The day before I left Alotau (after the close of VITAL) to return to Ukarumpa we had a really cool happening…a helicopter landed in our “back yard”. The helicopter had gone to Fergusson Island (smallish island off the southeastern coast of PNG) to pick up a couple doing translation out there. They overnighted at the Alotau Regional Center, so the best place to park was in the big grassy area out back.
It was a funny thought to me when recently I called out to my neighbor, Liz, “Hey, do you have a mouse?” and I realized that I really ought to clarify that I meant “computer mouse” and not the furry kind! I’ve never lived anywhere before where I needed to make that distinction, hee!
Tuula asked me if I would be able to write a short sample story for the Literacy folks. She was teaching them a new learning game. This game is called, “Write an ‘?’ Story.” It involves a person creating a story where the first letter of most of the words is the same. I spent quite a while coming up with my little story, and in the end, I really liked it ~ so I thought it might bring a smile to your day as well.
A shiny snake named Sally slithered down the slippery sidewalk. She sang a silly song as she slithered along. Sunshine shone down on her slimy skin, and she sped up significantly to slide into the shade of the sweeping Sycamore tree. She spied a small sleeping skunk under some sticks. As Sally snuck softly through the sticks, sadly, she sneezed! The sleeping skunk sprang up, spotted Sally snake, and squirted her with its stinky spray. "Sorry," said the skunk. "You surprised me!." Sally, now significantly stronger smelling, smiled, shook her head and said, "shew." Then she shed her skin and slithered off into the sunset.
big ones...
small ones...
some as big as your head!
Because VITAL takes place in the warmlands along the coast, the cool weather vegetables (carrots, capsicum {also known as green pepper in the States} zucchini, cabbage, tomatoes, potatoes) are hard to come by. And when you do actually find them, they are usually rather expensive and sad looking. SO-after talking about it with Liz, who you may remember helped me out with the buy for the October module, we decided that the thing to do was to plan ahead and purchase these veggies at the market in Ukarumpa, dehydrate them, and bring them down to Alotau when I come for the course.
January was my trial run, and I think that it worked out really well! I made one really big trip to the market and purchased loads of carrots and capsicum, and also some zucchini, cabbage, and potatoes. I borrowed a nice large dehydrator (about 10 trays tall),
and spent a little more than a week, with the dehydrator running pretty much the whole time (and me washing, peeling and chopping). Here are some of the results of that venture.
I also dehydrated a few zucchini—they are a really nice addition to chicken soup. As you can see, this zucchini is a little longer than a standard sandwich bag. It probably cost about 2 Kina in the Ukarumpa market. At a store in Alotau, it would sell for closer to 9 Kina.
Cabbage is also an ingredient in our chicken soup recipe. I wasn’t sure how it would turn out (and sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the final product!—next time) but it worked! In the square bowl at the back, you can see the sliced pieces of one cabbage—when dehydrated, it just fit into one sandwich bag. At the front, on the dehydrator tray, is zucchini that has been cubed and then blanched in boiling water (I guess blanching is supposed to stop something inside the veggies, and make them keep longer when dehydrated).
I think that my favorite was the potatoes—they looked really cool all dried up! But, they were the last ones I did, and in my packing haste, I didn’t get a picture of them either. Anyways, in spite of all the time spent bleaching, peeling, chopping, and blanching--I think that the whole thing was a big success!! It was SO nice this module not to have to spend time hunting around Alotau stores looking for nice specimens of these veggies, and knowing that I saved so much on the price!
Well, time has really gotten away from me, and here I am in the thick of another VITAL module—the fourth one that I’m helping out with. Once again I’m doing the buying and managing the kitchen, which means about three trips into town (20-30 min drive) per week to purchase fresh veggies and fruit, onions and other miscellaneous stuff and making sure the cooks have all that they need to keep the 40 staff and participants fed and happy. In my other time, I’m available to help out with computer questions, type up books for the literacy workers, and do some of the book/record keeping.
More later, but for now, a picture of our Feb ’09 VITAL staff and participants—minus me (I was in town, shopping) and Tuula, the photographer.
We usually try to have a special meal for the course closing each VITAL module. For this past October module, we had been translating selections from Genesis—key stories about Abraham, Jacob and Joseph—so some of the staff were inspired to try to give the participants a small taste of some of the foods and meal culture from the Middle East. Thus commenced what we called, “the Abraham Meal.”
For the food we decided on flat bread, hummus (chickpea/garbanzo bean dip), taboulleh (bulgur, tomato, cucumber, parsley & mint salad), tsatsiki (yogurt, cucumber & mint dip), falafel (fried chickpea meatball), lentil soup, lamb-kabobs (lamb meat is much cheaper here than in the US), and, of course, kaukau (sweet potatoes)—without which no PNG meal would be complete. The menu was maybe a little ambitious considering we would be feeding about 60 people and our cooks had never made any of these dishes before (except for the kaukau). We ended up making about 90 flat breads at the Centre the weekend prior to the course closing and freezing them until the meal on Friday evening, and our own cooks made another 30 on Thursday. We were able to get dried chickpeas/garbanzo beans for the hummus and falafel at the store without any problems and substituted brown rice for the bulgur in the taboulleh. There was no mint or parsley to be found, so we did end up missing a few of the flavors, but overall, I was pretty impressed at how things turned out.
Me, dishing up a plate of flat bread, taboulleh, etc.
In the past when I’ve made hummus we used a food processor or blender to turn the chickpeas into a paste, but we didn’t have one. So we ended up mashing them in a bowl using a bottle of soy sauce J It felt much more like what Sarah (Abraham’s wife) would have used to make her own hummus…though I imagine she wouldn’t have had a bottle of soy sauce either!
Two of the staff played the roles of Abraham and Sarah, hosting a meal for their friends (the participants and special guests) and the rest of the staff all dressed up in our best bed sheets to act as servants of Abraham.
'Abraham' and 'Sarah' are being fanned with a palm branch by one of their 'servants'.
We called the participants to come to the meal with our PNG substitute shofar (ram’s horn)—a large conch shell. As they came in the door, they had their feet washed, and then were invited to take a seat on one of the mats on the floor. We served the meal in courses, and as the participants ate, “Abraham” and “Sarah” told stories about their lives. Abraham’s “chief servant” also told the story of going on a long journey and, with direction from Abraham’s God, finding a wife for Abraham’s son.
Knowing that foot washing was something that was done in Biblical times (it’s even mentioned in Genesis 18 as something Abraham does for his special visitors), we decided that it would add to the experience of our meal by washing the participants feet off in a basin of water as they entered our “tent”.
One of the participants having her feet washed.
We were a bit surprised to hear afterward that many of the participants were uncomfortable having their feet washed and having their food served by the staff. But in spite of that, and the food flavors that they were not used to, after they got settled in to the meal, the participants seemed to appreciate the experience.
The inside of 'Abraham's tent'...his guests are being served flat bread.
