Operation Potato

For the first time in my life (I think at least ... not sure about year 1 and 2), I wasn't in upstate New York for Thanksgiving. No long car trip spent tucked between tins of scones, Christmas presents for the cousins, and luggage made bulky by snow gear; for that matter, no snow or miserably cold almost-but-not-quite-going-to-snow weather; no English muffins after a night spent sleeping on Grandma's special sheets; no Macy's Day parade; no crowding around the table and passing dish after dish after dish down the line. Odd years, that table would be in Campbell with the Andersons; even years it'd be in Lewiston or Colden with the Russells. But always with family.

The closest I got to that this year was a skype conference call with the Russell clan - a long shot from the real thing but definitely the highlight of my day. I'd known that this would be a lonely Thanksgiving though, so I woke up yesterday with a plan. If I couldn't have family, then I'd least have the second best part of Thanksgiving: mashed potatoes.

So I got up early and, armed with my dictionary, sat down and translated a recipe for Prisca. She's a bit of a magician when it comes to cooking, so I was pretty sure Operation Potato would be a success, but I had a few doubts ... what if she's never heard of mashed potatoes? what if she buys cassava instead of potatoes? what if my translation makes no sense and instead of writing "peel the potatoes" I wrote something like "make the potatoes naked"? I mean, we're talking about my favorite food here - not something to be taken lightly!

Prisca rose to the occasion though - I came home to find a hot pot brimming with perfectly mashed potatoes ... and a tasty lentil curry that was quite a nice surprise side dish. I whipped up a batch of cornbread and a salad, poured myself a glass of passion fruit juice, and ended up with a pretty nice Thanksgiving dinner! As for the potatoes ... they weren't quite as good as my Grandma's, but then again, nobody's mashed potatoes are quite as good as my Grandma's, so that was to be expected. Plus, as I was sitting down to eat, it occurred to me that there is no potato masher in my kitchen ... or any other sort of similar utensil ... and yet these potatoes were as smooth as possible - not a single lump! Like I said, she's a bit of a magician :-D

Harry

I got back from Uganda a couple of months ago and found a cat on my porch. And by "on my porch," I mean, if cats wore clothes and my porch had a set of drawers, his would have been neatly folded and put away - no luggage in sight ... this cat had made himself thoroughly at home and was giving me a look that said "well it's about time you showed up - what's for dinner?"

Cats around here aren't usually the friendliest animals ... not that they're mean, they just tend to be skittish and shy, so I was both surprised and pleased to discover that this cat was not your average Tanzanian cat. Skittish and shy are definitely not his MO - friendly and demanding is more like it. As for me, I've been waiting 9 years to live in a cat-friendly environment (i.e., not a dorm and not with my brother), so I promptly started bribing the cat with tuna fish to discourage him from moving out. (After a few days, I decided it was ridiculous to spend more on cat food than on my own food, so I switched to table scraps ... turns out cats will eat pasta, vegetables, beans, and basically anything else if they're hungry.)

It also turns out that this cat has a serious set of vocal cords on him - and he's not the least bit shy about expressing his outrage at being ignored. As soon as he hears me wake up in the morning, the yowling starts ... as soon as I go read on the porch or let him inside, though, he curls up on my lap and turns into the purring little engine that could. A spoiled brat one minute, the most affectionate animal I've ever met the next.

When he first showed up, I spent a few days trying out different names for him. I'd settled on "Mlizi" (noisemaker) when I mentioned him to Eva and she said, "oh? you mean Harry?" And for some reason, ever since I found out that someone else had already named him, it felt wrong to rename him. But since I'm not a big fan of the name that person picked, now I just call him "it" or "cat" or "you."

My favorite thing about the rainy season...

...is this plant:

When I first moved in, I thought that there was some sort of overgrown bush growing in front of my house ... never imagining that it was actually a beautiful flowering tree that was just waiting for the rains to start. I have no idea what it's called, but I do know that it blooms at night, is wonderfully fragrant, and is planted right in between both of my bedroom windows. Between the chirps of the crickets and the scent of these flowers wafting in, it's like sleeping in a garden :-)


Also, rainy season = rainbows!

16 Days of Activism

Did you know that at least one out of three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime? I didn't. I could be cynical and suggest that the UN has skewed its statistics to make for more sensational publicity, but I doubt that's the case. The recent surge in instability across the border in eastern DRC has led to such drastic increases in the incidences of sexual violence that aid workers are calling the region "the worst place in the world to be a woman." A couple of months ago, a woman in one of the camps here left her newborn baby in the bottom of a pit latrine - because she believed that her brother would not let her join his household in Burundi if there was an additional mouth to feed. It's not an exaggeration to say that the burden of poverty weighs more heavily on women - they are less likely to have access to education, more likely to be targeted by traffickers, more likely to be forced into early marriage or sexual encounters, and more likely to be trapped in situations where their rights are limited and their voices silenced. That all of this is perhaps more visible here does not mean violence against women is a problem unique to the developing world; women in the US, Canada, Europe, etc. are certainly not immune to gender-based discrimination and violence.

To add to the list of things I didn't know before, today (November 25) is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. It's also the anniversary of the assassinations of three of the Mirabal sisters by Rafael Trujillo in 1960 ... and it marks the first of 16 days of activism that symbolically link violence against women and human rights. So the 16 days start today, include World AIDS Day (December 1) as well as the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre (December 6, and conclude with International Human Rights Day on December 10.

I've heard rumors of celebrations and speeches being planned in the camps, so perhaps I'll be able to follow this post with pictures and stories that aren't quite as sobering...