Menstrual Health Project in Kalisizo

I traveled to Kalisizo to work with Brick-by-Brick on a menstrual health project. The theory is that many girls in low-resource, low-income settings hit puberty, start menstruating, and start missing school, because they do not have access to sanitary products that ensures adequate protection against embarrassing leaks. These girls’ grades drop, and some of them probably end up dropping out of school. Thus, if we provide them with access to sanitary products, then they can stay in school, get an education, and get further ahead in life then they would have otherwise. This sounds reasonable and logical, but the theory is supported by little more than anecdotal accounts. In fact, the largest, and possibly only, randomized controlled trial conducted to study the subject found that girls missed very little school in general, and girls who were provided with free sanitary products had no difference in school attendance from girls who were not provided with the products. Thus, Marc Sklar, the founder of Brick-by-Brick, wanted to find out if there is an interest in and need for access to reusable sanitary products amongst primary school girls in Kalisizo, and I had been tasked with conducting the survey. I shall not delve into the details of the survey. Suffice it to say that there is a great interest in access to affordable and reusable sanitary products amongst the girls.

In order to derive enough energy to conduct this study, I had to find nourishment around town. And that was how the chapatti guys came into my life. I first met Frank and Hassan while hunting around for rollexes in Kalisizo. They sold chapattis and rollexes in the mornings and evenings, and I purchased at least one rollex from them every single day. Their rollexes were delicious, and I may or may not have developed a mild addiction to them. However, one fine morning, I woke up a little bit late, and arrived at the chapatti guys’ stand to find everything sold out. I was absolutely distraught. I was craving a rollex. I wanted it. I needed it. Frank calmly told me that there were no rollexes left, as he was preparing two rollexes right in front of me. “What about those rollexes?” I asked him. He shook his head. Those were for him and Hassan. The rollex he was preparing was the biggest I had ever seen – he had stuffed it full of eggs and tomatoes. He must have been hungry, but I was hungrier. I sat down and refused to leave. I want to buy that rollex, I told him. You told me you’d be here until noon, and it’s barely 11.30am! How can you already be sold out? That is unacceptable. A businessman must keep his word to his customers, especially one as loyal as I. Please. I really want a rollex. Please? Pretty please? Frank shook his head in defeat and sold me his lunch. “Webale nnyo nnyo nnyo sebo!!!” I screeched in delight. I sighed with complete happiness as I bit into my rollex, brushing aside the tiny tinge of guilt lingering around my cloud of bliss. I would make it up to him. And I did. On my last day in Kalisizo.

On my last day in Kalisizo, I woke up at the crack of dawn and headed to town. I arrived at the chapatti stand before either Frank or Hassan. I was their apprentice for the morning. I wanted to learn to make chapattis and they didn’t mind the help (or hindrance – these are really really nice guys). They taught me the correct proportions of flour and water to use, how to mix everything (that was really hard work – Frank did most of it, since I apparently do not possess the requisite upper-body strength to make a master chapatti chef). We added some oil, and started to break off pieces of dough to turn them into these little dough balls ready to be rolled into chapattis. This is a lot harder than it sounds. You have to first break off a piece of dough that is just a little bit bigger than the right size for making one chapatti. Then, you place the dough in your hands and start to tuck the outside edges of the dough piece into its center with your two thumbs, while slowly nudging it towards your left palm. Eventually, the dough ends up completely in your left hand, while your right thumb is still tucking the bottom edges into the center of the now almost completely round ball of dough. You close your left hand into a fist, squeezing the dough very gently so that it pops up as a completely round ball right on top of the ring formed by your thumb and index finger – it kinda looks like you’re holding an invisible ice-cream cone with the dough ball as the scoop of vanilla ice cream sitting triumphantly on top, basking in the glory of its perfect spherical geometry. This whole process takes about 3 seconds (if you’re Hassan or Frank), but I started out at 30 seconds with a semi-spherical glob, and worked my way to about 10 seconds with an almost perfect sphere. Progress!

We then flattened the dough balls and rolled them into flat pancakes. Hassan then showed me the next stage of chapatti making. He put a flat dough piece on the round chapatti grill, and then turned the dough with his left hand while stretching out the circumference of the dough with the curved medial edge of his right hand (the meaty part of his hand right underneath his pinky finger), so that the chapatti became further flattened out into a perfect circle of deliciousness. This was really hard for me to learn, as I kept worrying that I was going to burn the skin right off of my right hand. But I got it, eventually, kind of.

At this point, we had attracted a crowd of spectators. Apparently, they had never seen a Chinese person make chapattis before. Business was great! We sold all of our chapattis and rollexes by 11am. And my greatest triumph – I made my whole Rollex from start to finish and ate it with great relish!