May 26, 2013

chocolate is not shared

my friend sent me home with a box of brownies yesterday.
can you imagine how hard it was to fall asleep, knowing there's a bunch of chocolate bits of heaven waiting for me??

well, I did manage to save them for today - brunch - as I woke up at 10:30 - that's pretty early for sunday...don't judge.

and at first I was like... I'm going to share them with my roommates, but then I remembered...

the unspoken rule that chocolate is not shared.

as you know, back in the days of my first africa we (volunteers) shared mangos, pineapples and avocados, every time someone brought them home from the market. It was nice way to add some color to the rather dull diet of githeri, ugali and kale back then.
oh what would I give for a plate of githeri now...


...so yeah, food was shared, but not chocolate. You see, good quality chocolate classified as luxurious imported item - you had to take matatu all the was to Thika to get a piece of decent chocolate. And so, we didn't share, nobody asked, we all just silently admired the bar of sweet miracle in hand of the lucky traveler who came back from the journey with that treasure.

I did share chocolate with my kids - but that's whole other story... chocolate and peanut-butter - looking back, I thank God none of my kids is allergic to nuts - Daniel used to eat handfuls (literally) of peanut-butter from the large jar on my shelf. I can still see his small hand stuck in a jar all the way up to his elbow...

and even though chocolate is widely available and rather cheap here, the unspoken rule stays written deep in my memory. Chocolate is not shared.

needless to say, I devoured those brownies alone... with iced coffee, wearing my PJs, still in bed.

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