"What Is That Bad Smell?"

"David, please, what this bad smell in die house?" So asked one of my foster kids as he walked in after school.

I don't profess to be a good cook, but I like food - I love food! So, I have had to teach myself to cook the meals that I like, one of which is cassoulet, which is a dish from SW France.

Now, I don't want to bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that a lot of preparation goes into this dish, and it takes me the best part of two days to get it on the table.

I was in the outskirts of Johannesburg at the time, and decided that a cassoulet would be a good meal that would last a few days. I started preparation on Wednesday, and started to cook it as soon as I got home from work on Thursday.

But that's when disaster struck. I had not long been in South Africa and was still struggling with the lack of oxygen at 5,500 ft. So, having put all the ingredients on to simmer for an hour or so, I fell asleep.

I was rudely awakened by the smell of burning meat, not the "Oops! Dinner is a bit scorched" smell, but the "seriously burned to a cinder" smell, which is stronger and horrible.

And I had no dinner.

I opened every window and door in the house to try to dispel the smell, with little success. Hence the question on Friday afternoon,

"David, please, what this bad smell in die house?"

I have touched on the use of Vaseline in Africa before, in the blog "The Colour of my Skin". Kids seem to love being greased.

But if you are a bit slow, they will set about it themselves. My friend's daughter, Faith, who is about 2 years old, decided that Mama and Baba were too slow and decided to Vaseline herself.

Now, Abigael, having four kids to look after, doesn't mess about with the little jars we get in England. Oh no, she has a 500ml pot. Faith found it. And she plastered herself.

We had to scrape it off her - the picture is after we had got the worst off her!

She was not happy.

-oOo-

When I was in South Africa in the late 80s, I fostered a few street kids. The first two, a pair of 12 year-olds loved the swimming pool, despite the fact that it was mid-winter.

When they dried off, they asked for Vaseline for their skin. I didn't have any, but I did have some Johnson's Baby Oil.

The first kid coated himself with the oil and was quite pleased with the result and was admiring himself in the mirror when the second child came into the room.

"What is this stuff?" he asked, turning his nose up. "You smell like a white kid!"

I wasn't sure how to take that.

The worth of Stale Bread

Not too far from my house in South Africa, there was a play park with swings, roundabouts, and a stream that ran through it, feeding a duck pond.

I used to take the foster kids there at the weekend to let off steam and during the week, I collected stale bread for the smaller ones to feed the ducks.

So, one Saturday, I trotted down the the park with a 7 year-old. He looked at the ducks and swans with interest. I threw a piece of stale bread amongst them and the little boy laughed like a drain as the birds scrabbled about for it.

"Good," I thought and handed the boy the bag of stale bread.

He promptly sat on the bank and ate it.

Before I was Baba Mzungu

I have not always been called Baba Mzungu - of course

When I was in South Africa, I was Leisimane, which means Englishman in Sotho, the language of the people of the same name.

While I was there in 1989, I fostered a couple of street kids, then another couple and then ... etc.

And I kept a diary. All the little anecdotes about these kids from a different culture, speaking a different language. I found it interesting but to anyone else, it was just that, a diary. So I decided to change the perspective and re-wrote it from the point of view of the first of my charges, a 12 year-old Sotho boy, living in a township during the apartheid era. Obviously, my diary only covered the time that they were with me, so I had to plump it out a bit. I had a good idea about what these kids got up to when not with me, but writing about the life of a 12 year-old in the style of a 12 year-old was a challenge.

Well, here's a taster:

Leisimane

You can never guess the consequences of a simple mistake.

A young boy is begging in a suburb of Johannesburg. He is very competent, but he suffers a slip of the tongue, a Freudian slip perhaps, when instead of asking for money to buy bread for a fictitious little sister, he instead asks for money to buy the chicken and chips he longs for.

What happens next could never have been imagined in his wildest dreams. The person he is asking is a visitor to his country, and is not yet impervious to little black kids begging. He takes pity on the child, and as a result, a whole set of events transpire, changing the lives of this boy, his family and friends, and even total strangers.

Want to know what happens? Click Here!