Estersauce and Juggling

The IRC Conakry has two housekeepers: Hannah and Ester. Hannah cleans [occasionally] and Ester has been assigned with the task of taking care of Igor, the Russian "Durable Solutions Advisor" who also lives in the Guesthouse.

Igor does not cook. As a literate and educated individual who obviously has the capacity to follow instructions, he surely CAN cook. But Igor, as a rule, does not cook.

He does not reheat food. He does not go in the kitchen. He does not boil water... because "in my country, women are better cooks than men so men do not cook." He does set aside kitchen utensils for use for juggling though.... (I'll let you sit for a second and get your head around that statement).

I could go on a long digression/soapbox about this, but I will restrain myself and go back to Ester: Ester cooks for Igor and, during Ramadan when there was no food anywhere during lunchtime, I started chipping in to have a portion of whatever Ester cooked for Igor. There are three possible options in Ester's cooking repertoire:

1. Fish
2. Chicken
3. Meat (They always say "meat"... I don't know if I want to know what "meat" this is)

At first, I thought Igor would chose the core protein item and Ester would make something to go along with it. But after about a month, Igor and I realized that Ester knows how to make one thing, which she combines every day with rice and fish, chicken or Meat: It is a tomato based sauce with about 3 cups of oil in it, carrots, eggplant, peppers and such. Igor and I now endearingly call it ESTERSAUCE.

One day I decided to be ambitious and teach Ester to make spaghetti and meatsauce so that maybe she would know how to do something different. In international development terms, I decided to call it "capacity building of local staff."

It took the whole morning of interruptions in my work, but she managed to actually cook something that might actually be recognized as meatsauce. The next week, Igor asked her to try the spaghetti again on her own, and (sure enough) we ended up with Estersauce on top of spaghetti.

So I have given up on dear Ester. I've been cooking for myself since I came back from Texas. And Igor will get to enjoy Estersauce for the next two months until his contract here is over. Maybe that might convince him to be the first Russian man to ever go into the kitchen?

I doubt it. He's got the utensils reserved for juggling.