The Worldwide Blogger Bake Off

by Lauren Roodt

“I’m sorry maam but would you like to take another loaf of bread. This one is bad” said the cashier to my mom. “On no-no I’m sure it’s fine. The girls have been picking at it non-stop!” my mum laughed. My sister and I could always be found sitting in the trolley, straddling a loaf of bread and devouring almost all of it before we reached the till. The smell from the bakery would hit us the moment we walked into Pick ‘n Pay. The fresh, warm, yeasty aroma of hot-out-of-the-oven bread was intoxicating. We would attack the crust first. Then plunge our greedy fists into its warm fleshy heart and pull out chucks of the still steaming white dough. As we dug deeper a small wall of crust would develop and we would launch our attack onto that. And so the process went until our stomachs were swollen and content.

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But sadly, my childhood memories are not shared by so many people of South Africa. Too many families are living below the breadline and the only memory a child has of bread is of the loaf which was handed to him through the Mercedes’ window. This is where you can play a part. Breadline Africa and The World-wide Blogger Bake Off are looking to develop a number of community kitchens by transforming shipping containers into places of food production and distribution. These kitchens will provide food to the destitute as well as create job opportunities in the poor communities. This is a charity to get involved in where you will actually do more than just donate money. You will actually be changing a life.

If you wish to make a donation, click here to fill in a simple form. I know too well that the majority of Rhodes students will happily blow R100 on alcohol in one night so perhaps donate the R100 to Breadline Africa instead of going out next week (it is swot week and you should be staying in anyway). Go on, it will be your good deed for the week. And if you are a blogger join the initiative and spread the news. God knows we need all the help we can get to alleviate South Africa’s poverty.

Getting Down and Dirty

by Lauren Roodt

Ah, you have got to love us Ruth First girls. What a team we are! On Saturday a couple of our girls teamed up with the boys from Centenary to plant a veggie garden for Cynthia's Soup Kitchen in Joza. Cynthia feeds many children in the area by providing them with regular meals. If only we had more selfless people like her in the world.

Putting the little old bakkie in danger of defying legal carrying codes we all enthusiastically piled into the back. Benita balanced precariously on a rake while I steadied myself against the sharp edge of a spade. With our spades, rakes and watering cans my alter ego - farm girl came out to play. My body sang to have a spade in hand as I put my back into it to turn the soil. My nose flarred to take in as much of the smell of newly turned earth that it could and my fingers itched to dig deeper. Pressing the soil firmly around the baby seedlings was like sealing a promise to the children of good food and care our the next few weeks. So humbling.

Everybody was having a blast! Passers-by stopped to chat and give their advice and many asked when they could have us visit their gardens. It dawned on me how important it is to be able to speak isiXhosa and made me revisit the abandoned thought of taking it to second year. Although we could communicate roughly it would have been fascinating to speak to the vibrant young boys and to ask the old man with the crinkled yellow hat where he had been. It was beautiful to see us all getting stuck in with the common bond of producing something worthwhile.

Ruth First and Centenary are considering taking this on as a fixed project. We will help Ma-Cynthia to maintain the garden and to provide the necessary gardening tools she might need. We also hope to start up more gardens in other areas of Grahamstown. With 70% of our town unemployed we all need to pull our weight to reduce the massive amount of hungry kids.