Making Mama's Chicken

Making Mama's Chicken

I started cooking my Mama's fried chicken my first week in Africa. I was still stationed at the main house on the Mkhaya Game Park, unable to make camp out in the bush until the local SiSwati guide returned from his days off. The past six days had been physically exhausting, spiritually exhilarating. The childhood dream of conservation work in Africa was finally happening, but as any seasoned conservation professional knows, caring for the wild and it's critters is not all dramatic scenes darting animals and releasing them into restored habitats. There's a lot of hard, physical, repetitive labor required.

 My work days thus far consisted of fixing fence, manually hacking and pulling hundreds of invasive lantana vines intertwined with the veldt's native trees, and haying for hippos, i.e. cutting grass, LOTS of grass, for some naughty hippos slated to be trapped and re-located out of a local sugar cane plantation, lest they get shot for eating the sweets.

But it was Saturday night. We'd been cut loose from lantana assassination early. Would also have all of Sunday free. Speewee, the chief cook and bottle washer for the house had a well deserved evening off, since the park's manager and his family were away for the weekend.  Supper was needed only for myself and one Dutchman, an IT guy from the Hague working out his own African dream.  The day before she had given me the layout of the kitchen. Pointed out which meats I had permission to prepare from the deep freeze, what cabinets held various spices and dry goods, which items were available for mixing and matching from the vintage 1950's fridge.

I could have been bold. I could have picked impala chops, or chunks of kudu meat for stew or grilled a circle of warthog sausage, but I had Mama's fried chicken on the brain. Had been since I'd seen the unmistakable image of Colonel Sanders on a billboard on Swazi's main highway. My North Carolina mother taught me to fry chicken before I turned 9 years old. No corporate, fast food version from half way around the globe could substitute.


So the frozen bag of mixed chicken pieces was plucked from the cold, set out to thaw. Most anatomically interesting chicken I've ever seen: five legs, four wings, three thighs and a solitary breast. Still, Picasso worthy or not, Mama's Mickey's Fried Chicken would be on the menu from a kitchen far away from it's origins along Tobacco Road.

Some swaps had to be made; sour cream and whole milk for the buttermilk soak.  Portugese peri-peri peppers providing a really good kick instead of the Cajun mix I use at home. It turned out better than perfect. I thought Mama might be smiling from on high. Hoped she was proud, not only of the cooking but of her baby girl's current adventure. Her generosity after she passed the year before had made Africa possible for me.

 That platter of chicken would be the first of many prepared and shared during my travels. Samples I left for Speewee made it to the head chef at the resort lodge. I was asked for the recipe from other chefs in other places once word got around the "American girl who makes the chicken" was close by. I began to lose count of the times I demonstrated how to do that one simple, secret step at the end of the fry for the perfect outside crust. Find me and I'll show you too.

I am proud to say Mama Mickey's Southern Fried Chicken has been on the menu of some very fancy places in sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar for a decade now. Cannot not think of a more fitting and enduring legacy to my beautiful mother, whom I miss every single day.

Saving Africa's Wildlife: Burning Ivory

Burning Ivory

On my flight to Australia in 1990, I read the cover story of the latest "Outside" magazine. A massive African elephant, a tusker, graced the cover. " Wildlife Wars" shouted at the reader in bold red letters at the bottom. The piece described the latest head of the Kenyan Wildlife Service's efforts to end elephant poaching. Richard Leakey (yes, one of those famous anthropologist Leakeys) had the daunting task to try to stop the epidemic slaughter of African elephants. In 10 years Kenya's elephant numbers had dropped from 85,000 in 22,000. He describes walking through warehouses full of tusks, from every size elephant. He realized poachers wiped out entire herds. There were piles of rhino horn, stacks of animal skins: leopard, lion, cheetah, zebra, and sable antelope. The reality of the wildlife deaths represented by the lifeless remains sickened him.

It was still legal to sell the ivory in 1989. Leakey could use the proceeds, ironically, for the anti-poaching programs he had planned, He didn't. He burned it. The whole world watched. The ivory trade stopped and African elephant were safe...for awhile.

Yesterday there was another dramatic burning of elephant tusks, rhino horns and endangered wildlife remains outside Nairobi National Park in Kenya. Africa's mega fauna (once again) reduced to bits and pieces. Eleven pyres were lit to demonstrate what illegal poaching looks like. The decision in 2009 to allow the limited sale of ivory have put the lives of wild African elephants in the cross hairs of extinction (once again).

 Pretty certain in this Twitterfeed, Snapchat, Smartphone universe, the whole world didn't watch this time. I'm absolutely certain many humans simply don't care that at the rate elephants and rhinos are being poached in the first quarter of the 21st century, they will be gone in the wild in one human generation. The elephants have, perhaps, 25 years. Rhinos 10.

 Last fall I went to Washington DC to participate in a Global March for Elephants and Rhinos. My poster used photos I had taken myself from my work on the Mkhaya Game Park in Swaziland in 2006.  Only a couple hundred gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial for our walk to the White House. Disappointing that many of the participants were more about competing with one another on who had done the MOST, been to more African nations, donated the most money, to make themselves feel better rather than being invested and passionate. Only a handful knew the devastating stats on the level of killing or the complexity of stopping organized crime syndicates feeding Asia's insatiable demand for ivory and rhino horn.

I do like the slogan we called as we marched and use it as a mantra :

 "Not a trinket. Not a trophy. Ivory on an elephant only."

They didn't have a good one for rhinoceros. Hard to rhyme I guess.

 How about this one: "Only a rhino needs it's horn."

Here's the story on Kenya's latest ivory burn. Let's hope this is the final time such drama is necessary.

Up in Flames: Kenya Burns More Than 100 Tons of Ivory