Play’s Dances and Parties in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
The plays we did were mostly musicals like the Gilbert and Sullivan light operas. I think my parents arranged these dancing lessons so that Ethiopian teenagers would learn how to dance modern things like waltzes, quick steps and even eight-some reels so that if they went to parties in Addis Ababa, they would know how to dance some modern dances and be able to join in. Some of them might even go to England to further their education.
I, (Philippa) also learnt how to dance these waltzes, foxtrots, and reels. I found it great fun and I can remember teaching them to my own family several years later. The eight-some reel was quite complicated but great fun to dance once you learnt how to do it. I am not sure I could dance it now in 2022 but I would love to try to dance it (although I would probably fall over now that I am over 90 years old.)
My parents would also host Christmas parties so that English families living in Addis Ababa could enjoy a proper English Christmas party.
There was a marvellous cookery book called the Kenya Settlers Cookery Book. (I still use the same recipe nowadays in Hemyock England and it has never failed to produce the perfect Christmas Cake.
I can still remember my sister-in-law Peggy Benson congratulating me on the Christmas cake I had made. (And she was not an easy person to impress) so it’s no wonder I still used the same recipe in 2022 and hopefully in 2023(if not me, then my children) so that this amazing recipe will not be forgotten. I don’t like marzipan, but Michael did, so he had my bit of marzipan which I scraped off the cake and gave to him to eat. So enjoy it, anyone who makes it and eats it. The recipe is in my cookbook.
I can’t remember if we had icing sugar in Addis Ababa. Piers thinks we did, But if we did not have it I would have rolled ordinary sugar with a rolling pin until it was fine enough. When we lived in Ethiopia we did not have a modern oven but we made one by digging a longish piece into the ground and lay burning charcoal on it until it became hot enough to bake food in it, then put the cake tins or roasting tins on top of the burning charcoal, cover them with metal tops and leave them there until whatever we had put in the oven was cooked.
So, even if we have all these strikes that are being threatened, we can build an oven in the ground, get some charcoal, and cook whatever we need to.
AND I shall continue to be thankful that I was born in Ethiopia and learnt all these ways of coping with these irritating conditions that we are suffering now in this so-called modern society and world we live in. We might even show the residents of Hemyock how to cope without electricity or lights. (Hopefully, we might find a hurricane light to read this recipe with or a book as perhaps the candles would be too dangerous, and the dreary TV would not be
worth watching and we could choose something better to read and enjoy. I quite like watching tennis matches and netball matches but footballers are paid far too much and spend the money they earn most of the time on frivolous stuff that does no good to anyone and spoils their families from the facts that are affecting a large part of our world. Some of them I am sure do a lot to help the poor and needy.
Here is the recipe I use.
Christmas Cake .
Beat the butter and sugar to a soft cream.
Mix flour, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon and sift into butter with well-beaten eggs. (5 mins of beating)
Cook in a slow oven for 5 hours (100 degrees in a fan oven.
I use a square 7” inch tin using a double thickness of grease-proof paper below and around and top of the mixture. This mixture will need a bigger tin, I always have enough left over to make a small individual cake, which I used to give to my godfather who was a bachelor. His name was Austin Matthew and he had done a great deal to help the poor people in Tanginika (nowadays called Tanzania).
So, when I make this cake, I always remember him as well and try to give the small one to someone who lives alone………..