on baking

One of the other things I decided to learn to do in my financially strapped and car-less state was learn how to bake.  I was one of those spoilt white children who didn't learn how to cook until she was almost twenty, and even then, I only learned what I wanted to cook (This did result in someone from the EastCape Opera Company teaching me how to scramble eggs a few weeks before my nineteenth birthday).  So while I baked a few things when I was younger and I got into the habit of making banana bread and whole-wheat bread that crumbled when you cut it in my last year in Grahamstown, this year, I resolved to become awesome.

And awesome I have become.  (At least my friends and family tell me so.  Bless)  I must admit, this is probably not due to my precocious baking skills but more due to:

1.) my pedantic recipe following.  Learning how to cook late has ensured I follow every recipe slavishly as I have had (until recently) very little faith in my own ability to make a meal taste great.

2.) My mother's amazing recipe book.

This is called "The Blue Ribbon Book of Beautiful Baking" and was published just towards the end of apartheid.  I know this because there are pictures of the three women who contributed recipes in the front and two of them are white and one is black (rainbow nation, y'all).  The white women have perms and are wearing white lace blouses (a "blouse" is the only accurate description) and the black woman contributed, in particular, her knowledge of baking using Maize products.  I will say no more.

The design may be old-fashioned, but even that suits me because it means the portion sizes are just right (no super-sized cake slices in my kitchen!) and the icing on the cakes is modest, not a tower of added sugar that is my absolute downfall.  You won't miss the taste, though, because the actual cake has so much flavour and just the right texture.  The recipes are just wonderful  because they are like the ones your mother used (or at least, your mother would have used if you are around my age and you grew up in KwaZulu Natal. I have two friends whose mothers have the same book).  All the measurements are in cups and spoonfuls (none of this tricksy gram nonsense for which you need an actual kitchen scale) and they give you handy tips about how to measure margarine or what measurement exactly is a "pinch" of salt in the front.

I enjoyed my first foray into baking (Beer Bread: so brilliant all you need is flour, beer and some salt) but what really hooked me was standing in the kitchen in the slanting sunlight after a really hectic week of work with my hands in a pot of flour (we don't have bowls big enough to accomodate the buttermilk rusk recipe!), kneading the margarine in.  After a week of engaging with my computer and with abstract concepts, it is really therapeutic to work with my hands and enjoy making something tangible.  It is also gratifying to feel I am acquiring a useful skill.

It has also been absolute joy to give people things that I have made myself.  I have already blogged about how much I enjoy wrapping presents and making cards for people, and being able to fill a jar with biscuits I have made with my own hands and give them to friends feels like I am giving them a jar full of homely happiness.

Part of the reason I only wrote one blog last week was that I was baking up a storm.  I made

1.) scones (with jam and cream I whipped myself (sort-of with a blender))
2.) Peanut-butter biscuits
and
3.) marble cake.  In a ring tin nogal.

It even resulted in my first Zulu birthday card.  I have been trying to get around to learning Zulu for about a decade, so this is a big acheivement:

So, to you, dear readers: Nginifisela impilontle nempilonde*.


*Seriously hoping I got all my prepositions right...

on (English) white liberals

Near the beginning of last year, a Mail and Guardian journalist named Verashni Pillay wrote a column called "The Indian Cringe List". Many people wrote in to say how much they enjoyed the column and its comedy with a pointed purpose, many of them white people. Then, just a few weeks later, she wrote a column called "Stuff White Liberals Say and Do". The same people who congratulated her on writing about Indian people turned around and wrote what borders on hate speech because she had dared to criticise the great white. I didn't have a blog back then, so maybe I would have written this in support a lot earlier. As with my moon cup blog, I suppose it is better late than never.

Even the words "white liberal" make me twitch a little with distaste, even as I admit that I am one. I wear African print skirts and I went on a march or two about human rights and Zimbabwe. I continue to try (unsuccessfully) to learn Zulu and I am writing my thesis on South African literature. So far so liberal, but these harmless pursuits are not what makes my skin crawl about being associated with (English) white liberals.

Firstly, the white liberals I'm talking about are (English) precisely because we are liberal towards everyone except Afrikaners. And Christians. And everyone who can't speak English "properly". And orthodox Muslims ('cause all Muslims treat women really badly). And "Twilight" readers. And black people who call us racist (we're not racist! We have lots of black friends) or black people who take "our" jobs. And people who associate us with fake white liberals who are just hiding under a veneer of liberality. And "stupid" people, which is pretty much everyone except me and my coterie of friends. But apart from that we are, like, totally accepting.

Let's start with first things first: Afrikaners (also known as "Dutchmen" or "Rock Spiders"). We all had to learn Afrikaans at school (most of us learnt it badly) but we don't really care because it's just Afrikaans. There are much more important languages to know, like English and Zulu and...all those other African languages (but English is still the most important because it is an "international" language). Afrikaans people legislated Apartheid so they are automatically more responsible for all racism. All English people just watched helplessly as atrocities were carried out and were not complicit at all. Even worse, Afrikaans music is kitsch, and Afrikaans people are probably not so smart because they say things like "jean pant" and "I'm going to frow you wif a stone".

Ditto black people with black accents. Trevor Noah has already covered this topic really well in his show, Daywalker. Nevertheless, it must be said that if our black learners or our black leaders mispronounce words (in their second, third, fourth or fifth languages) they also must be stupid and incapable of learning what they are taught or leading our country (in which the number of native English speakers tie joint fifth out of eleven official languages). Obviously English is the language of business and politics in South Africa, so politicians and businessmen must learn to speak English properly (because there is definitely a proper English that all proper English people speak all over the world and it all sounds exactly the same). I mean, when French businessmen or politicians conduct business in English with French accents it isn't because they're stupid, they just have a different international language. So, French people with accents are smart, it's just that Zulu people or people who speak...all those other African languages who have one of their accents when they speak English aren't smart (? oh dear! Moving on...)

It's like Christians, you know? They all believe that evolution is a myth and that dinosaurs are a conspiracy to test faith (they didn't really exist). I mean, how stupid can they be? It's almost as bad as that Mormon woman churning out Vampire romances that aren't even about proper vampires, they glitter in the sunlight. I mean that's so gay (not that we're homophobic! It's just a word...)

And Muslims are almost as bad as Christians. I mean, at least they don't hound us to try and convert us, but we know they treat their women really badly and they have a tendency towards fanaticism and bombing buildings.

Don't even get us started on black people taking our jobs. It's so hard to get a job now, and they will probably just give it to some unqualified buffoon for window dressing. I mean, life is hard, hey (takes another sip of beer and takes out blackberry to check new messages. Pulls Diesel jacket a little closer).

But seriously: I know putting unqualified people in jobs is a problem: the millions of unspent money in the Government Health Department is proof of this. I would still nevertheless argue that it was easier for me to get a job in retail last year than it would have been for a black woman with a black accent. I may not have diesel jackets or a shmart cellphone, but my rounded English tones and non-threatening short, white body ensure that my life (certainly) is really not that hard. At the same time, I don't wish to trivialise people's problems. Many families - white and black and all the shades and cultures in between - are struggling in the recession.

What I am really talking about is - in part - my own personal journey of self-realisation. I have held many of the prejudices I write about and have been embarrassingly ignorant about the complexity and variety within cultures other than my own. One of my earliest memories (I must have been about five) is telling my mother how I knew black people were all dirty and all criminals. She quickly put my young mind straight, but it makes me realise that racist propaganda was being pumped into my ears somewhere: whether it was at my beloved pre-primary school or at the houses of friends. Maybe a peer or an adult had instilled this belief in me, but either way I rattled it off because it made me a part of a group to hold the same (misguided) beliefs.

Some English white people are past and beyond my level of investigation into the nature of my inherited prejudices. A (fortunate few) never held these beliefs. There are - however - still too many (English) white liberals who fall into the kind of reasoning I have detailed because their prejudice binds them together in an exclusionary group where they feel a sense of belonging and superiority over others. Perhaps I should say "our prejudice binds us together in an exclusionary group" because no doubt I will continue to find more slippery and subtle prejudices and superiority complexes residing in my own breast that I will need to root out.

What makes it so difficult to change these habits is perfectly put by Karen Armstrong: most people (and I'm not restricting this statement to English white liberals) would rather be "right" than compassionate. Admitting one is prejudiced means admitting that one is wrong, or at the very least clumsily judging others. Never mind getting a job, this is one of the really hard parts of life: to go through this painful process and come out the other side a little less superior. But then, the less superior you are, the less hard it will get. And that is something to look forward to.