Letter from my terrace in Palma 27 "Two baked beans tins"
21
April, 2020
Two baked
beans tins
Two tins
of baked beans came rattling off the production line. They were exactly the
same as each other and exactly the same as the thousands of other tins that
were filled, labelled and dispatched that week. But then they diverged and all
similarity ended.
One found its way after a short and uneventful
journey to a suburb in west London. It was opened and the contents were swiftly
heated and eaten. The tin was not even rinsed but was thrown into the bin. And
in a landfill site somewhere near Heathrow Airport its story ends.
The other
tin made its way to Africa. Do not ask me how. It doesn’t matter. Stranger things
have happened. It found its way to Agadez in the middle of the Sahara. There
the beans were eaten in the restaurant and the tin was thrown on to the rubbish
pile. And there it was picked up by a young girl, Aminata. The blue label was
intact. You must know the label. It is light blue and on the front one bean is
about to fall out of the frame that encloses the name. Some tomato sauce is on
the point of dripping from the bean that is about to fall.
Aminata
loved this tin. For her it was valuable. She liked the blue label. She loved
the ridges of the metal as she ran her finger over the side of the can. There
was a lot of writing on the label. In fact, there was very little of the label
that was not covered in writing. Aminata spoke Tamachek, a little Hausa and
less French. She did not read any of these languages. On the label it said, ‘1
of your 5 a day’. It also said, ‘Vegetarian friendly’ and ‘Naturally high in
protein’. What wonderful sentences they looked but Aminata had no idea what they
meant. It didn’t matter. They were far from the needs of her life. She had her
beautiful tin, and she kept it in the tent where she slept.
In it she put things that were important for her,
her comb and her pencil. She kept the tin
for years. Gradually the beautiful blue label with the strange writing wore
away. That didn’t matter because the shiny tin with its small ridges was
beautiful too.
Aminata still has that tin though the metal is very
worn now. It is in her tent, and it is
still useful.
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