Life in the Village - Part 2

Gretchen, Tania, and Laura doing laundry

In the last post I left off with a promise to continue telling you about life in the village.

Every day was filled with chores. Not as many chores as there would have been if we had been growing and preparing all of our own food, as the villagers do, but still there were chores, such as laundry... by hand, of course. It was actually kind of fun to learn how to do laundry this way. As a bonus, it is really good exercise!

Filtering water.

As a precaution against illness, we filtered all our drinking water. The water situation in this village is actually really good, and eventually our bodies would most likely to be able to handle drinking the water unfiltered (it is rainwater collected into cisterns), but for now we filtered everything. The whole trip was a big enough shock to our sytems as it was.

Anyhow, enough daily drinking water for ten people meant a lot of filtering. However, this never ceased to be a source of entertainment for whoever happened to be around at the time. Quizzical looks were answered with a lengthy explanation of what we were doing, why, and how. =)

Josh's first attempt at making 'simboro'

As I mentioned before, we did not prepare our own food. The community has divided the people in the area into five groups. I am not sure if it is purely family groups or what, but it seems to be for the purpose of organizing responsibilities. At least that is what the divisions were used for this time. Each group was assigned certain days to provide food for our team. We were there for 10 days, so that means each group cooked for us twice. Sometimes we got to help, and that was really fun.

We got to learn how to make banana laplap, which we learned is a trademark food for Ambrym. Laplap comes in many different 'flavors'...  taro, yam, manioc, etc. I have learned that banana laplap is my favorite. In the photo to the right Lena is teaching Josh to make something like a cross between laplap and a spring roll, simboro.

To make simboro, first we scraped out the inside of green cooking bananas (like plantain, no they are not sweet). Then a little bit of the resulting mush is wrapped in a leaf of island cabbage. The little roll is then put into a pot like you see in the picture and then covered in freshly squeezed coconut milk. Then it is cooked until the rolls are firm. All in all the flavor is really not bad, certainly an island kakae (island food) favorite for some in our group.

A typical evening meal.

A typical meal for us...
(LEFT: beginning in the lower left and going clockwise)
banana laplap with pumpkin and coconut cream on top (YUM!), rice, ramen noodles with island cabbage (in the covered pot), chunks of boiled yam, and island cabbage in coconut milk (also a major favorite)

To be honest, I was a bit worried about the food. I have had a few, lets just say 'queezy', experiences since we have been here. But the food, WOW, it was really good. The only problem was the amount of it.

Culturally, to be polite, we really should finish all the food they bring at each meal. After all, there is no way to keep leftovers, and they work so hard for everything they have. The thing is... they would bring so much! We tried, and we tried, we stuffed, and swallowed, and stuffed some more... at each meal. We never had any hope of actually finishing what they brought at any one meal, but we tried to at least put enough of a dent in it that they would know that we liked it and would not be hurt or offended. After each meal, we shared what we had left with the various families that were nearby. That seemed to be okay, and sometimes very appreciated.

Grace, Gretchen, and Laura on clean-up duty.

When meals were over, it was time to do dishes. We were very grateful, a few days into our stay, to find dish-soap available at one of the village 'house-stores'. Many families in the village sell little things like mosquito coils, toilet paper, and laundry soap from their homes. This was a nice blessing for us to have these things available.

On this day (BELOW), Esther, after she spent a very long day away at her garden, let us help her get some ror (wild cabbage) ready for supper. This is some really tasty stuff. It is gathered along the banks of the rivers.

Here are a few more pictures...

Esther squeezing coconut milk over the wild cabbage.

My attempt at cutting firewood with a bush knife.

Shelly lets me help her pluck a chicken.

One chore I can't leave out... first aid. Joshua was a frequent recipient, but we also got to share our first aid with many of our new friends (sorry, no photos of that).

There is one brick oven like this in the village, owned by John (not pictured). He baked bread every day, and shared some with us for our breakfast every morning that we were there. Sometimes there was peanut butter or Vegemite on it. Ok, all you Aussies out there... 'plug your ears'... by the end of our stay, I was actually craving the Vegemite! For all you Americans out there wondering what Vegemite is... don't worry, you are not missing out ;) - (just kidding, to all my friends 'down under'). Vegemite is an Australian household staple that is super salty and packed with vitamins, it is just a little hard to get used to.

So, that gives you a bit of an overview of what chores and meals were like for us. This last photo is our whole group, minus Laura (behind the camera) and plus Lena and Ellen who joined us for super since it was our last day in the village.

I think next time I will share with you some pictures of cool cultural stuff. Until then...