Bintu gives me an African Cooking Lesson

We have held a Christmas Party at our house every year for the last 4 or 5 years. This year there were scheduling difficulties along with difficulties deciding how to fix problems of parties past (too many people invited to successfully interact with everyone, too many different groups invited at same time so many didn't know each other, too many children upstairs with the babysitters, etc) We ended up foregoing it this year. But by the week before Christmas I was missing it and so we invited just family friends, the Farrells for a low-key Christmas get-together. Unfortunately I planned long in advance to have my friend and visiting teachee, Bintu come teach me how to cook her African food. She had made sure she had work off, and I couldn't leave her hanging. So we went to the African grocery store then cooked and cooked 5 different dishes, HUGE pots full. She is amazing to watch, super fast, clean, and confident: a real natural chef. I tried to be her aide and write down the recipes as she made them out of her head. 7 hours, and a huge oil spill later, our friends arrived ready for a Christmas Party that just couldn't happen. I was still finishing up the cassava leaf dish, then Tom took Bintu back as she was picking up family from out of town. So our Party consisted of eating a huge African Feast (Fish, beef, chicken in peanut soup, vegetable soup, plaintain soup, cassava leaf stuff, and cow skin soup.) She kept saying how much she loves cows skin and I finally told her that she should really just take it home with her after Tom tried some because neither myself nor the Farrell's were going to be brave enough to try it. (I bought it after vetoeing the oxtail which she also loves and which I know I don't care for, I felt bad so I said yes to the skin, but UGH it's just thick, hairless, SKIN.) So the Farrell's were kind and forgiving as I was exhausted and not really up to playing hostess to the Christmas activities I'd thought to do for the kids and stuff besides a song and playing with the nativities. It's nice to have friends who can roll with things.

A word about Bintu. I just love her, I've been so happy to have her in my life. She is a very sunshiney person with a very contagious smile and kind, generous ways. She reminds me very much of many of my Brazilian mission companions, especially my trainer , Sister Goncalves. And her use of long, formal greetings for every hello and goodbye remind me of Cry, the Beloved Country.