EPISODE 2 – THE KITCHEN CREW

The Lieutenant called a muster to set our roster and assign duties. A bird had told me back in town to apply for special medical permit due to skeletal problems which would exempt me from drills and marches.

But first, let me tell you a bit about “Lieutenant” as we were wont to address him. He was a “dougla”, not too tall, very red in complexion – red, grizzly hair on his head and arms mottled with freckles. He wore a silver bracelet. Best of all, he was blessed with a sense of humor.

Lieutenant told me that I would head the Kitchen Crew. (I was the most senior recruit). A kindly old sergeant was to oversee us and he and I would be responsible for arranging the meals for the thirty-five people in the camp assisted by the other members of the Kitchen Crew. Food was brought in once a week on the SS Torani.

Three meals every day.

Light the fire in the mornings. Get the water boiling for the coffee. Boil the eggs. Then the black eye peas which would be fried with salt, black pepper and schallot. That was on the breakfast menu every day.

The students would come to the window each with a plate and a cup. One of the KC would serve the black eyed peas (one measuring cup each) and another the eggs (one to each person) and then a third, the coffee.

It was always amusing to hear the boys saying,

“Put lil bit more nah maan.”

Or “Gimme one more egg.”

Any left overs were saved. I would put the left over coffee in a milk powder can, set it before the fire to remain hot. Mid morning, the boys would come lurking around the “kitchen”.

“Amna, you got coffee?”

“Amna, anything to eat?”

“Come round to the back. Look out for Sargie.”

That’s how it went.

Much later in our tenure in the kitchen, I would try to make things easy for them. The sergeant might say ‘ “Cook one gallon and a half rice.” Or “Boil fifty eggs”.

If I’m in charge, I thought I should have some leeway. I would add more rice to the pot or one dozen extra eggs. No one had time to count how many eggs were in the pot. That was mid-afternoon snack for the hungry- belly boys.

I suspected that the kindly, old sergeant knew I was up to some tricks, and that is why he absented himself while we were cooking. He went down the hill each morning to gather sweet-sage which I would boil into tea for him. As the Guyanese proverb goes, “Haan wash haan mek haan come clean.” A symbiotic and wordless contract.

By the end of the first week theLieutenant had earned the title of RED FOX. Compliments to his red hair and his light freckled complexion.

At the end of each day, we took our towels, and bath stuff and walked down the hill to the creek to bathe. The water was cold and refreshing. There was a deep pool by the jetty and the girls would jump in and swim. There was a galvanized fence separating the pool where the girls bathed from that where the boys did. One evening, Heather’s clothes floated down to the boys’s end. A minute later, a hand appeared under the fence in the water bearing the items. Another time, a few of the girls decided to bathe without clothes. Suddenly, they all jumped into the creek and stayed there because the sergeant had come down the hill looking for sweet sage to boil for tea.

Each night, two of us were detailed to keep watch for two hours, and then would be relieved by two others and so on until dawn. I never understood WHY we were made to lose sleep keeping watch when there were only the baboons who came around the camp.

Lunch and dinner were usually root vegetables, or rice with chicken or salted fish served in the same way as breakfast and to the same refrain from the boys. “Put lil bit more nah maan. Me hungry baad.”We washed the huge pots after each meal. The proper way to do this was to forget washing the outside to take off the layers of soot. I was forced into this only after the crew advised each other- “Who gun know?”

THE KITCHEN CREW

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