Feeding people who feed people

This meal is not a vegetable curry Bunny Chow, which was Palesa’s favorite food. Bunnies are hollowed-out loaves of bread filled with spicy curries, each Bunny different according to what’s in it and how it is spiced. Bunnies were invented by Indian people descended from street children and homeless people imported from Goa and Tamil Nadu by white owners of sugar cane plantations in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Some came as enslaved people and others as "indentured" laborers, though many were never given their freedom and were effectively enslaved. Bunnies are “poor people’s food,” both filling and delicious. What’s actually on the table in this blip are Masala Dosas, large thin pancakes filled with vegetable curry. They are as close as I can come to a Bunny in Portland.

We are approaching the second anniversary of Palesa’s death. This time two years ago, she was gasping for breath. She had Covid-19, scarred lungs from tuberculosis, and was HIV-positive. She had been working as a nurse in an old folks home, which is where she contracted tuberculosis in 2019 and Covid-19 in 2021. Vaccines had not been made available for elder-care workers in South Africa, and when food riots erupted on July 8, 2021, the shops in her area were set on fire, and the smoke from the fires finished her lungs.

For this year's memorial I took Masala Dosas to the MERP workers who are volunteering in one of the gardens where they grow food for people who cannot afford food. There is more about them in their own words, in a “Solarpunk” magazine. 

They asked me to talk about Palesa, and about South Africa, about enslaved Indian sugar cane workers, and about the food riots of 2021, none of which they had heard about till today. I also talked about her dazzling smile, her generous spirit, her desire to give to others, to serve, to take care. I spoke some Sesotho for them. I told them Palesa loved to feed people even though, like me, she didn’t like to cook. She would have loved buying Bunnies (or Dosas) for people who feed people. I felt that she would have been pleased with my memorial this year. I could imagine her saying, with wonderful plosives and long consonants, “Tlala e mpe. Ntho efe kapa efe e kokobetsang tlala ke tlhohonolo fatso. Kaofela batsoalle baka, y kaofela batho ba heso ba re kealeboha haholo. Le nna, kealeboha.” (Translation: Hunger is terrible. Anything that eases hunger is a blessing. All my friends, and all the other people say thank you very much, and I also thank you.)