Breakfast in the Bush

Unzipping the tent in the cool air, the steam still rising off the elephant droppings deposited only a few feet away, I would embrace the African morning with the sight of my father stirring the porridge over the camp cooker. The warm, sweet aroma of oats simmering would lure me out of the tent, just as it would draw the baboons out of the forest. Lacking fresh milk, porridge in the bush was different every day. Sometimes it was drizzled with melted golden syrup or honey, other times it might be served with creamy coconut milk or thick, sticky condensed milk, topped with tropical fruits like mangoes, bananas, and pineapples, dried coconut chips fried in butter or toasted nuts – a simple bowl of porridge could become an exotic breakfast feast. And, depending on who we were on safari with, there was always a bottle of rum or whisky to hand. Not just any whisky – usually Glenlivet or Caol Ila, the latter because my father’s great-grandfather, Robert Sutherland, was the Chairman of Bulloch & Lade in the nineteenth century and there had always been a bottle of it in his house when he was growing up.