As many of you know I grew up in the desert,
well to be fair I grew up along the lush banks of the Blue Nile River in
Al-Gazeera in central Sudan. The desert was never far away though and
agriculture was focused on cash crops mandated by the Structural Adjustment
Plans of the 1980s (known to many now as the lost decade). Wad Medani, the small
city where I grew up, was astoundingly beautiful in its own unique way (as every
place is). I have never seen mud as black as the mud which squelched
between my toes as I swam in the vibrantly grey-blue waters of the river. The neem trees which grew everywhere in Wad Medani were beautiful with their many
tiny leaves creating the sense of a larger leaf. When a dust storm hit these
thousands of tiny neem leaves would bring a shower of green among the stark
brown of the Sahara sand. It was home, and when I close my eyes now I can still
smell the richness of the water droplets settling the dust as every household sprayed
their housh (yard) to cool the afternoon heat blowing in from just beyond the
horizon of trees.
Going to Ireland in the hottest of the
summer months, when a drop of water would evaporate within seconds, was an
annual pilgrimage and one I embraced in all its contrasts to my Sudan home. The
summer months were for the most part spent at my grandparents house in Cahir,
County Tipperary; a place most tourists to Ireland know only if they past
through it on their way to Cork or Kerry for the ‘real’ attractions Ireland has
to offer. But for me Cahir was the most exciting place on earth as a young girl
growing up in country which was not my ancestral home. Cahir was where my
cousins were, where my mother had grown up and gone to school, where people
looked like me, where my granny’s ‘ordinary’ (to me it was Michelin) Irish-cooking could never satisfy my appetite, and where every Friday I got to go to Cahir
Country Markets with my granny May.
Now there is something all of you non-Irish
readers need to know about Irish women – we are a force to be reckoned with,
and I am only half-Irish! You may have heard of the ‘Irish mammy’, the mother
who makes everything alright, takes care of all your needs and just has all the
right answers when you need them. Here’s a great recent article from the Irish Times
newspaper if you want to fact-check me. Even the country of Ireland, or
Éire means the matron or the goddess of the land. There have many females figures in Ireland’s history, my personal favourite being the pirate queen
Grace O’Malley who even had an audience with Queen Elizabeth I. But as those of
us who inhibit female bodies are well aware, over time the patriarchal system
(especially from the mid-1400s) has spatialized public and private life as
gendered. Grace O’Malley may have met the Queen of England, but my granny along
with all the other ‘Irish mammys’ was a force to be reckoned with only within the
private space of the home.
The founding of the Irish Countrywoman’s Association in 1910 enabled this public-private divide to be blurred for Irish
women. The activities and the events organized by the Association brought the
talents and the ferociousness of Irish women roaring into the public eye. One
of the activities encouraged by the Association was the setting up of local
country markets where women could share their homemade goods. Over time the
country markers expanded to include awards and became a real source of pride,
sisterhood and income for many rural Irish women. For me the country market in
Cahir on a Friday was one of the highlights of my time in Ireland, mainly because
I had a whole morning of my granny and a whole bunch of incredible Cahir women.
It was sometimes a rude awakening getting up early on a Friday to ensure we had
the ritual of microwaved porridge (half a cup of oats, 2 minutes and 7 seconds
and not a second more!) and a cup of good strong tea (tea-leaves only, as teabags
were unacceptable). I can still see the sugar melting into the hot porridge
before I poured the milk on top of it. The memory of the creaminess of the milk coupled with
the sweetness of the sugar still makes my mouth water. We would then pack
up the car with loaves of brown bread so fresh it had to be handled with great
care; jars of marmalade for which I had stood guard only a few days before stirring
the pot of simmering oranges; and there were current cakea, a slightly sweet
bread filled with delicious raisins perfect with a cup of strong tea. I would
feel the excitement grow as we pulled into the car-park of Cahir’s community
hall, my nervous energy masked by the need to appear organized and ready for my
granny. Despite the early hour there would inevitably be women already there
setting up the tables according to produce, setting out the tablecloths and organizing
the hall to create the one-way system around the tables. Each lady’s items were
marked with their number, a very important identifier for receiving their
payment at the end of the day, but also a means for customers to grab their
favourite items. I would walk around before the doors opened to the general
public, my eyes overwhelmed by the assortment of colours laid out on the tables.
There were jams, breads, cupcakes, tarts (or 'pie' as known to some of you),
fresh fruits and vegetables from the gardens, and bunches of wonderful flowers
which filled the hall with their different scents. It was a festival of smell,
at every table I found myself drooling one moment and floating the next in a
rural Ireland version of the land of ompalumpas. I was allowed to choose one sweet
baked item to have with tea after the market was over – it was the hardest
choice I would have to make all week. As I got older I also realised that there
was a ‘political’ element to the choice I made based on which lady’s baked good
I choose. The anticipation would grow as the time neared to 10am and the
opening of the doors. I would be told where to stand and watch the gallop of
the hordes of Cahir residents anxious to choose their favourite fresh products.
The doors would open and the swarm descended and I watched as all the wondrous
colours and shapes disappeared off the tables in a frenzy of chatter and delight.
Then in an instant the swarm was gone leaving only the wreckage of goods which
had not enticed their desires. The cleanup began, and I was only too happy to
help, as at the end of this was tea and my chosen baked good sitting up on the
stage surrounded by the ladies and their stories. Someone would put the kettle
on off stage right and we would set out a cup and a plate for everyone at the table
towering over the now deserted hall. The conversations were enthralling to me,
listening to the town gossip and the comparing of ingredients and which flowers
were doing well this year. They would delight in my presence as I performed
short Arabic poems for them or recounted stories of my ‘exotic’ life on the
banks of the Nile. My granny, a lady for whom giving compliments did come easy, would
look on with a glint in her eye, which as I grew older I recognized as pride. As
I write this I shed tears for times passed but not forgotten, for memories
and stories which will live on in me and all of us children who found such
wonder and adventure around the tables of the country market.
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