CHASING THE ONIONS

You can’t buy them in Zimbabwe. French Fried Onions (FFO). For this old Yankee the FFO paints a nostalgic picture of the Green Bean Casserole at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter family dinners.

My sister Delight started the ball rolling a year or so ago when she sent the makings for the casserole. A big hit with our guests at the pastor’s Sunday dinner. (also, a bit of fun to arouse a hint of envy in the heart of Theresa , an American missionary living across the alley from us, and a delighted chuckle when Debbie at Sunday dinner exclaimed quite loudly as her husband took a second helping).

As I said, you can’t buy the FFO here in Gweru nor have I seen them in South Africa. So I requested another supply from my sister. Just the FFO, because we can buy the mushroom soup and green beans here. I even add water chestnuts for an extra crunch. On September 1, Delight obliges. It’s about five weeks on the average from her post office in Los Banos, CA, to our post office in Gweru. On Tuesday, October 5, I get an ominous-looking envelope in our post box. Brown with no stamps. It shouts “government”!

Not thinking FFO, my heart skips a bit. Maybe it’s a notice that my second level of residency has been approved. It’s three years for your first work permit, another three years for the renewal, and a final three years to establish residency. It took two years for the first level to come through, and I actually have until February to make it two years for the next level approval to come through. Jim is hoping they’ll just go ahead and offer the permanent residency on the second level.

The brown envelope contains a slip telling us they are holding a package which requires a permit from the Department of Agriculture for importing onions. And I remembered my request for FFO. Just a simple misunderstanding, I reason. All they have to do is open the package.

We take the slip to the place where we pick up packages. We want to tell them to open the package, which they sometimes do when there is a question, but they say come back tomorrow at 11 when the customs lady is there or better yet go over to the government center and see her in her office.

Red (the fellow who’s worked about 30 years for Jim) and I show up at 11 but we’re already too late. Go to the government center, they say. So we do. Someone directs us to the right office, but she’s not there. Probably at the customs building a few blocks away. We miss her there. She’s at the post office, they say. But she isn’t. We miss her again. Try again in the afternoon or come again in the morning. 9 a.m.

We do get her at the customs building the next day. I explain that we’re talking about a condiment used in a casserole. I even have a picture of the casserole. And I tell them, it tastes really good. They laugh with me. Open the package, I urge her, and you’ll see these are not onion plants but processed onions in a can. She says meet her at the post office at 10 a.m. on Thursday. I can’t do that because we have a Pastors’ Tea at our house at 10. Could Red come in my place? Yes, that will be okay.

Red heads to town, about 2 kilometers. It’s a waiting game again but finally after 11 he connects with the customs lady at the post office. She opens the package and is satisfied. Red brings the package home. I see on the customs slip that Delight has written in bold ink ONIONS/CANS. The second part was blurred but the first part bold and beautiful. So it was just an easily misunderstood wrong assumption, but we have four beautiful cans of FFO. This Sunday we’ll have the Green Been Casserole, thanks to Delight and the customs lady in Gweru.

Nine around the table for Sunday dinner. Good fellowship and the food good, too. And I think of the difference between Third World and First World. How often do we get bent out of shape when we don’t get what we want when we want it. Here in Gweru we wait five or six weeks to receive a package, but I can remember as kids in the Congo that we would wait up to six months. My Grandma Erickson would often include homemade fudge in a package, and it would be looking a bit old by the time we received it. We ate it anyway—every crumb.

Or the urge to become impatient with Third World bureaucracy. It’s not worth it or worthy of us to be demanding or impatient. And it all works out with nobody fussed. And I like that about life over here. You’re not so much in a hurry that you can’t give respect to someone who has this little bit of control over your life. And it works—at least 76 percent of the time!