I can't believe it's been almost a month since the last post - apologies to anyone out there who's still listening. Still under a bit of deadline pressure here at work, so will take the liberty of using another guest blog (one I prepared earlier!)

I borrowed it from Aminatta Forna, from an interview in the Bristol Review of Books, Spring 2011. I hope they don't mind. It just resonated with me!

‘An essential difference between poverty and wealth is choice. Here we choose what we want to eat. In Sierra Leone there is no choice. In our village, people eat once, not three times, a day. Some days, not at all. On my last visit we had guests – NGO workers come to visit our projects – we wanted to feed them knowing there would be no food available elsewhere. But a python had slipped into the henhouse and devoured all but three of the adult birds. We tried to buy a chicken from someone  in the village, but nobody had one to sell. I am the wealthiest person in the village by far, but it makes no difference. I could not simply step out to the supermarket.

In the end we found a chicken, I can’t remember how, and cooked it with rice – one large dish shared by everyone. The visitors arrived and we were pleased. One was from the UK. When the food was served he said he didn’t eat meat and requested a vegetarian meal. It was his first time in the country and he wasn’t a bad person, he simply took choice for granted.

In one half of the world food is about life. In the other half, food is about lifestyle. In Britain, people are gluten or lactose intolerant, require a vegetarian, vegan or macrobiotic diet. We want coriander in December . Food is about choice. I love those choices as much as the next person, but I am increasingly aware of the costs and the contrast in the way the two worlds live. I wonder  how future generations will think when they look back at us, for such excesses surely cannot continue.’

Aminatta Forna is a broadcaster and novelist, born in Glasgow, and raised between Sierra Leone, her father’s country, and the UK. She is active in the Rogbonko Project, bringing education, agriculture and health to her family’s village. Her latest book, The Memory of Love, has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize 2011.


Thank you Aminatta, and good luck with the Rogbonko Project.