just like home

July is a busy, busy time here. This week, we had the Langham Conference here, so the place was packed with pastors attending the preaching conference. We're always so stoked when this kind of thing happens because it is such a great way to share our facilities.

Then it warmed my heart (which is already quite warm, because July is the driest month - mid thirties in the day), that when the team from Bethlehem College came back from a week in the village and a day at sea, one of them said, "oh, it feels like we're coming home." It's an honour that this place would feel like home to others as well.

Then, this week, I splurged and got another taste of my other home. Seven local dollars gave me possession of a kiwi fruit. I'm not sure why I took my kiwifruit spife over here (or is it a knoon?) but it finally got put to use. It was the first time I've eaten a kiwifruit in almost two years (I think). It was sweet, but a tad on the soft side. But still, rather special.

Random fact - it appears that outside of NZ, they call kiwifruit, kiwis. So people talk about eating a kiwi and I get scared - do they mean me or the bird?

Meals (take two)

This blog is called take two because the first one disappeared when the internet connection died a few minutes ago. Anyway.

Much of the food we like to eat is imported. Locally grown food includes taro, cassava, kumara, various types of "cabbage", tomatoes, eggplants, beans and capsicums, pumpkin and cucumber. Apparantly you can buy local beef, though I've never seen it. People kill a pig to celebrate a wedding and chicken and bacon is available in the market or local stores. We often buy the latter two, to support local enterprise, although the price of locally grown bacon and chicken is the same as the price of their imported counterparts.

So, the list of cheap food is rather short, being limited to locally grown food. Apart from fruit, all other yummy food is imported and thus expensive. So, chocolate is off the list :( Actually there are local cacao plantations but I've never seen the sweet delicious product of it in edible form.

Because we want to maintain good health and we are blessed to have sponsors, we don't have to live on cassava and cabbages but can eat the food we like. Well, within reason - milk is all powdered. I've always been opposed to using packets and the Bulk Store has an adequate supply of spices and herbs so we get by quite well. Let me give you an example.

Kumara is quite inexpensive, purchased from the market. You can buy a heap of kumara, about this size, maybe 12-15 in a heap for 10 Solomon dollars, or about NZ$2. So, kumara is a good staple. But kumara tends to be a bit dry, but not if you mash it with yoghurt and wholegrain mustard. Then it's delicious.

It made the perfect accompaniment to ghoulash. The ghoulash featured a small amount of cheap steak and heaps of locally grown vegies - capsicum, tomaotes and eggplant. With the right seasonings, it was scrumptious. I used my own lettuce for the salad as well as cucumber and tomatoes (Cucumber costs SBD$2 or 3 at the market. That's about 40 NZ cents!). I splurged by putting some cheese in the salad. Sometimes the Bulk Store sells expired cheese (how does cheese pass its use-by date! It just gets better!) for cheaper than you can buy cheese in NZ. I think that's why I splurged. Sadly, there's no expired cheese for sale at the moment. Also, when I was in NZ I bought a precious bottle of balsamic vinegar which I added as the dressing. (There's always too many precious things I want to take back here with me when I go for a yearly visit to NZ). The balsamic vinegar also makes the perfect addition to homemade mayonaise. Maybe my next post could be about homemade essentials...

We usually eat our hot meal at midday, because we're both around the house and it makes the afternoon easier. So while we were eating this yummy meal on our deck, Theresa was crawling around and...

pulling on Laki's ears. Oh, how Laki loves her.

A Custom Wedding

We’ve been to a few weddings here, but because many of our friends are from the South Sea Evangelical Church, and they rarely adhere to the customary bride price in SSEC churches, we have never seen a custom ceremony, only the typical church ceremony. Which, wasn’t so typical after all.

At the first wedding I attended here, after the vows, the pastor took the hand of the groom and joined it with the hand of the bride and I was expecting to hear, “you may kiss your bride”. Alas, hand holding is the most affection any will show in public, and then, only reserved for the happy couple at a wedding.

But this wedding was different.

Her extended family arrived first – along with this traditional basket of food –with a really cool handle!

Apparently, the basket was made by her grandmother’s father. So it is old. Things don’t often last long enough to be passed down, it appears, but this seems to be a real family heirloom. The family had prepared the food and cooked it (in a motu – yam parceled in banana leaf and roasted on hot stones covered in more banana leaf and sacks.) Then it was placed in this basket and taken to the venue.

Then after a while the groom’s family arrived… without the groom. He was working. But they promised he would come soon. Originally he told them to just pay the bride price and bring her to his house… Eventually he turned up and the bartering began. Although he was nowhere in sight and neither was she.

So the uncles (the bride’s father is no longer with the family) and groom’s uncles made many speeches about how much the bride price would be. The bride’s family wanted 10 000 shell money. Well, the groom’s family said they could only afford 7 000 because of school fees and the hardships facing them. Then the brides family came back to say, well, we’ve put her through school, she’s a hard worker…From our position in the cheap seats, I was starting to wonder if the wedding would go ahead at all. We were all discussing this whole business of bride price… what’s a normal price etc. Jair’s friend said that some people charge up to 20 000 shell money – now that’s a lot. But it all depends on what kind of woman she is – does she work hard, is she a good cook, good at gardening and carrying firewood etc. Ignorantly we asked, what if she’s pretty (naesbola) – do they get extra for her? The locals laughed at us. Why would you pay more for a pretty girl? She doesn’t necessarily work harder, does she! Looks don’t matter, it appears, when buying a wife. How different from our culture when even Christian girls (and guys!) wouldn’t even consider someone as a prospect unless they have some appeal to the eyes.

Well, this discussion between the parties went on for quite some time, while the groom was talking to his rellies and the bride was in the room, not wanting to come out, I think because of what she had to wear. Eventually, they came to an agreement of 7000 shell money and the groom came out and then the bride was summoned. She’s a very modest young lady, as are most young ladies are here. So she wasn’t so happy that she had to wear the customary shells with just a bra and her skirt. Her skin was oiled for the occasion.

After a few more speeches about how they were married they went into the leaf house for

a church ceremony. I had to feed Theresa, so I don’t know what happened there….

Afterwards, her family lifted up their traditional food basket and made a whole lot of noise, carrying it around, until they put it down and distributed the yam. Yum. Yam.

So that was the wedding. I thought they’d stay and eat at SWIM and then I would have shown you a banana leaf plate filled with all good things – cassava pudding, motu pork, big lumps of motu kumara and yam, cabbage cooked in with coconut so that it looks like spinach and feta tart. But alas, they took it all home to eat it…

But I will finish with this photo – one of the uncles from the province. You can’t see it, but he’s got traditional tattoo markings all over his face, the way the heathens of old do it. I mean he is old, so it was probably done when he was a young man before missionaries came or something.

But he looked a bit out of place in the particular clothes he's wearing. Such a mix of old and new.

What God sent me yesterday

Ok, so please believe me when I say that I’m not complaining. This is not a complaint kind of a post today.

But, sometimes the frustrations of daily life in the tropics, in a developing country, mount up and well… bubble up, not like a fresh spring, but more like a volcano….

Remember, I’m not complaining and I mean that in all sincerity. We know we’re right we’re God wants us right now and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

But…

I’m far away from all my family and friends.. :(

On a good day, I can send and receive emails… it seems to be a blue moon these days that I can do anything else necessary on the internet. I have to risk malaria and mosquito bites and sit outside at night to go on the internet because that’s the time it’s the best and we don’t have access in our house.

We live in a sauna… all the time. So much so that Jair goes through about 3 shirts a day.

Food is expensive – if you can find it. Last year, we had a flour shortage! Feta cheese is just under NZ$10 for a small 250g block. Needless to say, my fetish for feta is unsatisfied. Mince – about NZ$15 a kilo (not even the good stuff). I mean, steak, which I have never bought, is NZ$40 a kilo (that’s, good steak). Fresh milk well, what’s fresh milk. We don’t have it here. UHT milk is NZ$3 for 1 litre. Packets to make yoghurt, NZ$10. That’s a killer. Lucky, we brought back heaps last time we went on holiday.

Our house is invaded with ants – but I think we’re losing the war. Even though daily temperatures are about 33 degrees Celsius inside, Theresa wears clothes. Why? Most babies are naked, except for their nappy. Well, otherwise this happens

Yup. Ant bites. Lots of ‘em. Poor kid. They give Theresa and I welts; strangely, Jair has no side effects.

Oh another thing about ants, they eat, oh no, they excrete in our power points, so after a while, electrical appliances won’t work, because the power points are full of ant poo! Just when you want that light to turn on, but it won’t…. Grr. These ants are a little too hard working.

Sometimes you get dealt the white price… Well, actually, being white in a black country means you’re always the minority. (Now I can identify with minorities in NZ!) But it gets worse, sometimes you’re the hated, they’ve-got-money-so-let’s-make-‘em-pay minority.

In a different culture, you simply don’t always know the modus operandi -the way things work. So you’re always offending people, always doing something wrong, always misunderstood. Example – someone said of us, “well, you know what white people are like. When Theresa grows up, they’re not going to care about where she lives or who she marries. White people don’t treat their children like us.”

Deep breath. I mean, Theresa could marry anyone when she grows up, as long as he is a godly man. I’m like Henry Ford – you know, the “you-can-have-a-Ford-in-any-colour-as-long-as-it’s-black” kind of thing.

Speaking of cars, the road is always bumpy. I mean, even the tarsealed roads have massive ruts in them. Your body yerks and bumps about no matter where you go. You won’t know how nice it is to have smooth roads until you live constantly with dirty rut filled roads.

There’s mosquitoes and malaria and other nasty tropical health problems – like death inducing centipedes.

Honiara is very smokey and very dirty. We bought a tourist map which said “Honiara is pretty little bustling tropical island city.” Either the guy was lying or he’d never been here. Picture red splatters all over the ground (no, it’s not blood), rubbish piled up, smouldering, no street lights at night, so that you almost run over people dashing across the road, buildings in a state of disrepair. Tonnes of stupid White Toyota Hiace vans (local buses) and Toyota Corollas (taxis) clogging up the streets. The river runs, not with water, but with waste and rubbish. Dilapidated is a good way to describe Honiara.

And….

Well, to be honest, when these little, miniscule things build up, I feel annoyed. But as I sit here telling you what things are like here, brutally honestly telling you, I can’t help but scratch my head and think of more. What else?

Because really, there is so much to be thankful for. Last year, I was driving the car over those ridiculously bumpy roads to pick up the mail. I was tired, because Theresa was still just a tiny wee baby. It was hot. We have no air-con, so the car was like a steam room inside a sauna. My body ached from being tossed to and fro by the roads. I wish we had a letter box by our house, but no, there are no residential addresses here. I mean, there are not even streets, per se. I was very unthankful.

And then, that night, we went to someone’s place for dinner. It was about 5:30, the sun was rapidly going down. Because we’re close to the equator, dusk is very short. This person lived about 20 minutes away (partly because of bad roads). Anyway, I was a passenger this time, bumping along and we stopped. Some women were walking back to their homes, in the same area where we were going. One woman had a toddler with her and a baby in the front pack, and a sack of cassava. She had already been walking for 15 minutes, not to mention working all afternoon to harvest the cassava. She still had probably another 45 minutes of walking to go. The look on her face when we stopped to give them a ride. I can’t describe her relief. And I remember just thinking… wow. I actually have a car to drive…

to pick up my mail when I want to. I have a house to live in, that has screens so we don’t have so many bugs coming in; I can sleep on a mattress, not the floor. I have more than 2 changes of clothes. In fact, in the morning, I have trouble choosing what to wear. Our security guard just gave me (literally, 3 minutes ago) a whole bag of bananas; I have a bathroom inside my house and don't have to walk down to the dirty Lungga River to have a bath.

I have a fridge (most people don’t here) and there’s even food inside it. Not just enough food for tomorrow, but for next week, and if I had to, I could stretch the food in the pantry to go for a week after too, not to mention the fact that there is money in the bank to buy more. Most people here have enough money for the food for the week.

Vegies grow really well in my garden because of the beautiful warm sun and luscious soil. If I could be a vegetable anywhere, I’d pick here, because then I’d grow well… wait that means I’d be eaten quicker…. Hmm.

You get yummy fruit all year around. Bananas, paw paw, water melon, pineapple, bush limes are pretty much always for sale in the market and mangoes, passionfruit, rock melon, apples, star fruit, guavas, rambatams, pomelos, oranges, well, green ones, and many more fruit are often in the market depending on their season.

Sometimes precious precious friends and family in NZ send me things – like the two parcels I received this week. Thank you so much… you know who you are!

People singing here is like… well, I don’t think you can describe that. You’ll just have to come and hear it. There are 20 people currently having a meeting in the leaf house at SWIM and I swear, well, I don’t because I don’t tend to swear, but I can assure you that them singing hymns and choruses is much louder than singing a whole church full of people singing back in NZ. I love that when I sing in church here, I can sing as loud as I can, and I don't mean to boast, but that is rather loud, and yet, I still can't hear myself singing!

People have so little and yet laugh so well.

So, really, I’m thankful. I have an amazing husband, who put up a light above the kitchen bench for me today, and I didn’t even ask him too, although I really wanted one there. I have a beautiful baby girl, who brings us so much joy.

And I can read. The Bible. Most people can’t, but not only has God given me more than one Bible, but I was brought up in a country where you can learn to read.

I am so blessed.

What started as a post to tell you about an amazing discovery I made yesterday (still to come… we’re almost there), has ended being so much more. Yes there are difficulties, even though they’re really quite small in the scheme of things. But the thing is, if I can’t give glory to God in the small difficulties of life, but rather get wrapped up in frustration, anger and disappointment, then I’ve missed the point. It’s not about the big stuff, but rather, allowing God’s holiness to humble me so much that I gratefully accept whatever He sends my way.

Including, Pine Lime Passion Smoothies…

Ok, so there’s this café which makes this delicious smoothie, but then yesterday I thought, hey, why don’t I just make my own. I mean, they cost NZ$6 for one. That’s quite a lot. But wait, I don’t actually experiment. I mean, I experiment with new recipes, but I never, and I mean, ever, make up my own recipes.

But this time I did.

A 3cm section of a fresh local pineapple

I think about 1/2 cup of made up bush lime

4-5 teaspoons of passionfruit pulp

2-3 scoops ice cream (Frangipani ice make good icecream right here in the Slobbered-on Islands)

4 ice cubes.

That’s literally what I threw into the blender. Whizzed it up. Tasted, Adjusted.

Oh it was delicious. All 2 and a half cups of it. Ok, so I did give 1 cup to Jair.

And doubled the batch and made some more today and shared it around.

And when you come to visit me, I’ll make some for you too.

If all the ingredients are in season ;)