Christmas Cookies: Extra Credit Chocolate Macaroons
These are so good, and go so fast, that you might consider doubling the recipe even the first time you make it . . . Easy, easy, easy.
Chocolate Macaroons
(See Meringues for hints on separating yolks from whites)
2 egg whites, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon almond flavoring (optional)
1 1/2 cups shredded coconut (available now in the Sultan Center)
1 1/2 squares unsweetened chocolate, melted
(Melt chocolate on low power in microwave, or in a pan over hot water. If you try to melt it directly over the stove, it will burn, and it will smell terrible.)
Heat oven to 275 F / 140 C.
Beat the egg whites until stiff. Fold in sugar and salt, beat again until smooth. Add vanilla, then stir in coconut and chocolate. Drop by small spoon on a baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes. Let cool on the cookie sheet before removing.
Christmas Cookies: Extra Credit Meringue Cookies
Don’t even think of making these on a humid day – the meringue will get all rubbery. It’s worth waiting for a dry day.
In the comment section of Christmas Cookies: Get Ready Little Diamond gave two recipes for her favorite cookies, which she calls Angel Kisses. Since we are related, it is no great surprise that I like them, too, and you will want to take a look at her recipes.
I even like the name Angel Kisses, but I just think of them as Meringues. And I kinda like them plain white. Sometimes I fold chocolate chips inside, but the flavor is always vanilla:
My friends, these cookies are SO simple. The toughest part is beating the egg whites. How tough can that be? Just try it, try it, it’s EASY. And for these are relatively low sugar, for a Christmas cookie.
(Separating Egg Whites from Egg Yolks
To get egg whites to be really stiff, there can’t be any yolk at all. The very safest best way to separate the egg yolk from the white is to use your HAND. Your hand doesn’t have any sharp edges to break the yolks.
Get two little bowls. Tap an egg on the edge of a cup, and open the shell slowly, over one of the bowls, and let the white fall into the bowl, tip the shell so that the yolk falls into your cupped hand and let the white flow through your fingers into the egg white bowl. Take the whole egg yolk and put it in the second little bowl.
Empty the egg white into the mixing bowl where you will be whipping the eggs. The reason is, while you are separating eggs, sometimes a yolk will break. If you are holding your hand over the egg white bowl, the entire bowl of whites can be ruined by a little piece of egg yolk. So always break the egg over a small bowl, and when you are finished, put the egg whites into the mixing bowl. That way, if you have a goof, it will only be one egg, not more.)
No greasing pans on these cookies, either, but you will need parchment paper, or good old brown paper bags, cut to fit the cookie pan. The secret to the success of these cookies is long, slow cooking at a very low temperature.
Meringues / Chocolate Kisses
4 egg whites, at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup granulated sugar (here is where you need really fine, white granulated sugar for really pretty meringues)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional)
Preheat oven to 325°F / 160 C.
Beat egg whites in large bowl with electric mixer at high speed until foamy. Sprinkle in cream of tartar and salt; continue beating, add sugar slowly, slowly, beating continually until stiff. Fold in vanilla. Fold in chocolate chips, if adding.
Drop by spoonsfull on prepared baking sheet. Bake 30 to 40 minutes or until cookies are firm to the touch and just beginning to brown around edges. Remove to wire racks; cool completely.
Chocolate Meringues
3 egg whites at room temperature
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
3/4 cup sugar
3 T. unsweetened cocoa
Preheat oven to 325 F / 160 C.
Combine egg whites and cream of tartar, beat until foamy. Slowly, slowly beat in sugar, continue beating until thick and shiny. Sprinkle cocoa in, beat just long enough to incorporate. Drop by spoonsful on prepared baking sheet, bake 30 – 40 minutes or until cookies are firm on the outside. Remove carefully to wire racks, cool thoroughly.
There is a recipe for Almond Meringue cookies for diabetics at Cooks.com.
Happy Birthday, Law N’ Order Man
We drove to the hospital the night of December 2nd – it was a very cold clear night, and it seemed we could see every star in the sky, bright, twinkling, as excited as we were about the coming of this child. We were such kids, and we thought we were all grown up.
You, dear son, you taught us what being grown-up was all about. We thought we were ready for parenthood. We didn’t have a clue.
You were such a pretty baby, born early that cold cold morning in the hospital by the Chesapeake Bay. So pink and delicate we could see your veins through your skin.
We still marvel at you. After all these years, we still thank God for sending you to us, and we wonder at God’s mercy and sense of humor. You taught us everything we know about being good parents.
Oh! The fun we had! You were so funny, and so serious. We are so eager to see you, and your lovely bride.
And son, we are so proud of you. Happy Birthday, dear one, and thank you for being our son.
Arabesk and Jon Courtenay Grimwood
I am blessed with friends and family who share books, and Pashazade came into my life courtesy of Little Diamond, my globe-trotting glamourous niece. She always leaves a trail of books as she wanders hither and yon. Some of them are just too deep for me, or need too much attention. This series, the Arabesk Trilogy by Jon Courtenay Grimwood almost fell in that category.
I missed a clue. I kept trying to start the first volume, Pashazade, but was having a problem keeping up with the plot and the technology. I would go back and read again, trying to figure out what I was missing. I know I’m living in Kuwait, but I read! I keep up with the news! When did all this new stuff happen?
And then I just happened to look at the cover of the book and it all became clear – it is a parallel world, it is science fiction, and once I started reading and accepting all the strange words and implants as literary license, the book became fun, and intriguing, and very very hard to put down. And then I had to wait while the second and third volumes (Effendi and Felaheen) because the series is that much fun.
The main character, Ashraf al-Mansur has a complicated past. The plot is complex enough, but Ashraf doesn’t know who he is, we don’t know who he is, and we have to take time out from the plot now and then to get another piece of the puzzle. Fortunately, the puzzle pieces are in all kinds of cool places – Alexandria (but a different Alexandria from current day Alexandria) and the Sudan) but a slightly different Sudan, with a prophetic edge to it) and Seattle and a mental institution, and Tunis and the desert oases . . . oh, this is a lot of fun.
So Ashraf starts out in Alexandria, with his Aunt Nafisa who lives in this marvelous old madresa in Al Iskandriya, but then his aunt is killed, Ashraf becomes guardian to an exceedingly bright and introverted young girl, and falls in love with a young woman with whom he refused an arranged marriage.
Ashraf has friends in high places, is believed to have relations in high places, and although he gets into the worst situations, he has WASTA and a lot of problems just disappear. (For my non-Kuwaiti readers, wasta is sort of like the-power-of-connection-and-who-you-know-and-maybe-who-owes-you-a-favor-or-might-be-open-to-a-little-encouragement). These connections get people killed in the Arabesk trilogy, threaten chaos and mutilation and disaster, and take you on a great ride. Oh! Did I mention this is also a mystery, romance and has political intrigue, too?
It’s modern day – or maybe a year or two in the future – and with a huge twist in the universe here and there, so that it seems familiar, but it isn’t. There are dark shadows and differences that can be critical. And it has a whole raft of “who’s your ally?” kind of situations. It is a richly textured romp, and you are along for the ride. Don’t fight it, just lean back and hang on.
It is pure escapism, no great deep thoughts here. When the trilogy ends, however, you remember the characters, you remember the plots, and you still grin about them months later.
Pashazade, the first volume, is available through Amazon in hardcover and paperback. Paperback starts under $5.00, through used vendors.
Effendi is available from $10.20, new paperback edition.
Felaheen is available new and used from $8.99
Alhamdallah for the Thorns
1001 Kuwait Nights and I have been exploring parallel lines of thought – thanking God/Allah for problems as well as blessings . . . even the idea that problems, too, are blessings, or a conduit to blessings . . .
A friend sent this today. I hadn’t seen it before, but it continues the exploration of the theme. . .
Thorns
Sandra felt as low as the heels of her shoes as she pushed against a November gust and the florist shop door.
Her life had been easy, like a spring breeze. Then in the fourth month of her second pregnancy, a minor automobile accident stole that from her.
During this Thanksgiving week she would have delivered a son. She grieved over her loss. As if that weren’t enough, her husband’s company threatened a transfer. Then her sister, whose holiday visit she coveted, called saying she could not come for the holiday.
Then Sandra’s friend infuriated her by suggesting her grief was a God-given path to maturity that would allow her to empathize with others who suffer. She has no idea what I’m feeling, thought Sandra with a shudder.
Thanksgiving? Thankful for what? She wondered. For a careless driver whose truck was hardly scratched when he rear-ended her? For an airbag that saved her life but took that of her child?
“Good afternoon, can I help you?” The shop clerk’s approach startled her.
“I….I need an arrangement,” stammered Sandra.
“For Thanksgiving? Do you want beautiful but ordinary, or would you like to challenge the day with a customer favorite I call the Thanksgiving “Special?” asked the shop clerk. “I’m convinced that flowers tell stories,” she continued. “Are you looking for something that conveys ‘gratitude’ this thanksgiving?”
“Not exactly!” Sandra blurted out. “In the last five months, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.”
Sandra regretted her outburst, and was surprised when the shop clerk said, “I have the perfect arrangement for you.”
Just then the shop door’s small bell rang, and the shop clerk said, “Hi, Barbara…let me get your order.” She politely excused herself and walked toward a small workroom, then quickly reappeared, carrying an arrangement of greenery, bows, and long-stemmed thorny roses. Except the ends of the rose stems were neatly snipped: there were no flowers.
“Want this in a box?” asked the clerk.
Sandra watched for the customer’s response. Was this a joke? Who would want rose stems with no flowers! She waited for laughter, but neither woman laughed.
“Yes, please,” Barbara, replied with an appreciative smile. “You’d think after three years of getting the special, I wouldn’t be so moved by its significance, but I can feel it right here, all over again,” she said as she gently tapped her chest. And she left with her order.
“Uh,” stammered Sandra, “that lady just left with, uh….she just left with no flowers!
“Right, said the clerk, “I cut off the flowers. That’s the Special. I call it the Thanksgiving Thorns Bouquet.”
“Oh, come on, you can’t tell me someone is willing to pay for that!” exclaimed Sandra.
“Barbara came into the shop three years ago feeling much like you feel today,” explained the clerk. “She thought she had very little to be thankful for. She had lost her father to cancer, the family business was failing, her son was into drugs, and she was facing major surgery.”
“That same year I had lost my husband,” continued the clerk, “and for the first time in my life, had just spent the holidays alone. I had no children, no husband, no family nearby, and too great a debt to allow any travel.”
“So what did you do?” asked Sandra.
“I learned to be thankful for thorns,” answered the clerk quietly. “I’ve always thanked God for the good things in my life and never questioned the good things that happened to me, but when bad stuff hit, did I ever ask questions! It took time for me to learn that dark times are important. I have always enjoyed the ‘flowers’ of life, but it took thorns to show me the beauty of God’s comfort. You know, the Bible says that God comforts us when we’re afflicted, and from His consolation we learn to comfort others.”
Sandra sucked in her breath as she thought about the very thing her friend had tried to tell her. “I guess the truth is I don’t want comfort. I’ve lost a baby and I’m angry with God.”
Just then someone else walked in the shop. “Hey, Phil!” shouted the clerk to the balding, rotund man.
“My wife sent me in to get our usual Thanksgiving Special….12 thorny, long-stemmed stems!” laughed Phil as the clerk handed him a tissue-wrapped arrangement from the refrigerator.
“Those are for your wife?” asked Sandra incredulously. “Do you mind me asking why she wants something that looks like that?”
“No…I’m glad you asked,” Phil replied. “Four years ago my wife and I nearly divorced. After forty years, we were in a real mess, but with the Lord’s grace and guidance, we slogged through problem after problem. He rescued our marriage. Jenny here (the clerk) told me she kept a vase of rose stems to remind her of what she learned from “thorny” times, and that was good enough for me. I took home some of those stems. My wife and I decided to label each one for a specific “problem” and give thanks for what that problem taught us.”
As Phil paid the clerk, he said to Sandra, “I highly recommend the Special!”
“I don’t know if I can be thankful for the thorns in my life.” Sandra said. “It’s all too…fresh.”
“Well,” the clerk replied carefully, “my experience has shown me that thorns make roses more precious. We treasure God’s providential care more during trouble than at any other time. Remember, it was a crown of thorns that Jesus wore so we might know His love. Don’t resent the thorns.”
Tears rolled down Sandra’s cheeks. For the first time since the accident, she loosened her grip on resentment. “I’ll take those twelve long-stemmed thorns, please,” she managed to choke out.
“I hoped you would,” said the clerk gently. “I’ll have them ready in a minute.”
“Thank you. What do I owe you?”
“Nothing. Nothing but a promise to allow God to heal your heart. The first year’s arrangement is always on me.” The clerk smiled and handed a card to Sandra. “I’ll attach this card to your arrangement, but maybe you would like to read it first.”
It read: “My God, I have never thanked You for my thorns. I have thanked You a thousand times for my roses, but never once for my thorns. Teach me the glory of the cross I bear; teach me the value of my thorns. Show me that I have climbed closer to You along the path of pain. Show me that, through my tears, the colors of Your rainbow look much more brilliant.”
Praise Him for your roses; thank him for your thorns!
Christmas Divinity Candy
Divinity can be tricky. You really really need a candy thermometer to get it right, and you need a dry day – a humid day will ruin your divinity.
You will need:
2 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup light Karo corn syrup (they have this at the Sultan Center, but it is EXPENSIVE!)
1/2 cup water
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla (or peppermint, if you can get it)
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
In a heavy pan, stir together sugar, corn syrup, water and salt. Using a candy thermometer, cook and stir over medium heat until sugar dissolves, carefully, so that you don’t splash this on the sides of the pan.
Once sugar has dissolved, don’t stir it any more, just keep cooking until the candy thermometer shows 260 F. Take off heat immediately.
In a large bowl, beat egg whites until they are stiff – you will need a mixer or hand mixer to do this right.
Pour the hot syrup in a thin stream over egg whites, using your mixer at a high speed. Adding the syrup slowly is the key to this recipe working.
Add vanilla, beat at high speed 4 or 5 minutes or until candy starts to hold it’s shape when you lift the beaters out. Mixture will be ribbony, and sort of hold it’s shape.
Drop by spoonfuls onto waxed paper. If it flattens out, beat the mixture another minute, then try again. Try not to overbeat; the mixture will get hard and stiff! If this happens, stir in a couple drops of hot water until it softens just enough. Yeh, it sounds tricky, but it’s just getting the right texture. You really can do this.
When the texture seems stiff enough but not too stiff, add the nuts in quickly, then drop by teaspoon on waxed paper, allow to cool and dry. (Some people add other inclusions – candied fruit pieces, chocolate chips, peppermint candies, crushed into small pieces, etc. I’m a purist – divinity is just white with nuts!) Store tightly covered – divinity absorbs humidity! Best if served the day it is made, or very soon. It is so good it doesn’t last very long, people just gobble it up.
This photo is from AllRecipes.com.
Easy Kraft Christmas Fudge
This fudge is just so easy, it’s a sin. The only problem is finding Marshmallow Creme if you are living in a country where it is not readily available. We normally bring it with us when we come back from the US.
A plate of this fudge makes a great gift for a teacher or hostess.
3 cups sugar
3/4 cups butter
2/3 cups Carnation Evaporated milk, undiluted
1 12 ounce package semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 7 ounce jar Kraft Marshmallow Creme
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 teaspoon vanilla
Combine sugar, butter, and milk in heavy saucepan, bring to a full boil, stirring constantly. Continue boiling 5 minutes over medium heat, stirring constantly to prevent burning.
Take off heat, stir in chocolate chips and stir until melted.
Add Marshmallow creme, nuts and vanilla, and stir until well blended. Pour into a greased 9 x 13 inch pan. Cool at room temperature, then cut into squares. It’s a good idea to cut it sooner rather than later, as when it hardens, it is harder to cut into uniform squares.
This recipe doubles beautifully. If you are going to the trouble to make fudge, you might as well make a lot. 🙂
How easy is that??!!
Extra Credit Christmas Cookies: Rosettes
OK, good on ya, you’ve done your shopping and the cupboards are bulging. You’re already planning how to knock out those basic cookies, but now – now we get to think about trying something a little more challenging.
I will admit, this is not such a challenge to me. I grew up watching these made every year, it’s a Swedish thing. Now I make them every year, continuing the tradition. So I am going to share all the secrets with you, and you are going to do just fine.
First, a little theory. The rosettes I make every year use a sweet, lemon flavored mixture. Twice I have made savory timbales – you use a different batter. Those timbales are used to serve vegetables or something like lobster newburg when you have a lot of time and you want something to look very elegant, but the truth is, it’s a lot of work.
Meanwhile, rosette cookies for Christmas are also a lot of work, but you make a big batch at once, they last for up to six weeks in an airtight container, and they look very very cool and take up a lot of space on a cookie tray. And everyone thinks you are amazing, because they look so hard, but really, they’re not that hard.
Basic Rosette Lemon Batter
Beat 2 eggs
add 1 cup milk
Sift 1 cup flour
with a pinch of salt
1 Tablespoon sugar
Add to above and mix all together. It should look like thick cream. Add:
2 teaspoons of lemon extract, stir in.
Then you let the batter stand at least an hour. I often make it the night before and let it stand in the refrigerator overnight, then pull it out when I get up so that it warms up to room temperature. If you don’t let it stand, it doesn’t blend the right way.
You can do this in a pan on the stove . . .I did it that way for many years. But there is this wonderful machine called a deep fryer . . . if you have one, you are home free. I use something called a Fry Daddy, which is just the right size.
You will need a LOT of oil. I use a very mild vegetable oil like safflower oil or corn oil, something that doesn’t have a strong flavor on its own.
Warm the oil to 375 F/180 C.
Put out several sheets of paper towel. When the hot rosette comes out of the oil, you will pry it off the mold with the tines of a fork and let it rest upside down on the papertowel to absorb any of the excess oil.
Have a fork handy.
Choose the rosette wheel you want to use – most kits come with two or three. The most classic is a wheel shaped, but I also use a star and occasionally have used a butterfly. The timbale shape is also wheel shaped, but without all the divisions. Attach the form you choose firmly to the iron.
Get a comfortable chair, and sit by the hot oil. Have your bowl of batter right next to you, and paper towels nearby. Please, this isn’t something to do with children around, not when you are working with 3 – 4 cups of sizzling oil.
Dip the rosette iron in the hot oil, maybe five seconds, so it gets hot. (A hot iron is the secret to being able to get the rosette off easily when it is finished cooking.) Pull it out, tap it against the side of the pan to knock off excess oil.
Dip it quickly into the batter, it will hiss as the hot oil hits the cooler batter. Hissing is good, it means the iron is hot enough.
But dip into the batter only up to the top edge, not over the top edge! If the batter goes over the top edge, you will not be able to get the rosette off when it finished cooking.
So now you have a hot iron with batter on it, just right.
Plunge it into the hot oil. It will really hiss and bubble, that is what it is supposed to do, that means it is cooking. It will only hiss and bubble for maybe 30 seconds, then the hissing and bubbling will slacken. Somewhere between 45 seconds and 1 minute, pull the rosette out and see if it looks crisp and golden. Turn it upside down, tap excess oil back into the hot oil.
Over the paper toweling, use your fork to gently pry the rosette away from the mold in a couple places, and using gentle pressure, push the rosette off the mold. Place it upside down on the toweling so that it drains. One down!
At first, take it one at a time until you feel comfortable that you’ve got the hang of it. Then – you can actually do two irons at once. You let one iron heat while you are cooking the other rosette, then switch back and forth.
From time to time, maybe every ten rosettes, stir the batter again, because it can get oily and needs to be stirred.
If you do this with a pan on the stove, it is harder to maintain a steady temperature, and you will need a hot oil thermometer to keep track of it. When the oil gets too cool, the rosettes turn out too light and too floppy. If they get overcooked, they get too brown and they are hard to get off the iron. The deep fat fryer is your best bet for maintaining an even temperature.
This is also something more fun to do with a sister or a friend. My Mother and her best friend did it every year together; it was their special tradition.
OK, when you are finished with all your rosettes, and they have cooled, store them in a large tupperware container, WITHOUT CROWDING. These are so fragile, and they break easily.
Sift Powdered Sugar over Rosettes
When you want to take a tray of rosettes somewhere, you need to sift powdered sugar over the top, with the empty side up (the way they were when they were cooking) so that the powdered sugar goes down into the crevasses.
Some people use a sifter, but my preference is to use a small basket seive/strainer with a handle, put powdered sugar in it and tap it on the side with a fork. It controls where the sugar falls a little better, and gives more control over how much sugar you put on each rosette. Put them on the platter empty side up, so that they look all snowy and sugary and crisp.
WARNING! Do not attempt to eat one of these wearing a black dress! They are crisp, and they crumble, and sometimes powdered sugar goes everywhere, and it is a (mess) to get off.
As the cook, you get to eat the mistakes as you go along. At the end, you won’t want to eat any more. They aren’t so sweet, but they are mostly FAT! You will get other recipes for rosettes with your iron.
Have fun.
I found this photo at About housewares and it is a good photo, but to my way of thinking, the rosettes are upside down. I serve them the other way.
2011 Update: I used a Fry Daddy this year and every single rosette turned out perfectly. 🙂
Today’s Grin: We are Forbidden to Report the Following Story
Todays Kuwait Times bottom left corner:
Information Gags Press
Kuwait: The Ministry of Information issued a gag order to all local media over reporting the tussle between two leading Kuwait companies over the September takeover of a KSE-listed firm. A copy of the court order ordering the ban was attatched to the ministry’s letter to all local dailies and media. The following is a translation of the accompanying Arabic letter (shown on the front page):
From the Ministry of Information, To the Editor-in-Chief, Kuwait Times. With reference to case number 900/2006 filed by Mohammed Abdul Mohsen Al-Kharafi Holding Co and Mohammed Abdul Mohsen Al-Khorafi & Sons for General Trading and Contracting against the Minister of Commerce and Industry as the supreme chairman of the Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE), a court order has been issued pertaining to the banning of the publication of any news concerning the subject of the contestation (number 2/2006) till a verdict is issued concerning the nondisclosure violations. Therefore, please be advised to stop any publication till the case is over.
So the Kuwait Times reports that it cannot report the story. Brilliant.
Africa’s Oldest Pupil
This is a story I saw in last week’s Kuwait Times, but I can’t get it out of my mind. This humble man, with his ongoing search for knowledge, is an inspiration to me.
Source: Reuters
(This story is part of a special report on education in Africa, issued on Nov. 15)
By Andrew Cawthorne
ELDORET, Kenya, Nov 15 (Reuters) – With his stubbly grey beard and walking stick at his side, 86-year-old Kimani Maruge looks a little out of place among the rows of children sitting behind wooden desks at Kapkenduiywo Primary School. Yet classmates 10 times his junior would be hard-pressed to match the enthusiasm of Maruge, a farmer and veteran of Kenya’s 1950s anti-colonial Mau Mau revolt, who has the distinction of being the oldest pupil on the planet.
“I will only stop studying if I go blind or die,” Maruge says at the crowded school in a poor neighbourhood outside Eldoret in Kenya’s western farmlands.
The illiterate great-grandfather – who has outlived 10 of his 15 children — jumped at a belated chance to educate himself when President Mwai Kibaki introduced free primary schooling in the east African nation in 2003.
Enrolment across Kenya shot up overnight, with 1.2 million more children going to school. Kapkenduiywo had 375 pupils before Kibaki’s measure, and now has 892.
But there are none quite like Maruge. He says his inspiration came from listening to a preacher in church and suspecting he was misinterpreting the Bible.
“I wanted to go to school to be able to read the Bible for myself,” he says, tucking his long legs under a tiny, shared desk at the front of his overcrowded classroom of 96 pupils. “And in case there is ever any compensation for us Mau Mau, I would like to be able to count my money properly at the bank,” he adds with a large grin.
PERSISTENCE PAID OFF
When he first turned up at the school gates in regulation knee-length socks, cut-off trousers and navy blue jumper, Maruge was greeted with laughter. Teaching staff tried at first to direct him to adult education classes. But when he returned again and again, they realised he would not be deterred, and anyway there is no legal age-limit for primary school entrance in Kenya.
“Inside me, when I saw him there, I felt he was serious,” says headmistress Jane Obinchu. “And look at him now. Nearly three years later, he’s still here. He’s over the most difficult part, he won’t drop out now.”
In the classroom, Maruge’s favourite subjects are Swahili and maths, but he struggles with English which is new and strange to him. He is treated like any other schoolboy except for one privilege: tea at break. Fellow pupils treat him with care and respect, and love to listen to his tales of Kenyan history between classes.
“He tells us about the Mau Mau,” says Ireen Wairimu, 11. “And about the time when white kids used to go to school under a roof while African kids sat under trees.”
Hobbling on a foot he says was disfigured when he was tortured by British colonial captors during the Mau Mau revolt, Maruge cannot keep up with all the playground games. But he watches with relish and is always surrounded by chattering kids.
“They are my friends, they love me, they help me walk home,” he says. “I want to break the barriers between old and young.”
INTERNATIONAL POSTER-BOY
Known in his neighbourhood as “Mzee” – a Swahili term of respect for an elder – Maruge is happy to show off his new knowledge, reading passages of the Bible slowly and clearly in front of his house after school. Although still living humbly, Maruge has become a national celebrity and something of a poster boy for free education campaigners worldwide. Last year, he was feted at the United Nations in New York. This year, a Hollywood crew are working on a film about him.
“School has changed him. He looks younger and happier, rejuvenated by getting a second chance in life,” says headmistress Obinchu. “He calls me his mother, but I am the age of his daughters. He is an inspiration to all of us.”
Despite his advanced years, Maruge has plenty of dreams for the future. “I won’t stop. I want my name one day to be Professor, Doctor Kimani!,” he says, holding his books close to his chest. “Liberty is learning, you know.”
Recent Comments
Kitchen on Isiais: Winding Down intlxpatr on Shampoo Ginger tigerbutterya0c5ff1d… on Shampoo Ginger intlxpatr on British Soldier Kidnapped, Esc… John on British Soldier Kidnapped, Esc… Wikipedia Donate Button
Amazina
Early Voting in Florida
