So what do meal times look like at our centres?

The day begins with sweet milk tea before the boys go to school in the morning. Milk here is usually powdered or freshly delivered to shops in milk canisters which are carried by donkeys. If you buy pre-packed milk it is almost always already sweetened. One of our boys was given a carton of milk by a foreigner and eagerly started to drink it. He got such a fright when he realised it was not sweetened – his face was such a picture, absolute disgust (this was not in front of the generous friend, luckily!)  

The boys then return home for breakfast during the school break, around 11. They will eat fool or brown beans (adis) scooped up with bread. The boys generally share a bowl between two.They use the traditional style of eating – scooping up the beans with bread. Another way of eating is to break the bread into chunks and mix it in with the beans and eat the “mush” with your hand. This is a very common way to eat in Sudan.

For lunch – at around 3:30pm the boys usually eat Mulah. This is a stew – made with just one vegetable. One day will be potato mulah (my favourite), then pumpkin etc. They love putting dried lady finger okra into their mulah which makes a gravy with quite a slimy texture. They eat this with bread or with rice or asida rolled into balls with the finger tips and dipped into the stew. They will then also sometimes have some salad on the side - usually tomatoes, cucumber, onion and rocket. 

In the evening it is fool or brown beans again. A special treat in the evening is a sesame seed sweet – sometimes called halva in other Middle Eastern and North African countries. They will crumble this into pieces and put this onto bread, eating it as a sandwich. The boys also love their fruit. For snacks the boys eat various seeds, nuts and berries. A walk down to the river is never complete without a stop at the nabak tree. This has a yummy dry berry which is very common in the market place. Dried and salted pumpkin seeds are another favourite, quite a delicious snack – once you get the hang of cracking the shell with your teeth, spitting that out and eating the soft middle seed.

The boys don’t talk a lot during the meals – they are boys, the food is the priority. But without a doubt it is a vital part of their day and they do eat every drop of food. They fetch their bowls from the serving hatch and sit around tables outside in a shaded area. The teachers will sit together around a bowl – usually the men sit outside and the women in the kitchen.  

The boys have kitchen duty where they help the cook with the cooking, serving and washing up. It is very unusual in this culture for men to go anywhere near the kitchen but we feel it is important that our boys learn this. One day a week the cook has her day off and the teenagers will take turns, under the watchful eye of a teacher, to prepare the meals. They are very proud of their efforts and anyone visiting the Centre around lunch time has no choice but to stay and sample what they have cooked – making sure to be very complimentary even if the rice is a little browner than usual or the meat is a little tougher. Some of the boys are actually very talented cooks and one of our graduated boys was given the opportunity to train as an apprentice chef at a fancy hotel restaurant. He is often hired to do the catering for church conferences.