Finding the right foods for the ritual Passover meal was not easy in Ovamboland. In Windhoek, the capital, there is a Conservative synagogue and a small Jewish population. However, Windhoek is an 8 hour drive from here. I would wager there are perhaps 20 Jewish people within a 250 mile radius of Outapi, so the local markets don’t have a “Jewish foods” section. The most important food, of course, is matza, and luckily the only ingredients for matza are bread and flour. I found a recipe on the internet and made my own. According to the recipe you have no more than 17 minutes from the time the water hits the flour to the time the dough must go in the oven. I think I took a few minutes too long to knead the dough. When it came out of the oven, it tasted like boring pita bread, not matza. But it still tasted bad, and that's the important part!
Some other elements of the seder plate were also improvised. For parsley, I used lettuce. For charoset, I chopped apples, crushed peanuts, and then used yogurt to the hold them together. The whole concoction was quite tasty, and we ate it for dessert for several days. For bitter herbs, the closest thing I could find was a jar of German spicy mustard. Given our people’s history, I figure that works. For a shankbone, I went to the deep freezer and removed one of the legs of the goat we slaughtered the month before. Mogen David wasn’t available at the local bottle shop, so instead we used a cheap Namibian wine. However, the local wine is called Tassenberg – maybe it’s made by Jews! The actual meal was a stew of brisket, potatoes, carrots and onions.
Even if the food wasn’t spot on, we still retold the story. My aunt Phyllis reminded me that the story is the most important part of the holiday. My friends learned the story of Passover, of how God helped the Jews to escape slavery in Egypt. We shared my one Haggadah and passed it from person to person. We asked the four questions, described the four sons, and dipped our fingers in Tassenberg for each of the ten plagues. I sang “Dayenu” horribly out of tune, while Nicola and Robin looked on skeptically. Most of all, we reminded ourselves that Passover is not only about the Jews escaping from Pharoah thousands of years ago. Passover is about any people who are still in bondage in the world: across the globe, some people remain in slavery or indentured servitude; others are in the grip of oppressive, totalitarian regimes; and many remain in the grip of desperate poverty. We are lucky to have escaped such bondage thousands of years ago, but this holiday reminds us about those who are not so lucky.
Of course, it also reminds us that Jewish holidays can be summarized in three simple sentences: "They tried to kill us. We survived. Let's eat!"
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