Hanging a breadfruit leaf from your clothesline prevents it from raining. It wasn't entirely clear, when this was being explained to me, what, exactly, the area of effect for this particular weather control device is. Does it just not rain on your clothesline? Sort of like the reverse of the little cartoon raincloud that down pours on just one person? Or does a single breadfruit leaf take out the rainfall for the entire island because, if so, I feel like that might lead to a lot of accidental droughts. There's a leaf for just about anything around here: curing diseases, catching fish, causing diseases, catching women, making money, fertility, birth control, and bringing up the price of copra. In fact, given that there aren't really all that many kinds of plants around I think there are probably more leaf-related spells than there are actual kinds leaves, which suggests that some leaves must being doing double duty, which makes you wonder how if, for example, you're cooking up some papaya-leaf based potion, you specify you want the money-making effect as opposed to the herpes-causing effect. Although I suppose if you assume that each potion has to contain at least three kinds of leaves you open up a lot more possibilities. The local hospitals and health centers are constantly butting heads with practitioners of “kastom” (Bislama from the English word “custom,” referring to practices and traditions predating the arrival of Europeans), so for every guy you see walking around with a professional-looking hospital bandage covering a wound you see a guy strolling around with a heap of leaves fastened onto his cut with a piece of rope (this is even more amazing when you consider the fact that Vanuatu has socialized medicine, so getting bandages and antibiotic creams from the hospital is free whereas getting a stack of leaves from the witch doctor usually costs money). Belief in the magical properties of plants is so strong, in fact, that it's not unheard of for someone to make an announcement at the end of a church service asking if anyone knows of a leaf to help him nab a wife (yes, this actually has happened), which is ironic given how hard the churches work around here to combat belief in black magic and kastom.
Duncan and I go back and forth a lot about the ghost that lives at Aop river. Aop is a small river located about halfway between Lakatoro and Tautu. The road goes right over it and so one really has no choice but to cross it if you're trying to get from my house to Lakatoro or visa versa. Like any good parent, Duncan is worried sick that I'm going to get myself killed. Unlike my Dad in the States, however, who might worry about me getting involved with drugs or ending up in a nasty traffic accident or getting mugged while walking around New York City, Duncan worries that I'm going to get dismembered by spirits (is dismember the appropriate word to describe what spirits do to unsuspecting mortals? I'm not really sure, but I'm going to go with it anyway). You see, while he has no problem with me transiting between Lakatoro and Tautu during the day, I sometimes end up drinking kava in Lakatoro and then biking home after dark, and this is the source of the disagreement. It usually goes something like this:
Duncan: But you're not afraid to ride at night?
Me: No, I like it, it's not as hot.
Duncan: That road is no good at night. There's something no good there. It's not as strong as it used to be when I was little because we all pray now at church, but it's still there, ask anyone.
Me: Mmmm...
Duncan: Like, have you ever seen lights in the coconut plantation at night that look like truck lights?
Me: Yeah.
Duncan: Well, weren't you frightened?
Me: Maybe for a little bit, but then I realized that there was a truck behind me.
Duncan: You are a white man, you can't understand what I'm talking about.
And he's right, I really can't understand him when he tells me that there's a ghost haunting my road home. What's funny is that if he'd told me not to bike home at night because I might get mugged, I probably would've abandoned my late-night kava expeditions, but the idea of another person waiting to jump him on the road sounds about as ridiculous to Duncan as the idea of a ghost sounds to me. In Vanuatu they may be afraid of the dark but in US we're afraid of each other.
Unfortunately for Duncan, I will never be able to believe in ghosts any more than I'll be able to be convinced that breadfruit leaves prevent rain, but I find it increasingly difficult to argue my side of the story. I find it impossible to explain, for example, why it is that I think that antibiotic cream will help a cut heal whereas a leaf won't. Sometimes I catch myself launching into explanations about bacteria and how openings in the skin are susceptible to bacterial infections, especially in Vanuatu's humid climate, and that topical antibiotics help to prevent and fight off such infections, thus leading to better wound healing and I realize that, if one had absolutely no knowledge of bacteria or the microscopes that allow us to see them or the century or so of research into germ theory, this sounds about as plausible as mango leaves channeling the healing power of moonbeams into your skin. People listen to my explanations, of course, and sometimes remark at how right my explanations sound and a few people sometimes take my advice, but none of them really understand what I'm saying, and I realize that I've become something of a witch doctor in my own right. A practitioner of white magic, if you will. I spout scientific theory instead of mystical ramblings, but in the end it all sounds the same to those in the village. I've even had my share of triumphs and I-told-you-so moments. Most memorably, I was once approached by a few friends of mine about a rumor that had been repeated by almost everyone on the island which held that on a certain day the sun would not go down in the evening and we would proceed to have 48 consecutive hours of daylight. My first thought upon hearing this was horror that we would be having two consecutive days of unbearable heat instead of the more usual twelve to fourteen hours, but then I thought about it for a bit, trying to think of any reason why the earth would suddenly stop spinning for a couple days and, unable to come up with anything, I informed them that I was pretty sure that the sun would be going down on schedule. Everyone was duly impressed when this proved true. I felt like I was in one of those movies where some guy from the future, using his almanac, correctly predicts the coming of an eclipse and avoids some horrible fate by proving to everyone that he can blot out the sun from the sky, except mine was a lot simpler because it's WAY easier to predict that the sun will go down seeing as it happens once every 24 hours or so.
However, although it undoubtedly can sound silly, I sometimes find myself envying the Ni-Vanuatu and their black magic. It's something we've lost touch with back home, I think, that experience of standing face to face with nature and the staggeringly powerful forces that make it up. That experience of feeling so small and powerless in the face of something so massive and awesome that makes it possible to think that absolutely anything can happen. Ni-Vanuatu love their weather magic. Stories about controlling the rain are by far the most common for me to hear, and it's easy to see why. Rain is just so mystical and mysterious. It can appear in moments with such terrifying force and disappear just as quickly, sometimes not to be seen again for months. Living on a little island in the middle of the ocean, it's hard to think of anything that one has less control over. And so the breadfruit leaf on the clothesline to keep the rain from showing up. I mean, why not, right? Or the guy in Southwest Bay who can make it rain or (if it's been raining so much that rain has become the norm) stop it from raining by talking to trees (personally, if I could control the weather, I think I'd opt more for a nice, dry, breezy day, maybe in the lower 60's, as opposed to switching between hot and muggy and hot, rainy, and muggy, but I guess that just goes to show how much I know about tree-related weather control). It's easy to laugh at such things when we're sitting on a sofa inside watching the Weather Channel's 10-day forecast sum up nature in a couple of blue boxes with little cloud clip art graphics, but when you're watching the storm clouds race towards you across a rolling sea, it's hard not to see the magic. That's what I think we like to try and forget about science: it doesn't control the world, it just describes it. Newton, for example, didn't invent gravity, as some people like to say. Gravity was always there. All Newton did was come up with a clever way of describing what, exactly, gravity does. Similarly, we had weather before we had the Weather Channel, the Weather Channel just tells us the details of what the weather happens to be doing. But we don't usually think like this. We like to think of science as dictating how nature works when, in reality, the exact opposite is true. We shape scientific theories to conform to what we learn about the world, the world does not shape itself to conform with science. And so, really, we are still doing the same thing as the man hanging leaves on his clothesline. But we've gotten a lot better at it. We don't use leaves anymore. We've gotten very good at describing how the world works. In some cases, we've gotten so good at these descriptions that we can actually predict what the world will do in the future, but we still delude ourselves into thinking that we are in control of these things. We like to pretend that there is no magic in the world, but magic cannot be avoided. Magic is simple. Magic is not whispering at trees to stop the rain, nor is it water vapor in the atmosphere condensing around small dust particles and falling to earth, and it's definitely not a pixel-y smudge on a Doppler radar. When it rains, that's the magic. The rain does not care how we choose to rationalize or describe it, it has been around far longer than we have and long ago decided on its own way of doing things and it will continue to do those things for a long time yet. At its most destructive it swells our rivers, breaks our dams, floods our cities, and washes away our homes. At its gentlest it gives life to our crops, our livestock, and ourselves; it breaks the heat of the day and sends us to sleep with its whimsical patter on our roofs. Tell me that's not magic.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Yu No Kick Part 2: Local Cuisine
There is one belief that I hold above all others and that is that a good meal is the best thing in the world. Perhaps there are some that would disagree with me. Perhaps there are some that would point to things like love, or friendship, or NASCAR and say “wait, isn’t THAT the best thing?” But they’re wrong. Nothing else brings a smile like a good meal. It doesn’t really even matter what it is. With the right approach, anything can be made into a mouth-watering, taste-bud-tickling delight. People like to subdivide food into neat little categories so they can organize restaurants listings in the phone book. Italian food, French food, Japanese food, Indian food, Thai food. In the end, there are only two categories that matter: good food and bad food. There are hot dog stands that turn out sublime wonders of flavor and suit-and-tie-required French restaurants whose fare makes cardboard seem appetizing. It’s all in the execution. My family and I tend to plan our vacations around where we’ll be eating. “Want to go to the art museum? Hmm. Sorry, it’s all the way across town from the seafood place we want to try. Maybe next time.” Our memories are all wrapped up in what we’ve eaten. “No, that couldn’t have been Nick’s tenth birthday because that’s the year we went to the pizza place. You know, the one with the good thick crust?” We're not picky, we'll eat anything, as long as it's good.
A lot of people claim not to know how to cook. They site being clumsy or forgetful or too afraid of screwing up, but I think this is bogus. All that's required to make a good meal is a complete and utter obsession with food. Those content with microwave pasta for dinner will never be able to cook well because they'll never see the point: why work hard to prepare something special if you're content with something mediocre? The extra time and effort will just seem wasted. On the other hand, a true foodie will think nothing of walking two hours to get a fresh fish then gutting, scaling, and de-boning it if it means a really good fish fillet for dinner. Even if said foodie has no idea how to go about scaling or gutting a fish, they're sure as hell going to find out. In cooking, as with many things, where there a will, there is a way. Thus, the will is everything.
In Vanuatu, it's easy to give up on food, even for such a devotee as myself. It's hard to muster up the will to bake a batch of cookies when the first step is sharpening a machete to go to chop down a tree for firewood. A lot of volunteers eventually give up on the whole cooking thing altogether and just subsist on boiled bananas provided by their host families. Some of us turn to kava as a replacement for food, which is sort of odd because kava is pretty much the exact opposite of food, it has absolutely no nutritional value and it tastes awful. It's kind of like drinking Diet Coke, if Diet Coke were mud-flavored. However, it's one thing for a volunteer living in Vanuatu for a couple years to suck it up and give up on good food for the duration of his service, knowing that he'll be able to return to it eventually, but it's another thing for a Ni-Van living in Vanuatu all their life to not strive for something beyond the plain, boiled root vegetable. Like with a lot of things, a lack of technology does mean some complications. We like to romanticize about simpler times before modern gadgets took the fun out of everything, but the fact of the matter is that, although a wood-burning oven may sound quaint and appealing, the lack of fine temperature control provided by gas or electric ovens means that goods prepared in an old-fashioned oven tend to be either burnt or undercooked. But, although technology has made fine food more accessible and made possible some previously unattainable culinary feats, the fact remains that good food predates Food Network. Which begs the question, what the heck happened in Vanuatu to make their cuisine so soul-crushingly boring?
The root crop is the mainstay of the Vanuatu diet. It makes sense. They're easy to grow, they're starchy and satisfying, and they have a long shelf life. You can divide root crops into four categories: manioc, yams, taro, and kumala. Manioc is what we use to make tapioca in the states. It's probably the most potato-like of the group. The meat is straight white and has that kind of flour-y, starchy texture. Yams are the broadest of the categories. There are dozen, perhaps hundreds, or different kinds of yams in Vanuatu. They range from potato-sized to full-grown-cow sized. Some have tough, wooden skins, almost like bark, some have thin, soft skins, and some have skins with long, vein-y roots growing out of them. Sometimes they're white on the inside, sometimes they're purple, and sometimes they're white with purple streaks. They can have mild, potato-y tastes or strong, wild tastes. In short, you never really know what you're getting into with a yam. Taro grow in particularly wet, swampy areas. They put out large, triangular leaves that can be as big as your chest and make decent umbrellas in a pinch. Their skins are brown and bark-y, but dotted with purple nodules. They're vaguely reddish-purple on the inside and are so incredibly starchy that cutting one covers your knife and cutting board with a flour-like paste. When you cook taro, you have to be sure to make sure every last bit of it gets soaked in plenty of water or oil or the result will taste like eating dry flour. Kumala are sweet potatoes, and are my personal favorite root crop. Sweet potatoes are kind of magical: they're easy to grow, they keep for months without preservation, they taste good, and they have more nutrients than any of the other root crops. There are two varieties of kumala in Vanuatu. One is similar to the kind you can buy in the US, brown skin with orange flesh. The second has purple skin and white flesh and is slightly sweeter. Personally, I'm a brown-and-orange fan. Unfortunately, kumala doesn't seem to get as much use as the other root crops, probably because you can't make lap-lap out of it.
The standard root crop concoction is lap-lap, and, in my opinion, manioc makes the best lap-lap. Lap-lap is essentially baked root crop mush. I can see it as perhaps a precursor to a flat bread, except they never got as far as drying their starchy mush to remove the excess water before cooking and achieve that nice, fluffy, bread texture. To make lap-lap, you peel your root crop and grate it against a rough board to make a paste. You then take the paste and wrap it in leaves. Then you put the whole thing in an underground oven made by digging a hole and filling it with hot stones. The lap-lap goes in the hole and then is covered with dirt and allowed to sit for a few hours until it congeals. Dig it up and enjoy. Serves 6-10. Manioc and taro lap-lap have the doughiest texture, kind of like raw pizza dough. Yam lap-lap is a little more mealy. Banana lap-lap is more goop-y (yes, I forgot to mention, you can make lap-lap with bananas too. Either unripe sweet bananas or plantaines. No one really like banana lap-lap though, even Ni-Vans complain that it's unappetizing).It's not that lap-lap is bad, it's just not anything. It's plain white bread, or dry mashed potatoes, or plain oatmeal, it's a vehicle for other flavors, not a complete meal in and of itself. Commonly, chunks of meat are cooked in with the root crop paste, which improves the flavor substantially as the drippings from the meat soak into the lap-lap. The more adventurous Ni-Van chefs will add salt or curry powder to the paste, which also adds a welcome addition of flavor. On Malekula, a hole is made in the middle of the lap-lap and then filled with coconut milk after the lap-lap is cooked. You can then dip your lap-lap pieces in the milk before eating. The coconut milk adds much-needed hints of sweetness and oiliness. Overall, lap-lap isn't a bad dish, it's just not something you'd expect as the crowning achievement of thousands of years of culinary practice.
There are other ways to enjoy root crops of course. Simboro is another common dish and is sort of a lap-lap variant. Instead of taking your root crop paste and wrapping it in large banana leaves to bake, you wrap it in island cabbage leaves. Island cabbage leaves are a lot smaller, but they have the advantage of being edible. Island cabbage is one of those vegetables that likes to remind you that you are, in fact, eating a leaf. Maybe it's just from experience, but things like lettuce or cabbage don't look particularly leafy to me. Like, it's obvious they didn't fall off a tree. But not island cabbage. Island cabbage looks like a leaf straight from a tree. It looks like something you might have to rake up off your yard come fall or that you might use to wipe yourself while camping. It tastes kind of like spinach or kale. Anyway, you take your paste and wrap it up in island cabbage to make little rolls that look kind of like damales (grape leaves stuffed with spiced meat and rice and soaked in lemon juice), except they don't taste nearly as good. You then boil the rolls until the paste congeals and serve. I'm not a big fan of simboro, because it's basically exactly like lap-lap, except it's often served by itself, without meat or coconut milk to enhance the flavor, and thus is spectacularly bland. Also, the island cabbage tends to get kind of slimy when you boil it, which is a little off-putting.
My favorite Vanuatu dish is probably bunya. Chop up a bunch of meat and a bunch of kumala or taro, wrap everything in banana leaves, and cook it underground, lap-lap style for a few hours. The meat gets nice and tender from the slow cooking, the banana leaves trap all the moisture inside, and the kumala soak up all the meat juices. Optionally, squeeze some coconut milk on top after it's done cooking. Simple, to the point, good.
The thing is, that that's basically about it as far as traditional dishes go: three dishes, two of which are almost the same. Just a bit of a letdown. That's not to say, of course, that lap-lap, simboro, and bunya are the only three things to eat in Vanuatu, just that these are pretty much the only prepared meals. Most other things are just eaten as is. Pineapples, mangoes, guavas, passion fruit, papayas, avocados, oranges, grapefruits, lychee, and bananas are all eaten raw and plain. I've never seen anyone incorporate fruit into their cooking. It seems like there are some good sauces and pastries that could be made. Peanuts, nangai (kind of like almonds) and other local nuts are also usually eaten raw and plain. Pumpkin and other squashes are boiled and eaten, sometimes with coconut milk. We've got tons of seafood, crabs, clams, mussels, lobsters, prawns, and fish, which are boiled or roasted and eaten plain or incorporated into lap-lap. We have spices. There are small, thai-style hot peppers no bigger than a fingernail but that pack quite a punch. We've got wild ginger and vanilla and pepper and spring onions and lemon grass, all of which go more or less unused. It just seems like there's a lot of potential going to waste in Ni-Vanuatu cuisine. Most of the raw ingredients are there, and yet there are no peanut sauces, no curries, no chutneys, and no fruit pastries. Sometimes I wonder what went wrong, but then I realize that I, who should know better being a food snob of sorts back in the US, have fallen into the same pattern. Most of my meals consist of little more than fried kumala and the occasional piece of plain fruit or meat. I think maybe its the heat.
A lot of people claim not to know how to cook. They site being clumsy or forgetful or too afraid of screwing up, but I think this is bogus. All that's required to make a good meal is a complete and utter obsession with food. Those content with microwave pasta for dinner will never be able to cook well because they'll never see the point: why work hard to prepare something special if you're content with something mediocre? The extra time and effort will just seem wasted. On the other hand, a true foodie will think nothing of walking two hours to get a fresh fish then gutting, scaling, and de-boning it if it means a really good fish fillet for dinner. Even if said foodie has no idea how to go about scaling or gutting a fish, they're sure as hell going to find out. In cooking, as with many things, where there a will, there is a way. Thus, the will is everything.
In Vanuatu, it's easy to give up on food, even for such a devotee as myself. It's hard to muster up the will to bake a batch of cookies when the first step is sharpening a machete to go to chop down a tree for firewood. A lot of volunteers eventually give up on the whole cooking thing altogether and just subsist on boiled bananas provided by their host families. Some of us turn to kava as a replacement for food, which is sort of odd because kava is pretty much the exact opposite of food, it has absolutely no nutritional value and it tastes awful. It's kind of like drinking Diet Coke, if Diet Coke were mud-flavored. However, it's one thing for a volunteer living in Vanuatu for a couple years to suck it up and give up on good food for the duration of his service, knowing that he'll be able to return to it eventually, but it's another thing for a Ni-Van living in Vanuatu all their life to not strive for something beyond the plain, boiled root vegetable. Like with a lot of things, a lack of technology does mean some complications. We like to romanticize about simpler times before modern gadgets took the fun out of everything, but the fact of the matter is that, although a wood-burning oven may sound quaint and appealing, the lack of fine temperature control provided by gas or electric ovens means that goods prepared in an old-fashioned oven tend to be either burnt or undercooked. But, although technology has made fine food more accessible and made possible some previously unattainable culinary feats, the fact remains that good food predates Food Network. Which begs the question, what the heck happened in Vanuatu to make their cuisine so soul-crushingly boring?
The root crop is the mainstay of the Vanuatu diet. It makes sense. They're easy to grow, they're starchy and satisfying, and they have a long shelf life. You can divide root crops into four categories: manioc, yams, taro, and kumala. Manioc is what we use to make tapioca in the states. It's probably the most potato-like of the group. The meat is straight white and has that kind of flour-y, starchy texture. Yams are the broadest of the categories. There are dozen, perhaps hundreds, or different kinds of yams in Vanuatu. They range from potato-sized to full-grown-cow sized. Some have tough, wooden skins, almost like bark, some have thin, soft skins, and some have skins with long, vein-y roots growing out of them. Sometimes they're white on the inside, sometimes they're purple, and sometimes they're white with purple streaks. They can have mild, potato-y tastes or strong, wild tastes. In short, you never really know what you're getting into with a yam. Taro grow in particularly wet, swampy areas. They put out large, triangular leaves that can be as big as your chest and make decent umbrellas in a pinch. Their skins are brown and bark-y, but dotted with purple nodules. They're vaguely reddish-purple on the inside and are so incredibly starchy that cutting one covers your knife and cutting board with a flour-like paste. When you cook taro, you have to be sure to make sure every last bit of it gets soaked in plenty of water or oil or the result will taste like eating dry flour. Kumala are sweet potatoes, and are my personal favorite root crop. Sweet potatoes are kind of magical: they're easy to grow, they keep for months without preservation, they taste good, and they have more nutrients than any of the other root crops. There are two varieties of kumala in Vanuatu. One is similar to the kind you can buy in the US, brown skin with orange flesh. The second has purple skin and white flesh and is slightly sweeter. Personally, I'm a brown-and-orange fan. Unfortunately, kumala doesn't seem to get as much use as the other root crops, probably because you can't make lap-lap out of it.
The standard root crop concoction is lap-lap, and, in my opinion, manioc makes the best lap-lap. Lap-lap is essentially baked root crop mush. I can see it as perhaps a precursor to a flat bread, except they never got as far as drying their starchy mush to remove the excess water before cooking and achieve that nice, fluffy, bread texture. To make lap-lap, you peel your root crop and grate it against a rough board to make a paste. You then take the paste and wrap it in leaves. Then you put the whole thing in an underground oven made by digging a hole and filling it with hot stones. The lap-lap goes in the hole and then is covered with dirt and allowed to sit for a few hours until it congeals. Dig it up and enjoy. Serves 6-10. Manioc and taro lap-lap have the doughiest texture, kind of like raw pizza dough. Yam lap-lap is a little more mealy. Banana lap-lap is more goop-y (yes, I forgot to mention, you can make lap-lap with bananas too. Either unripe sweet bananas or plantaines. No one really like banana lap-lap though, even Ni-Vans complain that it's unappetizing).It's not that lap-lap is bad, it's just not anything. It's plain white bread, or dry mashed potatoes, or plain oatmeal, it's a vehicle for other flavors, not a complete meal in and of itself. Commonly, chunks of meat are cooked in with the root crop paste, which improves the flavor substantially as the drippings from the meat soak into the lap-lap. The more adventurous Ni-Van chefs will add salt or curry powder to the paste, which also adds a welcome addition of flavor. On Malekula, a hole is made in the middle of the lap-lap and then filled with coconut milk after the lap-lap is cooked. You can then dip your lap-lap pieces in the milk before eating. The coconut milk adds much-needed hints of sweetness and oiliness. Overall, lap-lap isn't a bad dish, it's just not something you'd expect as the crowning achievement of thousands of years of culinary practice.
There are other ways to enjoy root crops of course. Simboro is another common dish and is sort of a lap-lap variant. Instead of taking your root crop paste and wrapping it in large banana leaves to bake, you wrap it in island cabbage leaves. Island cabbage leaves are a lot smaller, but they have the advantage of being edible. Island cabbage is one of those vegetables that likes to remind you that you are, in fact, eating a leaf. Maybe it's just from experience, but things like lettuce or cabbage don't look particularly leafy to me. Like, it's obvious they didn't fall off a tree. But not island cabbage. Island cabbage looks like a leaf straight from a tree. It looks like something you might have to rake up off your yard come fall or that you might use to wipe yourself while camping. It tastes kind of like spinach or kale. Anyway, you take your paste and wrap it up in island cabbage to make little rolls that look kind of like damales (grape leaves stuffed with spiced meat and rice and soaked in lemon juice), except they don't taste nearly as good. You then boil the rolls until the paste congeals and serve. I'm not a big fan of simboro, because it's basically exactly like lap-lap, except it's often served by itself, without meat or coconut milk to enhance the flavor, and thus is spectacularly bland. Also, the island cabbage tends to get kind of slimy when you boil it, which is a little off-putting.
My favorite Vanuatu dish is probably bunya. Chop up a bunch of meat and a bunch of kumala or taro, wrap everything in banana leaves, and cook it underground, lap-lap style for a few hours. The meat gets nice and tender from the slow cooking, the banana leaves trap all the moisture inside, and the kumala soak up all the meat juices. Optionally, squeeze some coconut milk on top after it's done cooking. Simple, to the point, good.
The thing is, that that's basically about it as far as traditional dishes go: three dishes, two of which are almost the same. Just a bit of a letdown. That's not to say, of course, that lap-lap, simboro, and bunya are the only three things to eat in Vanuatu, just that these are pretty much the only prepared meals. Most other things are just eaten as is. Pineapples, mangoes, guavas, passion fruit, papayas, avocados, oranges, grapefruits, lychee, and bananas are all eaten raw and plain. I've never seen anyone incorporate fruit into their cooking. It seems like there are some good sauces and pastries that could be made. Peanuts, nangai (kind of like almonds) and other local nuts are also usually eaten raw and plain. Pumpkin and other squashes are boiled and eaten, sometimes with coconut milk. We've got tons of seafood, crabs, clams, mussels, lobsters, prawns, and fish, which are boiled or roasted and eaten plain or incorporated into lap-lap. We have spices. There are small, thai-style hot peppers no bigger than a fingernail but that pack quite a punch. We've got wild ginger and vanilla and pepper and spring onions and lemon grass, all of which go more or less unused. It just seems like there's a lot of potential going to waste in Ni-Vanuatu cuisine. Most of the raw ingredients are there, and yet there are no peanut sauces, no curries, no chutneys, and no fruit pastries. Sometimes I wonder what went wrong, but then I realize that I, who should know better being a food snob of sorts back in the US, have fallen into the same pattern. Most of my meals consist of little more than fried kumala and the occasional piece of plain fruit or meat. I think maybe its the heat.
Yu No Kick Part 1: By Popular Request
Once again, sorry for the long delay between posts. Getting online has not been as easy as it was last year. However, I do have my new laptop keyboard now and that seems to have fixed my computer problem, so hopefully smoother sailing in the future.
**The following are some stories I repeated to various people while I was in the States who requested that they be added to my blog. Enjoy.**
Digging up a banana tree is hard work. Someone told me that bananas are actually more closely related to grass than to other trees. I don’t know if this is true, but it makes sense. Banana trees aren’t really made out of wood, but rather a fibrous and watery leaf-like substance that’s only barely capable of supporting it own weight. They grow quickly, shooting out huge, canopy-like leaves that make decent umbrellas if you become caught in an unexpected downpour. They don’t fruit in those nice, grocery store sized bundles, but rather in huge hands, each carrying 30-50 bananas and easily weighing over 20 kilos. The fruit hands are so heavy that they pull down the trees they’re attached to when they mature and the whole mess comes tumbling to the ground to start the next generation. Thus, banana trees tend to come in stands, since the fruit doesn’t move very far, the new trees tend to grow right on top of the old ones. Often seven or eight trees can grow in more or less the same place, their root structures becoming intertwined and indistinguishable from one another. Thus, although cutting down banana trees is relatively easy (and fun), because of their flimsy trunks, digging a banana stand out of your garden is (because of all the interlocking roots) the effective equivalent of digging out a 100 year old oak. The key is to tackle it in small pieces: use a shovel to separate a bit of truck from the rest, drive the shovel home repeatedly as hard as possible into the opening you’ve created to cut the roots apart, and work on digging out the little section you’ve just isolated. Repeat until the entire stand is gone. It’s not a pleasant job, especially in the late-summer Vanuatu heat, it takes most of the day, and it leaves one absolutely covered in mud and sweat.
I’d just finished a grueling afternoon banana-clearing to make way for my planned vegetable garden (which, by the way, never really panned out. Weeds crept in far faster than I was willing to remove them) when I saw my headmaster make the trek across the school yard from the office to my house.
“Dan!” he called out, “Can you come put the new toner in copier?”
The school had acquired a photo copier because of some ill-thought-out grant scheme in 2003 or 2004. As far as I could tell, they’d used up the original toner and never bothered to replace it.
“OK,” I said, realizing I was probably one of the few people on the island who’d had experience changing toner, and beginning to make my way towards the office.
“If you want to wash first…?” my headmaster added.
I looked down at myself and considered. I was incredibly filthy. Flecks of mud covered almost every inch of me, I wasn’t wearing a shirt, and my pants were soaked though with sweat enough to make it seem like I’d been caught out during a particularly violent downpour. However, changing a toner cartridge wouldn’t take long, I reasoned, and I’d be back to work afterwards and just get dirty again.
“It’s alright,” I said.
We made our way to the office and I realized that the headmaster’s comment about washing had not been a question, but a request. You see, I’d vastly underestimated the level of solemnity involved in a Vanuatu toner changing. I entered the office to find it full of school staff, all dressed in their Sunday finest. Given the size of the office, I had to maneuver carefully so as not to get mud all over people’s island dresses and shirts. I stood in front of the copier and a bubble of people formed around me. I reached for the copier but was told to wait as the pastor stepped forward and led us in a prayer thanking God for life and the new day and also for providing both a new toner cartridge and a Peace Corps volunteer capable of installing it. Then the headmaster stepped forward and gave a short speech covering the same basic points. Finally, he nodded toward me, indicating I had the go-ahead to replace the toner. I got to admit, I was a little nervous. Although I knew, in general, how to replace toner, I had no experience with the specific copier in front of me and I worried that I might spend too much time fiddling around with various catches and levers and ruin the moment. Perhaps, I thought, a trial run should be suggested for next time. Fortunately, the copier was well labeled (thank you Xerox) and so the procedure went off with the necessary smoothness. When I’d finished, everyone clapped politely and the pastor closed with another prayer. We all filed out of the office and I went back to my yard work wondering what in the world had just happened.
**************************
There are surprisingly few birds in Vanuatu. Well, maybe it’s not surprising. I sure as heck wouldn’t want to have to flap my way across thousands of miles of empty ocean from the mainland in order to colonize a rather small and somewhat dull string of Pacific islands. Perhaps what’s more surprising is how many land animals went through with the feat. Maybe birds just have more sense. At any rate, there are no crows crowding the rooftops, no pigeons covering the ground in search of food, no birdsong to greet you when you wake up in the morning. There are a plethora of chickens, true, but they just don’t really seem to count. They’re too awkward in the air. There’s also a species of wild pigeon that inhabits the bush that the locals call nawimba. Duncan shoots them up in his garden sometimes, and they’re pretty good grilled. But (perhaps because they’re so tasty) they’re somewhat few and far between. No, in Vanuatu, it’s the mammals that rule the skies. Flying fox (actually a kind of fruit bat) take to the air around dusk and the night is full of their sounds as they fly about screeching and eating fruit. It takes a little getting used to, but it’s actually kind of a nice way to fall asleep.
When Duncan has bullets the two of us roam the village looking for flying fox in the coconut trees to shoot and incorporate into lap-lap. I play the role of human tripod. When Duncan sees a target, he shouts “Dan!” and I run up and stand a few paces in front of him so he can balance the gun on my head as he takes aim. It’s not a bad technique, and we can bag a surprising number in a couple hours.
On one such hunting expedition, however, I discovered that the flying fox is not totally unchallenged in its dominion over the night skies. Duncan had wandered ahead of me a little more than usual one night hunting when all of the sudden he shouted “Dan!” in a tone that was a couple times more frantic than his usual, relax manner (you see, flying fox tend to sit around on one coconut tree for a while, so you’ve got plenty of time to set up your shot). I took my position as the tripod, but I could sense an increased level of excitement: something different was afoot. Duncan fired off a shot and the two of us went in search of the resulting body. I was traipsing around in the bush, finding nothing, when Duncan shouted my name again. I looked over to see him triumphantly holding up an enormous owl. Now, I’m a fan of birds of prey and this owl looked so graceful and deadly, even while dead, as Duncan held it from its wing tip, its body weight causing the wings to spread (it was a white owl, and looked kind of like the one they use to play Hedwig in the Harry Potter movies), that I felt a tinge of regret that I had been accomplice to its killing.
“Do you eat owls?” I asked. All things become justified in the pursuit of fine cuisine.
“No,” Duncan replied, “but when you see an owl, you have to shoot it.” (I should add that the Bislama word for owl is “night hawk,” which makes them sound extra awesome).
“What do you do with them?” I asked.
“Burn them,” Duncan replied.
“Why?”
“Because sometimes they’re really people doing black magic. They can turn into owls.”
That brought me up short. Not so much because he believed that it was possible for people to turn into owls, but more because he believed that this justified killing said people. In essence, that’s what had happened: an attempted homicide prevented by the fortuitous fact that people can not, actually, turn into owls. It’s like, “Hey Dad! Why’d you shoot the dog?!” “Sorry, I thought it was one of the neighbors.” “Oh, well, that’s alright then.” Killing animals for sport is one thing, but killing animals because you think they’re people was a little too much for me to wrap my head around. As tends to happen in such situations, I was at a loss for words. I just smiled and nodded.
**The following are some stories I repeated to various people while I was in the States who requested that they be added to my blog. Enjoy.**
Digging up a banana tree is hard work. Someone told me that bananas are actually more closely related to grass than to other trees. I don’t know if this is true, but it makes sense. Banana trees aren’t really made out of wood, but rather a fibrous and watery leaf-like substance that’s only barely capable of supporting it own weight. They grow quickly, shooting out huge, canopy-like leaves that make decent umbrellas if you become caught in an unexpected downpour. They don’t fruit in those nice, grocery store sized bundles, but rather in huge hands, each carrying 30-50 bananas and easily weighing over 20 kilos. The fruit hands are so heavy that they pull down the trees they’re attached to when they mature and the whole mess comes tumbling to the ground to start the next generation. Thus, banana trees tend to come in stands, since the fruit doesn’t move very far, the new trees tend to grow right on top of the old ones. Often seven or eight trees can grow in more or less the same place, their root structures becoming intertwined and indistinguishable from one another. Thus, although cutting down banana trees is relatively easy (and fun), because of their flimsy trunks, digging a banana stand out of your garden is (because of all the interlocking roots) the effective equivalent of digging out a 100 year old oak. The key is to tackle it in small pieces: use a shovel to separate a bit of truck from the rest, drive the shovel home repeatedly as hard as possible into the opening you’ve created to cut the roots apart, and work on digging out the little section you’ve just isolated. Repeat until the entire stand is gone. It’s not a pleasant job, especially in the late-summer Vanuatu heat, it takes most of the day, and it leaves one absolutely covered in mud and sweat.
I’d just finished a grueling afternoon banana-clearing to make way for my planned vegetable garden (which, by the way, never really panned out. Weeds crept in far faster than I was willing to remove them) when I saw my headmaster make the trek across the school yard from the office to my house.
“Dan!” he called out, “Can you come put the new toner in copier?”
The school had acquired a photo copier because of some ill-thought-out grant scheme in 2003 or 2004. As far as I could tell, they’d used up the original toner and never bothered to replace it.
“OK,” I said, realizing I was probably one of the few people on the island who’d had experience changing toner, and beginning to make my way towards the office.
“If you want to wash first…?” my headmaster added.
I looked down at myself and considered. I was incredibly filthy. Flecks of mud covered almost every inch of me, I wasn’t wearing a shirt, and my pants were soaked though with sweat enough to make it seem like I’d been caught out during a particularly violent downpour. However, changing a toner cartridge wouldn’t take long, I reasoned, and I’d be back to work afterwards and just get dirty again.
“It’s alright,” I said.
We made our way to the office and I realized that the headmaster’s comment about washing had not been a question, but a request. You see, I’d vastly underestimated the level of solemnity involved in a Vanuatu toner changing. I entered the office to find it full of school staff, all dressed in their Sunday finest. Given the size of the office, I had to maneuver carefully so as not to get mud all over people’s island dresses and shirts. I stood in front of the copier and a bubble of people formed around me. I reached for the copier but was told to wait as the pastor stepped forward and led us in a prayer thanking God for life and the new day and also for providing both a new toner cartridge and a Peace Corps volunteer capable of installing it. Then the headmaster stepped forward and gave a short speech covering the same basic points. Finally, he nodded toward me, indicating I had the go-ahead to replace the toner. I got to admit, I was a little nervous. Although I knew, in general, how to replace toner, I had no experience with the specific copier in front of me and I worried that I might spend too much time fiddling around with various catches and levers and ruin the moment. Perhaps, I thought, a trial run should be suggested for next time. Fortunately, the copier was well labeled (thank you Xerox) and so the procedure went off with the necessary smoothness. When I’d finished, everyone clapped politely and the pastor closed with another prayer. We all filed out of the office and I went back to my yard work wondering what in the world had just happened.
**************************
There are surprisingly few birds in Vanuatu. Well, maybe it’s not surprising. I sure as heck wouldn’t want to have to flap my way across thousands of miles of empty ocean from the mainland in order to colonize a rather small and somewhat dull string of Pacific islands. Perhaps what’s more surprising is how many land animals went through with the feat. Maybe birds just have more sense. At any rate, there are no crows crowding the rooftops, no pigeons covering the ground in search of food, no birdsong to greet you when you wake up in the morning. There are a plethora of chickens, true, but they just don’t really seem to count. They’re too awkward in the air. There’s also a species of wild pigeon that inhabits the bush that the locals call nawimba. Duncan shoots them up in his garden sometimes, and they’re pretty good grilled. But (perhaps because they’re so tasty) they’re somewhat few and far between. No, in Vanuatu, it’s the mammals that rule the skies. Flying fox (actually a kind of fruit bat) take to the air around dusk and the night is full of their sounds as they fly about screeching and eating fruit. It takes a little getting used to, but it’s actually kind of a nice way to fall asleep.
When Duncan has bullets the two of us roam the village looking for flying fox in the coconut trees to shoot and incorporate into lap-lap. I play the role of human tripod. When Duncan sees a target, he shouts “Dan!” and I run up and stand a few paces in front of him so he can balance the gun on my head as he takes aim. It’s not a bad technique, and we can bag a surprising number in a couple hours.
On one such hunting expedition, however, I discovered that the flying fox is not totally unchallenged in its dominion over the night skies. Duncan had wandered ahead of me a little more than usual one night hunting when all of the sudden he shouted “Dan!” in a tone that was a couple times more frantic than his usual, relax manner (you see, flying fox tend to sit around on one coconut tree for a while, so you’ve got plenty of time to set up your shot). I took my position as the tripod, but I could sense an increased level of excitement: something different was afoot. Duncan fired off a shot and the two of us went in search of the resulting body. I was traipsing around in the bush, finding nothing, when Duncan shouted my name again. I looked over to see him triumphantly holding up an enormous owl. Now, I’m a fan of birds of prey and this owl looked so graceful and deadly, even while dead, as Duncan held it from its wing tip, its body weight causing the wings to spread (it was a white owl, and looked kind of like the one they use to play Hedwig in the Harry Potter movies), that I felt a tinge of regret that I had been accomplice to its killing.
“Do you eat owls?” I asked. All things become justified in the pursuit of fine cuisine.
“No,” Duncan replied, “but when you see an owl, you have to shoot it.” (I should add that the Bislama word for owl is “night hawk,” which makes them sound extra awesome).
“What do you do with them?” I asked.
“Burn them,” Duncan replied.
“Why?”
“Because sometimes they’re really people doing black magic. They can turn into owls.”
That brought me up short. Not so much because he believed that it was possible for people to turn into owls, but more because he believed that this justified killing said people. In essence, that’s what had happened: an attempted homicide prevented by the fortuitous fact that people can not, actually, turn into owls. It’s like, “Hey Dad! Why’d you shoot the dog?!” “Sorry, I thought it was one of the neighbors.” “Oh, well, that’s alright then.” Killing animals for sport is one thing, but killing animals because you think they’re people was a little too much for me to wrap my head around. As tends to happen in such situations, I was at a loss for words. I just smiled and nodded.
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