So the other night I decided to watch the animated movie “Madagascar” before going to bed. I didn’t get through all of it, but I was cracking up about some of the things that happen; especially the fossa. At one point when the zoo animals first arrive on the island and are talking to the lemurs, the lemur king tells them they are in the ‘wild’ and they respond:
Alex--“you mean like live in a mud hut, wipe with a leaf kind of wild!?”
Lemur King responds, “Who wipes!?”
I was literally laughing out loud in my house, alone, for way longer than necessary. I feel like this could be a conversation between a PCV and anyone back home in the states. I do usually have toilet paper on hand (although newspaper is the malagasy paper of choice), but most PCVs live in some form of a mud or palm leaf hut and have a ‘latrine.’ These things have become completely normal to our lives, and I would prefer a latrine 9 times out of 10 (think no water pressure and less than sanitary cleaning methods…). But I was reminded many times by my parents the ways in which I have ‘gone wild,’ actually my dad put it as, ‘going rogue’ (though not sure exactly what he meant by that). So while, Madagascar, may be pretty inaccurate in many senses, I feel like they hit that one right on the mark.
To add to this comment, I am going to describe the scene that went down at my house last night. About a week ago, Lucette and I were talking in my house at night, like we always do, and as she got up to go to bed, we noticed that there was a chewing noise coming from next to my house. When I shined a light on it Lucette got really excited and ran screaming for the girls in her house to bring her a large stick. She said that it was a ‘tandrika’ and is really good as a laoka (dish with rice). Tandrika was not a word in my annoyingly small dictionary and from what I could see it looked like a big tailless rat. It got away and that was the end of it for a week. Last night Lucette and the students that live with her during the week were coming home after dark from watching a movie at a neighbor’s house (my town is all fancy with their electricity). I was already in bed, lights off, watching a movie on my computer when a huge commotion breaks out outside my house. Lucette and the little girls managed to chase down the tandrika, capture and kill it; not being even a little bit quiet, resulting in myself, and ALL of the neighbors coming outside in our pajamas to watch. There was a whole group of adults screaming and laughing like a bunch of little kids. It was hilarious. Once killed, I got a good look at this tandrika and it looked a lot like a possum only without a tail; aka definitely not something I would ever want to eat. Lucette showed it to me again while it was cooking and told me that it tastes just like pork. I took off before lunch today; eating a rat/possum like creature is not on my to do list for Madagascar.
Ok and now for Thanksgiving. I will begin by saying that my first thanksgiving dinner was a huge success. I started by going to Ambato to shop and bake some desserts at the flop house the day before. I think one of the hardest parts was trying to figure out how much food I needed for the 15 or so people that I would be feeding. I have been cooking for myself, or maybe on a very rare occasion, one other person for the last year and I couldn’t seem to get my mind around how much food 15 people would need, so I just bought a ton of everything. I got up and started preparing things at 530am on Saturday (this is a normal wake up time, even on saturday) and almost immediately a man showed up and started constructing a tent in our backyard. I mean I knew Lucette and Noeline were excited about this, but I didn’t realize they were that excited. The tent was followed by a man coming and hooking up his inappropriately large speakers, in true gasy fety fashion, and preparing to DJ the party (aka play the 3 cds he owns over and over). By the time Tom rolled in on his bike at about 7am the party was in full swing, complete with a tent, DJ and 40 or so small children dancing. This meant that we had an audience for everything we did; luckily the whole idea of cooking a turkey in an oven was ‘hafa hafa’ (different) and so by acting like we knew what we were doing, everyone believed we did. In reality, Tom and I were following the 10 steps that I had found online from a man who cooks turkey on in a wood burning oven and improvising the many times that, even then, we couldn’t possibly follow his directions. Ohatra (example) on Friday I suddenly came to the realization that we didn’t have a pan to cook Ted on. Solution (thanks to Lucette): Fold a large piece of scrap roof metal in half and stick it on top of some tin cans in the stove. I’m not joking. Problem number 2: no thermometer. Solution: add some time to the times that the directions state and hope for the best. They also say to take it out of the oven and cover it with tin foil for a half an hour at the end, in order to let it finish cooking. Our solution, cover it with plates and an Air France blanket until we were finished with the rest of the side dishes.
Once Ted was cooking away in the oven, we got started with the sides. We had stuffing, mashed potatoes, cheesy potatoes, sweet potatoes, green been salad and brouchetta. It was a little potato heavy, but aren’t all thanksgivings? Half way through we had to flip Ted, while he was cooking in a crazily hot oven, on a piece of tin. We attacked the problem with our arms covered in spare clothes and large serving utensils in hand; all the while having a crowd of about 45 people watching. We lost all of the juices into the abyss of the stove, but we successfully rotated Ted. Everything else went according to plan (ha! Like I had a plan) and Lucette and Noeline were preparing their own dishes that they had decided to contribute. At about the 3 hour mark, Lucette came running into the house and told us we had to check on the turkey. The stove had gotten a little too hot, thus catching the doors and the logs that were bracing our piece of tin on fire. Since the whole back yard was tented, we were literally engulfed in smoke. Tom and I made the executive decision that Ted was matsaka (ready/ripe) and proceeded to pull him out of the stove with our large serving utensils and into a laundry basin. He got a little charred in those last few moments in the on-fire-oven, but the meat inside was still delectable. Following this was, perhaps, one of the most funny scenes that has ever occurred in my house. I was finishing up the many potato dishes, Tom was ‘carving’ Ted with my leatherman and megan was sitting on my bed with one of the huge mortar and pestles, making peanut butter. I have pictures that I hope to post one day.
We finally sat down to eat and I made everyone play the ‘what your thankful game’ before we ate. They didn’t totally get it, since I started and talked about how thankful I was that a year ago I got to Ambohitsilaozana and didn’t have any friends and didn’t know how to speak Malagasy, and now I am having a fety in my town and have friends and malagasy family to celebrate with. It started a round of how all the malagasy were thankful that they have gotten to know Americans, which I guess works in a way. Anyways, it was really great to have my two closest Malagasy friends and their families celebrating with me. We ate so much that Meg, Tom and I were talking about how much pain we were in for hours afterwards. And even though there was rice and traditional gasy food, I didn’t eat anything but the American food (there was no more room!) and was still stuffed. Unfortunately, Malagasy people are not mahay about how you are supposed to nap after eating turkey. The food was cleared away and the dancing started up, with crowds of people from my town wandering through to watch. We didn’t get a break until almost dinner time (which Meg and I couldn’t bring ourselves to eat) when we did the dishes and then escaped to my house to drink wine and eat no-bake cookies. I took the entire next morning to sleep and recover in my house. The fety was great though and it left me feeling very thankful for the time that I have spent in Ambohitsilaozana. I am incredibly thankful for the ways in which Lucette and Noeline have made me a part of their families and made me feel so at home in a town, culture and country so different than my own. I was blessed with a wonderful town to be placed in for Peace Corps and an equally wonderful group of PCVS to leave near. It’s been a great year with a lot to be thankful for and I am glad that I got to have my Thanksgiving, although slightly unconventional, here in Madagascar.
0 comments:
Post a Comment