Botswana Fat Cakes

Other than good wildlife, Botswana can boast about their only delicious thing in this entire country, if not sinfully artery clogging, and that is the Fat Cake. Yup, even when Michelle Obama was here promoting good health, she indulged in more than one “unhealthy” Fat Cake. How can anyone really resist. Basically, the fat cake is made of dough and probably disgusting hydronated oils, rolled into a fat ball, then fried in more disgusting oil. Sounds like an American donut X 5 without the hole, meaning that with every bite you lose 2 days off your life, and gain 2 pounds--a pretty good trade off, I'd say!  I've indulged in a few along the way out of pure desperation, and I must admit they are quite good. My neighbor makes them, and Keoki goes crazy, just like most do for the infamous fat cake. They are just downright popular.

So, if I can digress for a moment, Phyllis, the NYC correspondence class teacher, had the good idea to share story books with the kids this semester. We would both read the same book, then have the little ones draw a picture from our lesson plan, and hopefully tell a little about the drawing. Great idea right! Most of my little ones never saw such a thing, let alone ever had anyone sit and have story time with them, so needless to say, 40 kids are piled on top of me and the book.  Instead of constantly screaming for them to get off me, I scaled down and chose 15 kids to go outside and do the circle thing. That didn't work either, but at least I only had 15 kids on top of me instead of 40. The pictures in the book are sending these kids into never, never land nirvana. Needless to say, The Ladybug Girl and the Bug Squad was a huge hit. All the kids were able to talk about the book afterwards, albeit in simplistic terms, but it's a start. So at the end of the book, the Bug Squad are all sitting around a table eating delicious chocolate cupcakes—yummy. Upon seeing the picture, I told the kids they were having a party eating----and before I finished my sentence, 15 kids jumped and yelled out, “they're eating FAT CAKES!  Explaining what a cup cake was compared to a fat cake was just downright futile. I could have been talking about the man from mars, they just know what they know, and that's that! Ya gotta love it!

Let me digress one more time---in my school, our Form 3's were to be done with school after 2 long weeks of exams, then they have to wait until February to find out if they pass and could go on to high school.  Well, I brought my camera to take photos and maybe say some nice words to the group after the test.  But no, this is how Jr. School ends for these kids---the last the test is over, the Police Squad gather around and chase all 300+ away--with clubs and all.  No time for niceties, good luck, we love you...nothing.  I'm wondering though if they all ran away to get  a Fat Cake!

Uh, can I digress again please---Yay for Obama's victory yesterday!  African's are rejoicing, and showing emotion like I haven't seen here; in the schools, taxis, kombies, on the dirt paths, all over the place with huge enthusiasm. It's refreshing and hopeful that the Obama's may come again just to eat the Fat Cake!