Eileen Black- We Never Had Good Nutritious Meals
When we go to eat, when we go to eat, I don’t know what kind of food or how… and I don’t who was cooking or who prepared the meal, but they were such bad cooks. I never remember having a good meal, and not filling. We never had good nutritious meals, we were always hungry. We were always hungry and that’s why in there the girls would go and steal some bread to feed us… [laughs]. You know, that’s how thoughtful some of them were. That’s how we, I think, we survived.
You know a lot of people right now just hate porridge, because of the way it was served there. Myself I eat porridge, that’s my staple in the morning right now. I don’t know how, but I remember it was a chunk, just like a big dry chunk of porridge when they served it to me. I would look at it and I used to think, “if you are hungry you have to eat that, if you’re hungry you have to eat it.” I don’t even remember if there was toast, juice, or anything like that. All I remember is that big chunk of porridge and they would slap it in a bowl and we were expected, and we ate. We had to eat it. I can’t say I didn’t eat it because it was too yucky, I had to eat it because I was hungry.
Yes, and where else can I get food in that building? Where can I get food? You go into the playroom, there’s no food in there. You go into the and into the supervisor’s room there was probably a lot of food for them for their snacks. They didn’t know us; we were just apiece of something like this [picks up a piece of paper and crumbles it]. We make it or if it doesn’t tear, if it doesn’t disintegrate, you know, it doesn’t matter to them. And if we all died, all the better for them, but some survived it. Some survived it. Some survived to tell their story.
– Isitsimani, Eileen Black
Notes:
Oral interview with Eileen Black. Conducted, translated, and transcribed by Angeline Ayoungman. Old Sun Community College, June 29, 2022.
