursdays, and it was Margaret who found women to join the group.

That was in December, and we have been meeting on Thursdays ever since, with varied success each week. Margaret found almost fifty women to join the group, but attendance is spotty and varies from three to forty at each meeting. We try to create something each week, and as I said earlier, this week it is jelly.

We boiled guavas over a fire and strained the juice through a piece of cheesecloth. Next, we added lemon juice and sugar and set the mixture back on the fire to boil until the pectin in the lemon causes it to set into jelly. The wind blows smoke into my face, and I raise my hand to cover my nose. My fingers smell like lemon and wood smoke, and somehow those two scents mix into barbeque.

The semester that I graduated from college, I went on a road trip with my boyfriend Zach, and our friend Megan. On our way to Pensacola Florida, we stopped in Nashville for dinner. We ended up eating barbeque in a restaurant where a man with a banjo and a harmonica tried to sing the blues. They were the second best ribs I’ve ever paid for**. Afterwards, on the phone, Megan talked to her vegetarian boyfriend, saying ‘those pigs were so happy to become such delicious food…’ and that is what I think of as I sit under this mango tree, a time when I ate corn bread patties slathered with real butter with my friends in a place where the music was so loud that we couldn’t talk, but we didn’t need to talk.

The women want to take the guava jelly off of the fire to set, but I don’t let them, because if we take it off too soon, our jelly will be soupy. They don’t want to keep boiling it because it will reduce too much, and we will have less jelly. We decide to take it off to set and spoon it into the tin I brought so that we can make marmalade from the left over lemons from the jelly over the fire. When you make marmalade, no matter the type, you need to use lemons. If you want to make orange marmalade, for example, you should use one lemon for each orange, and however much fruit you use, you must also use an equal amount of sugar, so for each kg of fruit (half lemon) you use one kg of sugar. Luckily, lemon trees are all over, even I have one, and today, we have five ripe lemons, a pile of unripe lemons, and about five oranges. We decide to eat the oranges, and make marmalade out of just the ripened lemons. The process is slightly different, and this is my first time making either jelly or marmalade, so I keep the Peace Corps Malawi cook book close by the whole time. It turns out that the women were right about the jelly, and when it cools it is the consistency of gummy bears.

The marmalade turns out a little better than the jelly, but because we didn’t have enough sugar, it is very bitter. I tell the women that I never understood marmalade to begin with, but that we can all enjoy it on bread if we add a little more sugar when we eat it. The women and I spoon the marmalade into containers, baggies or leaves so that we can bring a little home. I can tell that they are trying to be polite as we each try some, and that the marmalade is really too bitter to eat plain, but I think we are all excited to have something to spread on bread this weekend.

Margaret and I walk to the main road together, and she tells me the latest gossip about women we pass, whose husband is ill, and why this one or that one hasn’t been to meetings lately- they are all good reasons, and the women seem to do a good job of sharing the things they learn later, so I don’t think it is a big deal, but I know that Margaret wishes they all came every week. As it is, most only seem to come when they know we are making something, and I can’t blame them.

Ever since the group started Margaret has been telling people that I am her daughter. She must know a lot of people because everyone outside of the school addresses me as anya Banda***. As we walk, she adjusts my shirt and chides me:

‘Melissa, you should not fail to put a button here’

‘no ama, that’s the style, to leave the front open, and wear a shirt under it’

‘style… you say it is the style, but still, a button Melissa’

We part ways at a crossroads, and I get on my bike. I don’t normally like the ride going home from Umoza meetings, because it is mostly uphill, but it is late in the day now, and it is getting cool. There is thunder to the East, but I’m not worried, because for the past week there have been vague threats of rain, but no proper storms. I ride past fields of cassava and corn as I make my way home, and am relieved when I finally get to the top of the hill. It is too dark to see now, but in the daytime, you can see the lake off in the horizon on this road, and when you are riding downhill, you can see it both directly in front of you, and to the right, almost as if you are on an island.

I realize that some day, I am going to be doing something completely different, and suddenly some article of clothing or a smell will remind me of Malawi, and I’ll suddenly remember something like riding my bike home at dusk through cassava fields, or sitting on my back stoop listening to the BBC with a coffee on a Saturday morning and I’ll feel homesick for this place too, but mostly, I’m sure, I’ll miss my friends.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

*They say that you cannot translate Bantu languages directly into English, you can only describe each word, but the women named the group Umoza because it is a word that means people coming together to learn from each other

**the best being Sandmanns in East Grand Rapids, where they cook the ribs in steel drums, but of course the best ribs overall are the ones that my uncle spike makes, but I don’t need to pay for those

***daughter of Banda, of the Bandas- it isn’t a direct translation