Fat Cakes
“This is what happens to a professional football player in South Africa after he retires.” Shakes pats an impressive paunch lovingly.
Built like a bulldog, his belly is just about the only soft part on him. Rumor has it that while it has certainly grown in stature, it was one of the characteristics that defined him even in his heyday as a professional footballer–that and an incredible left foot that delivered pinpoint passes. Everyone in and around Joburg remembers Shakes but no one knows how he managed to run circles around his competition with such a frame and as such a smoker. I have little doubt but that he still can.
“Do you want to know why? Fat cakes!” Shakes throws his head and belly laughs, his breath glowing white gold in the dawn sun. “Come with me.”
Closing the doors to the car, we walk fifty feet or so down a tight dirt alley between shacks standing as precariously akimbo as a house of cards. Rounding the corner, Shakes creaks a small door open to reveal the warm glow of a single, exposed light bulb and the sound of bubbling oil. He ducks through and I follow.
Besides us there are three people in the room. One man is deftly rolling and flattening pieces of dough on a floured, wooden tabletop and then dropping them into a big vat of boiling oil. Fishing them out after a couple minutes with a wire sieve, the other man drops them onto paper which he rolls up into a neat package and hands over in exchange for 5 rand. Their mother supervises in the background and takes care of the money. Five rand for five fat cakes–$.13 each. And man are they delicious.
I hate to romanticize and idealize the gritty authenticity of experiences like this when families like these live so close to abject poverty but what else can one do? Patronizing the family business, befriending the people, eating their fat cakes with eyes closed and a guilty smile, these do not go unnoticed.
“Are you ready?” Shakes has a hand on the doorknob. “I must drop these with my wife before they are cold.”
Blinding light streams in when he opens the door, temporarily invading what seems to me to be delicious and cozy sanctuary from the awakening world outside. Yet awakening it surely is. There are already more cars navigating a growing number of pedestrians. Fat cakes are made first thing in the morning only. It’s 7:00am and already the makeshift fryeries are winding down. Their workers cleaning up, readying themselves for a new day. The lucky ones get to start it with roll of fresh-fried homemade fat cakes tucked under their arms which work hard every day to create the bellies we find so, um, distinguished.
