Ngalipe Catering Services

Part I

Weddings in the Republic of Congo are a big deal. They are very expensive and don’t happen very often so when there is one, it is a VERY special occasion. Papa Serge, who is the dad of the family that lives next door, has catered for weddings from time to time. This weekend he was scheduled to prepare enough baked goods to serve 600 to 800 people. So naturally he needed help. Along with various members of the Ngalipe family, Lauren, the Samoutous, Laura, myself, two nursing students, Delphine and another lady all helped out. (Some longer than others). On Friday we started at 6:30 in the morning; just Guylvi and I in the kitchen peeling a mountain of bananas. By 8:00 Lauren had joined us and the Samoutous came around 10:00. Two guys who are friends of Serge were in charge of carrying pans/trays, etc. back and forth from the house to the oven (which is outside). We were doing the preparations in the Harveys’ house, so it was very convenient that they weren’t there at the time. :)

One of the finished cakes: (In Africa we don't always go for elegant, and we sometimes border on tacky. People seem to like it this way here) 

We had to put all the finished baked goods into cardboard boxes. Now such thing as a big plastic container with an airtight lid (at least not readily available). We put them on the table with a ring of cinnamon around them overnight and hoped for the best regarding ants and other critters.

  

I'm making cinnamon rolls and Lauren is mixing up cake batter:

Every now and then I went back to our house to put more water in the purifier, fill up more bottles and bring them back, so there’d be enough water for everyone. Papa Serge cooked lunch, which was some beef, rice and kwanga. (Kwanga is too hard to explain what it is). We got a twenty minute lunch break and ate one of the failed chocolate cakes for dessert. 

Many long hours later, we finished about 500 muffins, a tripled batch of cinnamon rolls and six or seven cakes. We washed loads of dishes and made more cakes to be the actual decorated wedding cakes. A few of them didn’t turn out so well, or got stuck to the pans, so we ate those. This might not sound so bad, but standing on your feet ALL day on a concrete floor, sweating rivers because it’s 90 degrees inside the house and trying to beat dozens of bowls of batter by hand that are supposed to be mixed with an electric mixer gets old after a while. So does chopping wood with an ax, loading wood into a sweltering oven, taking things in and out, and carrying hot pans to and from the house. But I wouldn’t know about that part. You’d have to ask the guys.

 

Finally, around 7:00 in the evening, we finished. Back at our house, we watched Over The Hedge. Looking back I realized what a perfectly fitting choice of movie that was, especially in regards to what happened the next day. (Stay tuned for Part II)…