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.