ACT 1
Eight mekhooa sit around a table in an empty dining room. Under florescent lights, they ponder a paper menu listing a plethora of fine-dining options. After thirty minutes, a waiter approaches.
Waiter: Hello. (points to menu). We have only fish and chips and peri-peri chicken.
Chorus: Nothing on the next three pages?
Bridget: No hamburgers at all?
Waiter: No, no hamburgers. (pause). There are no buns.
Bridget: Oh, ok. But you have the meat?
Waiter: Yes
Bridget: Well what if we order a hamburger on bread? Would that work?
Waiter: (pause). Yes, ok.
MJ: So seriously, though, you don’t have anything on the last three pages of the menu?
Waiter: No.
Taylor: Um, but if you have bread and cheese, could I just have the toasted cheese sandwich on page 2?
Waiter: Let me check.
Scene fades with seven hungry people drinking quarts of Castle Lager and looking rather despondently at their menus.
ACT 2
Same positions, ten minutes later.
Waiter: Yes, ok, toasted cheese. (returns to kitchen)
A man enters from outside wearing shorts and a t-shirt.
Man: Ok, ok, so seven burgers? But you know no buns?
Chorus: Yes, I think we can manage.
Man: Ok, but you want something else on the burger? Cheese? Mushrooms?
Ellen: Oh yeah, cheese would be great.
Bridget: Oh, and mushrooms on mine, please.
Man: We have no mushrooms.
Bridget: Huh?
Man departs through kitchen door
Jamie: Who was that?
Bridget: I think he was the chef.
Reid: Really? I just saw him drinking with some friends at the bar.
ACT 3
Forty-five minutes pass. The waiter returns bearing hamburgers, which he places in front of each person at the table. Everyone looks closely.
Chorus: Wha?
Reid: Um, are these buns?
The TTLF Fellow is a representative of the North American organisation The Tiny Lives Foundation. Based for one year in Mokhotlong, Lesotho, the TTLF Fellow serves in an administrative support capacity for the Basotho charity TTL.
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