Food!

Let me begin my stating that for far superior thoughts on food, you should check out Ariel's blog that she does with a mutual friend Alex - http://www.aveganblarg.com/ They cook vegan, but more importantly they cook tasty. Here in the jungle, I often end up cooking vegan or vegantarian myself - my other inclinations are generally more expensive and requiring of refridgeration - but not nearly so consistently tasty. But I'm learning! And I'm happy to have spent a few happy hours in Ariel's kitchen learning amazingly applicable things for my cooking here - who would have thought a collegiate Vegan kitchen wouldn't be that far from a Peace Corps jungle kitchen? Of course, it is really far which is tough but we do what we can.

So, this is the story of a meal I made. But it starts with a woman. A grandmother that lives near me, to be exact. One whom I have helped make cassava and other things and who, as grandmothers the world over, often gives me food and expresses concerns about me not eating enough, etc. Unfortunately, she tends to give me/make TERRIBLE tasting food. Cassava bread is in fact almost unpalatable unless it is still warm or smothered in peanut butter. She often has meat, which is wonderful - meat! But jungle meat, particularly smothered in local oil, is not actually yummy. And she knows I love okra and so often calls me when she makes it...but the way they cook it here, and in particular the way she cooks it - mixed with the incredibly bitter vegetables they love here and cooked until it is slimy and viscous - it hurts. It just hurts.

GRANDMA BAO - They do have Bao in this country. Asian market in the city. Oh yes.

ME WITH CASSAVA

In this grand tradition, she gave me some quaak. It's cassava based, but prepared differently and kind of dried/baked into something like grape nuts that can be eaten as a hot cereal or mixed with rice. I didn't think to get a picture of it in raw form, but picture grapenuts without anything grapey and you have it - she gave me a large calabash full of the stuff. I didn't really know what to do with it except I was pretty sure I wouldn't love it for breakfast.

So here's what I did instead, here in my jungle kitchen. Two burner propane stove, two pots, one pan, only the spices and sauces you thought to bring from the only city in the country - a seven-ish hour journey away by car and boat.

THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

THE TOOLS OF MASTERWORKERY (more commonly known as the majority of my pots and pans)

I made soup! Well, really stew. Given the amount of wood-ish stuff, dirt-ish stuff, and small beasties (even after washing it several times), I knew this was something I wanted to boil hard. So I put it all in my big pot and started it a roiling! I knew it was going to be bland to death except for that faint (and not entirely wonderful) cassava back drop, so I added two packets of Chinese Chicken soup flavoring and a healthy extra dose of garlic and soy sauce. It boiled into the consistency of a slightly watery gruel, but smelled pretty good - now to make it into actual food! It was probably about 20 minutes for those of you following along at home, but you'll know by looking and tasting.

STEAMY POT (ignore the fact that you can see green beans and thus know that this is out of sequence)

My garden here produces green beans, antroelwa, and eggplant so far. Antroelwa is perfect for one thing - giving away. I don't know how to cook it yet, but I know it would have to involve sugar because it is just to bitter for me to love at this point. But the eggplant and beans are good and a staple of my diet here. So I cut them up together to steam/stir fry in my pan with a maggie (bouillon) cube and a bit of oil and enough water. It comes out tasty every time - so easy even I can't mess it up! Though I almost did this time, since I learned in this go that they are better cooked separately - too bad I only have the 1 pan!

Given how much stew-base I had made, it was a good thing I hadn't picked beans in 2 days - I cut up a bicep-sized bundle of green beans, and they are generally 14-18 inches long here. It was about three eggplants - they are less than half the size of what I picture eggplants as in the States, but they add some consistency and some variety to whatever you throw them into. The oil and bouillon are mostly for flavor and sticking, the water should be just enough to boil into steam not to really boil the veggies. Stir it up good when you first start it, but then leave it covered for about 10 minutes before you begin checking it. I like them slightly crunchy, here. When my mom makes them, with almonds and other lovely things, I like them cooked soft - but here a little bit of crunch is welcome, since Saramaccans cook EVERYTHING until it's soft. Including fish bones, which I think I mentioned in a previous episode.

STEAM-STIR FRY ATTACK THROW DOWN

So anyway, green beans are good, but do they have protein? I don't know, but I know I love my protein - especially when eating cassava based foods. That's thanks to an article my dad sent me - thanks Dad! - about an odd neurological condition that can strike if you aren't getting your proteins right while consuming large amounts of cassava. I'm oversummarizing and I didn't read the article deeply, so my facts are basically nonexistent, but let's just be honest - this stew still needed some oomph!

So I mixed in three chunks of white protein - I would recommend tofu for those vegemites among you and eggs for those baby-eaters lacking access to tofu! They do have it here, but it requires refridgeration so you can't keep it for long.

Saramaccans eat asian style - rice based and pulling from several small communal dishes of vegetables and whatever else. So they are occasionally scandalized by my approach of mix-it-all-together-smush! Thanksgiving loaf, any day of the year. And that's the approach I did here, quite appropriate to the stew-like idea I think.

UNHOLY MIXTURE OF TASTY JOY

After that, I gave it some time to cool and meld a bit and then it was time to eat! Pretty darn tasty, surprisingly enough! I don't really know how to cook, but when it comes to making things up as I go and having fun at the same time I tend to do alright. Usually.

GARRRRRRLICSSSS! Some of this got thrown in - who'd have thunk it!

FLYING SAUCES! Well maybe they aren't flying. But they are on my wall! Kind of!

Anyway, sorry I can't always include pictures like this - it's just too hard given the type of internets we have here. I'd love to be offering better albums and comments too, but it's just too hard for the above reasons. So check out the link at the top of my blog for the photos I have been able to upload - jumbled as they may be - and enjoy this slightly more coherent attempt. And now, more food pictures! Yay!

ANOTHER DAY'S ATTEMPT - Lessons learned! Don't mix beans and eggplant when you cook them! Use both your pots! Rice turned out ok this time. TVP for protein, good vegan meal!

ANOTHER UNHOLY MIXTURE!! - from training. When the primary ingredients made available to you are peanut butter, bread, nutella, and cucumber...well eventally you end up throwing them together. What can I say - it wasn't half bad! It made for breakfast and I can claim the title of champion (family scrabble, thank you very much just to name one example) so therefore UNHOLY MIXTURE BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS! NOW ABSESTOS FREE!

BANANA BREAD! I tried to get a picture of the um...you know...banana bread itself. But it goes fast. Very fast. It once got a speeding ticket in Pennsylvania. No joke. I've made banana bread about 6 times here and it's turned out tasty four times, ungreat once, and burned but tasty once! Not bad! Wish I had chocolate chips though.

That's all folks! Bye!

Keeping Fit and Fitting In

Hey guys!

Things are pretty good here and I've got some internet time and some battery so I thought I'd throw up a live blog post! Actually my first one written while actually on the internet. So you are looking at now. Don't ask about then. This is now.

It's been a good couple of weeks, recently. Health issues clearing up, though still a variety of minor cuts and whatnot, starting to be able to contact more people and more regularly to say hi to the people important to me around the world, and feeling good about life here.

It's starting to be life, too, which is nice. It's a weird life, that's for sure but it's life. I'm starting to feel more in control of myself and my surroundings - though we are still a long way from actually in control, if that is ever possible - and that helps a lot. I'm working out almost every day and I've started teaching Tae Kwon Do! I almost forgot how much I love TKD and teaching TKD too - but I really do.

It's hard for me and for students to be consistent here, in a world without a real focus on exact times or communication about tomorrow, but I've taught almost every day for the last week or two with at least some overlap in who came to learn. We are starting to put the formal stuff in more deeply - bowing and all that - but we've got the basic rules down at this point. No hitting other people and you have to have pants on to do the class. Both can be a bit hard to maintain, unfortunately.

I also started teaching English yesterday! Not exactly a roaring success, but not bad for no training, no things, and no way to communicate to the larger population what's going on! About 10 people came by and we had enough pens, paper, and chairs to make it work. And chalk! Unfortunately, I was a little late asking the Captain about the chairs so he was slightly miffed. Only slightly, but you forget that it is in fact a very hierarchical structure here...sometimes.

He knew I was beginning the lessons soon...I just didn't think to inform him of the exact date and time because I knew he didn't want to come learn. Still should have though so he could ask me how he could help, rather than me asking for chairs the day of. But, that's the nice thing about doing a small, informal projecty-thing like this. I'm learning. I've learned how hard it is to communicate things to a disparate population within the village. A couple specific people or the whole village is doable, but finding the people interested in a thing is tough. Also, tell Captains. Other lessons forthcoming, I'm sure!

I'm also getting better at cooking! What does that mean? Less rice, more pasta. And more lentils and similar products! Split green peas have even more protein, did you know that? I'm still eating a tremendous amount of green beans because that's what my garden has right now, but they are tasty so that is fine with me.

In terms of work, I'm excited that things are beginning to begin. I've learned a lot about the village and I am now constructing the baseline report that will help me educate potential donor organizations about Pikin Slee and the needs of the people here. It's cool to see how much you can learn by just living in a curious and friendly way. It's hard to do formal research both because of the lack of formal resources and because that might send the wrong message.

I think of it as semi-passive sponging. You just kinda float around to the hot spots, see what's going on, soak up some fun and some knowledge and some relationships, and then float on to whatever's next. People know I'm here to help and they are friendly, so it's easy to learn if you have the right attitude - and there is so much to learn! For me, and for people outside the village with the resources to help us improve things here.

I've started making a map of Pikin Slee with the doctor here - that is definitely something I wouldn't want to do on my own for fear of making the wrong impression. We've managed to find 2 historical resources from past government work and have been filling in details base on the doctor's and others' living experience here - where the water is, the stores are, the places people wash and work, etc. We've been trying to walk around with it to fill in more details, but we keep being delayed.

And that's the crux of life here - patience, because plans are tough. We wanted to begin walking around last week, but there was a pregnant lady. And then, very unfortunately, she died. The whole village went quiet for a few days - a mother and unborn baby dying together is very rare and very unlucky. Even worse, some people think they saw an evil spirit lurking around the hospital around the time of her death. It's not on me to judge their view of things and so I don't - this is something they take very seriously here.

A medicine man arrived yesterday to help cleanse the hospital, the doctor, and maybe the village - I'm not sure. I have not been involved in it, but I know a lot of things were put on hold while they were waiting for the medicine man to arrive and do his work.

But today they have finished and just in time for a party here in the village. A visiting soccer team has arrived and there will be games and dancing today and tomorrow! Hopefully there is some time in all of that to get started on this map!

Hope things are well for all of you!

The Horizon

Peace Corps is such an odd mixture of things. I work unbelievably hard everyday and almost every moment is a test of some combination of my patience, initiative, mental toughness, physical toughness, capacity to learn, positive attitude, and focus on my goals. Just to name a few. And you know me, the mornings where I don't start my pushups before 7am or I turn off my light a bit early so people don't clop clop on my door and I can watch a movie in peace - I feel guilty. Interesting fact - clop clop is what knocking is here and you say it, you don't physically knock. Probably because not everyone has/had doors and even if they do, they might not be mighty.

I know I've mentioned this before, so skim if you like - it's my blog too, after all. And I don't reflect as fully here as I probably need to be. It's hard to write for a public audience when I am actually a government employee who literally took an oath. But I need to capture these thoughts, and the deeper ones, because of what they represent. Growth. I'm definitely not going to get much added to my savings plan by these two years and that's not what I came for - I came to grow and to explore the unknown and take risks to help myself and help others. And to find something worth breaking a sweat over 24x7 - which the above qualifies for and I haven't found in this much abundance since Cornell Fight Team.

So when I say it's hard, you know I mean it because I know what hard work is and because you know I'm not complaining - to a surprising degree my research, guesswork, and training pretty much prepared me to expect what this is. I like that it's hard - it helps keep me motivated. It's supposed to be hard - that's how you know you are getting better. I've said that to my students at home in TKD and I say it to myself in the mornings when I do pushups and in the afternoon when four people are staring through my window talking a hundred miles a minute about me, at me, and through me.

So Peace Corps is that deep seated character building stuff that you need to know you have and people love to ask you about in interviews and you have great stories about for the rest of your life. It's pretty cool and I like it. But what makes it truly exciting, is that all of that is the backdrop. You have to do all of that, get past surviving all of that, get good at all of that as a stranger in a strange land in a strange language so you can get to the final third of the Peace Corps job. Having a measurable impact at helping people improve their lives. That's important for them and for me. I would be successful in the Peace Corps eyes, and probably to a large part in the community's eyes, if I just succeed at living well here - exchanging cultural and personal knowledge, spreading peace and friendship.

But as much as I love hugs, and I do, that won't cut it in my eyes. And, hopefully, not in the eyes of the people in the village who worked hard to bring me here. It's exciting because I have to apply the ephipany that I had in Tae Kwon Do at Cornell and never quite repeated at work - when you are doing something that is worth fighting for, it isn't enough just to show up and survive. Don't think about making it until the clock runs out, think about how much you have to squeeze out of each minute before the clock runs out. And this is about people's lives.

And the opportunities to work together to make a difference are starting to appear. The head master of my school started the first adult education program in the interior last year. He fought tooth and nail to get the teachers partially paid, but they are scrounging school supplies and motivation to keep teachers and students going. They managed to keep about 125 of 150 students and over 2/3 passed into the next grade at the end of the school year (an amazing statistic in Suriname). The headmaster has looked for more money to give things the kick they need to keep going and to grow, but hasn't found it. And now, a neighboring village wants to start a similar project.

So with the headmasters and the volunteer in that village, if we can find not even $US1000, we can fund a school year for nearly 200 adults. The numbers are heartbreakingly small, aren't they? But if we can find that money, 200 people are going to get closer to being able to read, write, and 'rithmetic. You could ask, how important is reading out here for adults that aren't going to move to the city. It's a fair question - there isn't much to read. But there is when it comes time to install a solar panel, or learn about aids, or even apply that medicine the doctor gave you correctly. And math is needed without question. Many people here get money from the government, but one problem is that most of them can't count well enough to know when the distributors of that money are cheating them. So it is pretty exciting.

At the same time, I'm helping the headmaster put his student records into Excel. It stinks because I'm sure there is a better way to do it, but this will work and probably be simple enough that he can upkeep it by himself. He wanted to be able to save them to a flash drive so they are more protected, because when you lose someone's record it is gone forever now and that can make a lot of things tough. If we do that, we will be either the first school or possibly the second (the government is working on a pilot project, but we don't know it's current status) to have computerized records.

Both of those will likely be relatively small, quick projects. Finite and easy to finish, though finding a sustained source of funding for the Adult Education Program is problematic. For larger work, I'm going to try to make a map of Pikin Slee. This will help with any number of things, the primary one being it will show the people here and the outsiders with money just how much they have and how much they don't. No one actually knows how many people are here - and that means no one understand how far how many people walk to carry drinkable water to their houses. I certainly don't understand that yet and I live here - how can you ask UNICEF or some rich Dutch guy organization too?

That happened yesterday and it was very interesting. I was talking with a friend of mine here about how he makes money and what he wants to do. His house is next to the primary dock for the village and he was talking about putting in a pay toilet and a small store so the boatloads of tourists can drop off some of their money, as well as other things, when they pass on their way to the tourist camp or the museum. I mentioned that, though I don't know a lot about it yet, there are several programs that help you get loans or grants to start businesses like that. He was casually interested, but not jumping up and down.

I was jumping up and down. I started doing back of the envelope calculations to get at estimated cash flow, profit margins, growth opportunities (you could put it pay toilets in several other locations and they would work, I'm pretty sure!) Obviously, silly. You can't foster entreprenuership without the entreprenuer. He is enterprising, but also clearly wasn't excited about a possible loan. Worth looking into for me to educate myself about the options so I can explain them better and help him or someone else if they are jumping up and down, but not a go just yet.

So the opportunities are beginning to show, in terms of concrete work I will be doing over the next few months. That feels good, though is certainly scary as well. Just living is almost challenge enough. It's hard to stay healthy and happy and keeping going back out there to live among people who don't yet understand me and that I don't yet understand. But only almost.

Baku

I almost feel like I am writing this in a whisper. The funeral rites for the dead Basia are still going on and a few days ago I participated in one of the more intense parts. For several days, many of the men (almost 50) have gone to the graveyard to dig the basia's grave (baku means hole in general and grave in this context). The ritual is long and complex and involves significantly more than just digging a hole in the ground. I ended up going across three days, including the day we actually buried the Basia and I could have gone at least half a dozen more times if I had so wished.

I say that I write this in a whisper because it is a secret. It is amazing to consider, but I would imagine less than a thousand white people have ever seen what I saw in this ritual. And that knowledge comes with a curse - tell about the rituals, particularly for profit or in a book or movie to be sold in America and you will die. When it was explained to me it was mostly just an explanation, but the element of threat and seriousness was there to a degree that disturbed me and almost made me angry or confused. After all, why would anyone want to spy on the dead rituals of the Saramaccans? I don't know, but I had to cleary state that I was not, would not, and respected there secrecy. Which I did, and I meant it. Curses aside, it's their secret to keep. So I can't write much about it.

What I can write is that I felt honored to be a part of the ceremony. Though at first I was given conflicting advice about whether I should and could go or not, the village elders plainly told me I was as welcome as any person of the village. One said it straight out in Saramaccan, "Yu wan kondre sembe nownow, naso?" You are a member of the community now, aren't you? That was a great feeling.