playing


The silly evenings out are also worth remembering.  Sometimes when I come out of town and into the city for a “banking night” I feel a desperate desire for everything that is not ‘gasy.  Processed food, cold drinks, English speakers.  But those felt needs are becoming less and less I have found as I progress in my service. 
Yesterday, for example, I came into town to teach my weekly course at the university in Diego.  When I got back from teaching I was exhausted, having been up since 5 that morning to bike and taxi-brouse in, prepare the odd ends of my lesson, and then hold the class.  I was ready to relax and was therefore couchin’ it with my best girl, Nicki, trying to decide on evening plans.  Apparently, she had enlisted us for a company outing with her co-workers at PSI.  I sighed, wishing to not have to go through the charades of being the white girl, the puppet for excited ‘gasy men to twirl around, but she had promised so I told her I was in.  

We go to the pre-decided location and lounge for awhile, drinking brochettes and eating beers (wait, what?) and waiting for them to come.  It’s a bit late so I’m wondering if they have stood us up.  Around 9:15 we get a call and they ask where we are (to which we respond that we are just where we told them we would be).  Three minutes later a taxi pulls up and we are pulled from our benches into the laps of people already in it.  Confused, we laugh and talk on the way to somewhere.  Finally we arrive back in the middle of town, to a ramdom street corner with the entire staff of PSI is assembled and waiting for us.  Apparently by telling a few of them we might be up for something and meant that everyone must be informed and sent invitations to the whole staff to come play with the Peace Corps volunteers.  (Who can blame them?  We’ve got spunk!).  A bit overwhelmed, we shrug and follow them into a tiny bar with a raging bass system that is throwing out the notes of the live band playing at the center.  Drinking and merriment ensues including Macarena-ing, electic sliding, and we end all slow dancing like an eighth grade semiformal event to “Endless love”. 

It was a goofy and wonderful time by all and it is those moments when you are exchanging dance moves with a 45 year-old Malagasy dude that you realize Peace Corps is maybe not about getting overwhelmed and then needing to take a break from 'gasy culture, but more finding those parts of the culture that feel like home to you.  That bring out the giddiness that sometimes feels hard to find.  

Silly, sweet night.  It also involved a foam party…but perhaps that is a story for another day. 

Comfort foods (or, where there is no Big Macs)


Being stuck in the bush leaves one far away from the comfort of ready-made or microwavable food.  This is something we all expected coming into Peace Corps, and have all evolved different methods to overcoming it.  My friend Katie, for example, receives monthly packages from her mother which cost her a fortune just to receive at the post office.  However, once she “mandoa vola” (throws up her money) she is treated, and generally shares, treats we forgot existed.  

My parents live in Rwanda and Togo, so I have little expectations of them to send me goodies of which I might crave from home.  So I have been forced to develop my own comfort foods that I can enjoy right here in my hut.  It really started after one particularly bad day at my first site when I was frustrated with language and hadn’t eaten anything besides tomatoes and rice for a week.  I lay on the hut of my floor thinking about what I really wanted to eat.  Surprisingly the first thing that came to my head was not pizza or French fries but a food that is a staple of my diet in the states: a veggie burger.  The first problem, of course, was that the freezer section at the town grocer was out of order and so I could not pick up a packet of my favorite spicy black bean burgers (the sarcasm in that last sentence is clear right?).  But really, I am in the land of nothing pre-made so if I wanted a veggie burger, I was going to have to get creative.  I walked the 5 k to my closest market where I found the basic things that are always there: tomatoes, onions, beans, rice.  That day was a lucky day, as a truck had dropped off a rice-sack of flour.  

So I loaded up on all of these things and went hungrily back to my hut.  I pulled out the yeast I had bought back in the capitol before getting to site and set to making the buns.  Let the yeast soak for five minutes in warm water, throw some sugar in, salt, and enough flour to make a good dough, then leave it to rise.  Second step was the burgers.  Since my favorite veggie burgers in the states are of the black bean variety, I figured I could scrape something together with the beans I had brought back from the market.  They were white, but who am I to judge on color anyways?  So I set them to cooking, which takes at least an hour. 
This is the funny thing about having a food craving here and actually trying to ease it, it will generally take you so long to make the thing that by the time its finished you will be fine with rice and tomatoes again.  Alas, by now I had put in enough effort that I figured I’d finish it out.  The dough had risen so I set my “oven” to heat.  This oven is really just a huge pot with sand in the bottom of it.  I put it on a burner or over a fire and wait for it to get good and warm, then I throw a pan with the buns in it and the lid back on and it bakes!  There is of course no temperature gage, so it requires standing by, but still…it feels like a luxury here.  When the beans soften I poured out the liquid and mashed them up.  I then added chopped onions, a bit of sugar, some vinegar, some ginger powder I happened to have, and an egg that I had begged my neighbor to spare from her chicken.  I stirred it all together and made it more solid with flour and the crumbled up stale end from a baguette I had bought on my last market trip.  Finally, I made them into patties and fried them up as the buns finished baking.  Slice up the tomatoes and a pineapple I found on the walk over and assemble it all.  It was freakin’ delicious.

Since this episode I have ventured to make many different foods.  Some have turned out terrifically like the veggie burgers while others, like any Indian food I have attempted, just don’t quite taste right.  I have been amazed though how, with an ever-flowing amount of time, so many things can be made that I could never have imagined the process of before.  Bagels, English muffins, pretzels.  I made an entire Thanksgiving dinner for twenty on my tiny double-burner.  Fermented a pineapple trying to get a taste of wine.  Have you ever made fried chicken where the recipe included killing and plucking the chicken first?  If curiosity killed the cat then I guess it was the desperation of a PCV that killed the chicken.  

 I suppose it’s good that these things that have turned out so delicious are on the more time-consuming time or else I’d come back to the states looking much more American than I did when I left!  (Is being overweight still an American stereotype?  I don’t even know anymore…perhaps Michele Obama has straightened out today’s kids after all).  But once in awhile it’s nice to know that they are feasible.  

I wonder if when I go back to the states I will go back to buying buns, pre-made veggie burgers, and pasta.  It’s almost absurd to imagine it possible.  Will I dive into the conveniences of instant cooking or will my food habits forever be changed by knowing what food tastes like when it comes not from the glossy supermarket?