Author Archives: claudmba

by claudmba | March 11, 2013 · 12:20 pm

Step into the gap: arrival in Freetown

Pete is one of this year’s CAFOD gap year participants. Here is his first update from the overseas section of Step into the gap experience.

The Gappers in Serra Leone: Carmel, Joe, Pete and Iona with Harriet (centre).

Carmel, Joe, Denise, Pete and Iona in Serra Leone.

King’s Lodge Hotel, Freetown

24 hours into the trip and I am already exhausted. The fun started at Heathrow on Saturday evening with a few boarding gate issues and the original plane worryingly being deemed ‘unfit for flight’ but eventually we got away.

We touched down at dawn and then took a water taxi from the airport to the capital city of Sierra Leone, Freetown. The water taxi was an exciting novelty but received a mixed response from the group, upsetting the insides of half the group whilst gently rocking the other half into a serene sleep.

The first moment to pause and reflect on our witness found me sooner than I anticipated. As I stood on the water’s edge at 7am on the first day a series of small children walked past our group each carrying a bucket of water upon their head. The apparent normality of this strenuous labour really struck me; they were here simply carrying out their morning business. They can’t have been older than 8 years old but they were doing this duty at first light in order for them and their family to have water to survive for the upcoming day. No doubt that they will be there at the same time tomorrow.

Our wonderfully welcoming local CAFOD chaperones, Harriet and Dennis then brought us straight to our hotel and after some much needed rest and recuperation they took us to Lumley beach for the afternoon. Although it is not intentionally named after the actress, the beach was both gorgeous and entertaining.

All along the vast beautiful beach were scenes of socialising and activity, which we enjoyed as we walked along the sandy shore. As I looked around at the tropical paradise I couldn’t help but feel I was on holiday. So I immediately ran to the nearest sun bed and put my towel down for the week.

Our first taste of Sierra Leonean cuisine was at a seafront restaurant so I felt obliged to go for the locally caught fresh fish. Now I love Blackhill fish & chip shop but I must admit that this was something else and has set the bar high for future meals on the trip! Maybe on my return I will suggest to Blackhill fish & chip shop that they add ‘barracuda and fried rice’ to their lunchtime special board.

We’re all retiring early this evening before proper work starts tomorrow.

Stay tuned!

Could you be a CAFOD Gapper?

CAFOD is currently accepting applications for next year’s Step into the gap programme. Make sure you apply before the April deadline!

1940s wartime soda bread (from Ireland to England!)

Gran’s wartime soda bread recipe has been so welcome this Lent

Soda bread is easy to make and takes very little time. It doesn’t need to prove and doesn’t take a lot if kneading. It’s yummy with a scrape if butter and a bit of your cheese ration.

It’s an excellent alternative to the national loaf (known by Brits at the time as “Hitler’s secret weapon” because it tasted so dreadful). Hurrah for Irish heritage!

Why not make some for a frugal Lenten lunch in support of Hungry for change?

Of course if you’re not living on rations you can use ordinary milk instead of reconstituted. Because I used ordinary milk not buttermilk the bread doesn’t have that slightly acid quality. Gran suggests a capful of vinegar added to the milk but I haven’t done this and it works fine without.

You could use all wholemeal flour if you’re making this in 1945 and refined flour has run out.

You need:

250g wholemeal flour

250g plain flour

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 scant tsp salt

about 450- 500ml ‘household’ milk (or ordinary milk)

Sift the plain flour into a big mixing bowl. Add the other dry ingredients. Mix well with dry fingers.
Add the milk, bit by bit and mix with the dry ingredients to form a soft dough. Make sure you have plenty of extra flour to hand as it gets a wee bit sticky to begin with. Fingers definitely work better than a wooden spoon which is likely to get stuck.
Once you can collect it together, tip it into a floured surface and bring it together until you can make a nice ball.
The action here is not a hard knead as for normal bread – but more along the lines of scones or shortbread: you’re just bringing it together, rather than bashing it. It’s good mood bread!
When you have your lovely ball of dough, take a serrated bread knife and cut a big deep cross right across the top.
Leave it to sit for 30 mins, so the bicarbonate of soda can get to work (according to Gran).
Whack it on a floured baking tray and pop it in the oven at about 200 degrees. It should take about 30 mins to bake – check to see if it’s risen and the slits have closed up again. It should turn a lovely golden brown and have a nice crust on the outside.
Very important step: before the bread goes cold, but after it’s cooled enough not to give you third degree burns, cut a healthy slice of the end and put a bit of butter on it. (If your butter is t rationed you can put a lot of butter on it…) then take a big bite, close your eyes and chew, revelling in your brilliant bread-making skills.

About the Author: Claud Mba has worked in CAFOD’s digital communications team for three years. She lives with her husband in Kent and is a lifelong supporter of CAFOD’s work. This Lent she’s putting her love of 1940s style and culture to the test: getting sponsored to live on 1943 UK rations, in solidarity with people who don’t have enough to eat around the world. This bread recipe is from her Gran, who moved from Ireland to England in 1938.

You can read more about Claud’s challenge and sponsor her here:
http://www.justgiving.com/claudonrations

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by claudmba | · 10:37 am

1940s Rations challenge: What our mums have taught us

I love visiting my Gran. And as she lived through the war and rationing, she’s been a goldmine of information.

Gran has always been hardworking and resourceful. Like her own mum, she was great at making supplies stretch.

“There wasn’t much bread,” she says, ‘but we made soda bread. And for stew you could sometimes get a bone from the butcher. It was a good idea to make friends with the butcher, and then he’d put aside an extra bone for you to boil.”

Gran’s wartime soda bread recipe has been so welcome this Lent

One of her favourite stories is how Arthur the butcher taught her to skin a rabbit. The skin could be cured and the fur used to line a little person’s coat, and there’d be rabbit pie for dinner. Nothing was wasted.

Get Gran’s wartime soda bread recipe here>>

“We looked after each other,” she says. “Neighbours looked out for each other and we shared what we had. That’s how it worked.”

This marvel of scrimping and soda bread is my legacy. I grew up in a home where ‘waste not want not’ hung in the air alongside aromas of bubble and squeak. Like Gran, my mum learned to feed her big family on the proverbial loaf and fishes. We’d tease her for saving a few peas in a Tupperware, or turning Sunday’s veg into Monday’s risotto. But we never went hungry.

Before the rations challenge, I hadn’t thought much about what I needed, only what I’d like to eat. So I’ve often ended up throwing food out (guiltily, expecting Mum and Gran to burst in yelling ‘no-o-o-o-o!’ in a slow-motion fashion) because I bought too much.

Now, I’m working out how to make food stretch, and appreciating how Mum and Gran had to balance everything to feed all those hungry mouths.

And the food waste is disappearing! The most I throw away is carrot tops and leek bottoms. I’ve stopped peeling carrots and spuds (a good scrub does as well and wastes less). With the meat, cheese and milk I work out what I need each day and how to make it last. It’s a revelation.

Around a third of all food produced for human consumption is wasted every year around the world. Yet one in eight people don’t have enough to eat. What if we could change this?>>

Mums are brilliant. They never stop teaching us. My Mum and Gran are strong, practical women whose ability to make do and mend kept us all in shoes and coats (albeit usually hand-me-downs).

For Gran, the occasional spare rabbit must have been a fantastic gift. As a mum with scant resources, it represented a family feast. And she watched her children grow up strong and healthy, their futures before them.

So many mums don’t get to see that, because the unfair food system stops them. They can make a little go a long way, but if there’s not even a bare minimum, no amount of mum magic can make it stretch.

Sabita is a mum from Bangladesh. She struggles to grow enough to eat and sell when crops are washed away by heavy rains and sea water flooding. But our Caritas partner has helped her with simple solutions like raised vegetable beds and using home-made compost to improve the soil.

Sabita from Bangladesh

“This plot has made a big difference to my family. It’s improved our diet and given us extra income,” she says.

It takes such a small amount to get a family up and running.

Sabita features in our Emmaus meal resource. Why not share her story with your community?

We honour mums on Mother’s day. We celebrate and give thanks for them. We can also honour mums around the world, by taking action today, and making the first step to ending world hunger.

If we can make the system fair, I’ve no doubt mums can do the rest. That would be a real gift to mums everywhere.

Mother Mary,

You hold all mothers in your heart; you know their joys and sorrows. Pray that we may be inspired to create a world where every mother can watch her children grow, happy and healthy, and rejoice as their futures unfold.

You can read more about Claud’s challenge and sponsor her here:
http://www.justgiving.com/claudonrations

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Tagged as Bangladesh, campaigning, Emmaus meal, food, fundraising, Hungry for change, lent, Lent Fast Day, prayer, rations challenge, sponsored events

by claudmba | March 6, 2013 · 10:07 am

Kenya elections: When will we know?

About the Author: Joseph Kabiru is CAFOD’s Media and Communications Officer for the East and Horn of Africa.

Voters queing at Kadenye polling station, in Molo, in the Rift Valley before polls opened at 6am.

It is a rainy morning in Nairobi and just like other Kenyans, I am worried, waiting to see whether Kenya’s general election will conclude peacefully.

Technical hitches mean a delay until we know whether there was a first round win for any of the eight Presidential candidates. Uncertainty leads to anxiety.

I was among the hundreds of journalists and election observers who yesterday heard the Chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, Isaack Hassan, promise the wait will soon be over:

“The 290 constituencies around the country have now completed tabulating their results and they are making their way to Nairobi, where they will present the final results.

“I must say we had anticipated our electronic tallying system to be 100%, but we have had challenges and have not able to deliver the provisional results in real time.

“I am aware Kenyans are getting anxious, but I urge them to remain patient as we await the final results from the returning officers.”

The chairman faced a barrage of questions about whether the country was facing a repeat of 2007, where the country descended into chaos and violence following delays in releasing presidential results. While the electoral body chair re-assured Kenyans all was well, there is cause for concern.

Gauging by the mood of political parties’ agents, the stage is set for disputes to arise from the emerging results. One area of concern is over the large number of spoiled or rejected ballots, which by Monday evening stood at 330,000.

Should these ballots be included the total number of votes cast? If so, it will significantly reduce the percentage of votes claimed by each Presidential candidate. With the constitution requiring the winner to attain more than 50% of the total votes, this could be crucial, reducing the chances of a first round winner.

The Jubilee Coalition, whose candidate Uhuru Kenyatta is leading the provisional count, has said it will not accept the inclusion of spoilt votes in tallying the final percentages. Their rival, Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s Coalition of Reform and Democracy, has also expressed concern with the way the tallying of votes has gone so far.

My hope, and that of fellow Kenyans, is that by the end of today, final results will have been declared, they are accepted by all parties, and the country remains peaceful. We continue to pray for peace.

Please join us in praying for a peaceful conclusion to the Kenyan elections. find unique prayer resources here>>

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Tagged as campaigning, campaigns, election, Elections, Kenya

by claudmba | March 5, 2013 · 5:48 pm

Rations challenge: The new black market

Sarah, my black market supplier

I have in my bag an incredibly exciting thing. Four beautiful, muddy, enormous hen’s eggs.

Everyone knows that in wartime, the black market did a roaring trade. The nylons, oranges and chickens handed over from the back of a lorry helped to break the monotony of wartime austerity, and supplemented a hungry family’s ration.

In the interests of fairness and the spirit of this challenge, I haven’t taken up offers of extra food. All except these four little beauties, which I can now admit was my one prearranged extra purchase during Lent. When your allowance is one egg a month, I can’t tell you how much it means.

Please help CAFOD help people who don’t have enough to eat. Give to our Lent campaign>>

Not that they came cheap (no pun intended). My black marketeer, aka Sarah, CAFOD’s campaigns writer, could name her price. She’s a bit inexperienced as a crook: she has charged me the princely sum of £1 donation to CAFOD per egg, and didn’t even recoup (again, no pun intended!) her 80p expenses.

When it comes to supplementing my rations ‘illegally’, I’m definitely not making a habit, but I do want to make a point.

Joseph Parsait lives in Kenya. During the dry season maize is very expensive. But he still has to buy it for himself and his family. He relies on others for his daily bread.

Nobody should go hungry when there’s enough for everyone. Let’s make a change this year.>>
Like me, Joseph has limited access to food. Like me, he has to pay whatever the sellers charge him. Unlike me, he doesn’t have a choice. He can’t opt out; if he doesn’t pay the high prices, he doesn’t eat.

He says: “If you buy, you stay alive. If you don’t buy, you die. You have to buy whether you like it or not.”

Times of crisis bring profiteers out of the woodwork, but they bring out heroes too. Joseph is my hero, because despite his hunger and his responsibility to his family, he can say: “I forgive those who sell to me at a high price. Because we know God, we have to forgive.”

You can see why people might charge those high prices. The profiteers are probably living with uncertainty: trying against the odds to support their families. Times are hard; people take what opportunities they can get, even at the expense of others.

Less forgivable perhaps, are the really big profiteers: the giant global companies who control the majority of the world’s food supplies and keep people like Joseph living in a permanently precarious state. They pay growers less than a living wage so they can cream off as much profit as possible. And they sell to their consumers at the lowest possible price. In turn, we don’t make a fuss because, let’s face it, we all like a bargain.

Joseph from Kenya

You might be tired of hearing me rant about this subject. But I’m not going to stop.

It’s no fun being hungry, even for a short while. In my very limited experience, what takes up your brain space when you’re hungry is, well, being hungry. So it’s not surprising that people pay exorbitant prices for food. It is scandalous that they have to.

I’d always imagined the black market as a rather quaint, cheeky affair: your slightly dodgy friend with an oddly shaped overcoat tipping you a wink and sorting you out with a few supplies. But actually, profiteering is an inevitable by-product of an unequal society.

This is a world where people are exploited twice over: firstly because they don’t earn a proper wage, and again because they pay too much to eat.

I’ve bought my eggs, knowing that I’m adding to my fundraising and that tomorrow I will enjoy a blissful breakfast of egg on homemade soda bread toast – a breakfast I will never again take for granted!

But profiteering in times of hardship isn’t just a bit of fun. It’s the result of an unfair food system. And that really is unforgivable.

Nobody should go hungry when there’s enough for everyone. Let’s make a change this year.>>

Claud Mba has worked in CAFOD’s digital communications team for three years. She lives with her husband in Kent and is a lifelong supporter of CAFOD’s work. This Lent she’s putting her love of 1940s style and culture to the test: getting sponsored to live on 1943 UK rations, in solidarity with people who don’t have enough to eat around the world.

You can read more about Claud’s challenge and sponsor her here:
http://www.justgiving.com/claudonrations

Author Archives: claudmba

Step into the gap: arrival in Freetown

1940s wartime soda bread (from Ireland to England!)

1940s Rations challenge: What our mums have taught us

Kenya elections: When will we know?

Rations challenge: The new black market

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