Perfect’s Perfect ‘Mashke’

“After all, Mashke will help you sleep well”, she said.

Serving time in an all girls Catholic boarding school was probably one of the lowest points of my existence. Just this morning, I bumped into the Reverend Sister who used to make life difficult for me. She has a limp and had aged considerably. I was surprised she still remembered my name and called me out loudly. Despite the fact that this was 15 years ago, I seem to not have outgrown my resentment for the school. I was an Arts student and like all other Art students we were divided into two classes. My class was the Art A Class which meant we majored in Government Studies or Civics, Religious Studies, Literature and French while the Art B class majored in Economics, French and Geography.

My class was filled with talkative pubescent girls who had an opinion on everything, but one girl particularly stood out for me-Perfect Adusu.

Unlike most of the girls in the school, Perfect came from a nearby village. It may appear that her admission into boarding school was her first time in a big town and unlike some of the girls, she didn’t hide her fascination. She was light skinned and had a slightly disproportionate head. Initially I found her annoying because she made comments about everything and took particular interest in taking playful digs at me despite my ignoring her. In hindsight, I realize that she made comments about everything because she was fascinated by everything she saw especially being in an environment that was completely new to her. She obviously processed things differently. At the time I didn’t have the patience for her. I, on the other hand was a very angry teenager. I was trying to understand the world around me and dealing with erratic hormonal impulses and was not interested in dealing with the shenanigans of other teenagers and so for the first year of school, I made no friends. She would usually stare at me and pass funny comments about my silence and lack of conviviality.

Unlike most of us, Perfect came from a lower class background. She openly talked about it, about the struggles of everyday life, going to the farm and helping her parents on the farm and walking for miles to fetch water. I realized she didn’t talk about her plight to elicit any sympathy. Her comments and remarks were more of a culture shock and an attempt to understand what kind of world we came from. She didn’t have access to internet and media the way we did and so everyday was a new fascination for her. There was an innocence to her comments and sometimes I found them endearing. She complained about how the rest of us had it easy and how much we wasted food in the dining hall, and how much we didn’t appreciate the little luxuries of life.She took her studies seriously too and by the time we reached the third year, she had been appointed Prep Prefect.

One evening in second year, Perfect entered the classroom grinning from ear to ear holding a large bucket which she placed on the table in front of her. I could tell by the way she entered the class that evening that she was about to make a speech as she usually did on her observations about us from the perspective of a ‘village girl’.

I was curious to know what was in the bucket so I asked what she could possibly be doing with a bucket in the classroom. She took in a deep breathe, took a good look at me as though I had asked her an offensive question and proceeded to tell us why she had a bucket in a classroom. Perfect had been shocked at how much we wasted that evening’s meal of Kenkey and Fried Fish and how there were so many balls of Kenkey untouched, and how there are so many people in her village starving and wanting a quarter of what we had. For those of you who don’t know, Kenkey is a Ghanaian dish made from fermented corn and rolled into balls and wrapped in corn husk. She simply could not bare to see so much waste and so she had gone to the school’s kitchen, borrowed a bucket from the pantry and collected all the leftover Kenkey and mashed it. She had taken her time and mashed it into a smooth paste which we call Mashke, taken out the remainder of her sugar and powdered milk which was supposed to last her the entire term and brought the Mashke to class so everyone would drink because after all, “Mashke will help you sleep well”, she said. She wasn’t lying about the sleeping bit.

To say I was flabbergasted would be understating it. I honestly couldn’t make it up. The entire class was in shock. After a few minutes of silence brought on by the incredulity of what Perfect had done, Marta decided to taste the Mashke. She confirmed it was delicious and Perfect proceeded to move from table to table fetching Mashed Kenkey into everyone’s cup. I went ahead to take a first sip and realized how tasty and well done the Mashke was. To be honest, Mashke was not something I particularly enjoyed, but Perfect’s Mashke was simply PERFECT.

News spread to other classes and the girls flocked into our class with their cups to taste Perfect’s Mashed Kenkey.

What Perfect did that evening gave me a lot of perspective. Here was a girl who didn’t have the privilege that most of us had. She came from a poorer background and made no pretense of it. She had seen hunger and she had worked probably harder than most of us to get into the same school as us. Seeing so much food go to waste was something she couldn’t contend with because life wasn’t as easy for her as it was for us. We could afford to waste food simply because we could and no one would reprimand us for it. We showed no appreciation for the cooks who had spent the entire evening making this food for us.

Here I was, absolutely hating school for virtually no reason, but for Perfect, it was another opportunity to appreciate the little things some of us took for granted.