MMMMMMMMmmmmmmm

Finally, by popular demand, a post about food. 

After only three days here we had already met Miss Loria, or Lori, the unofficial cook for the students and faculty of the Universidad Nacional branch in San Andrés. For 5,000 pesos (cheaper than the Eintopf at the Mensa, cheaper than a Kid's Meal at McDonald's*) she serves up a hearty and delicious meal. When I tasted her coconut rice, fish filet and fried plantains with homemade guava juice for the first time I thought, "I will be eating at Lori's every day." 

But, alas, I love to cook. It absorbs a lot of brain power and a lot of pesos, but I can't stay away from the kitchen. I have only been back to Lori's a half a dozen times.

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My philosophy here is vegan + omnivore = vegetarian! 

Warm white corn tortilla with avocado, cucumber, kidney beans
and mango - vegan delight.

Just kidding. It is true, however, that I am hardly consuming milk or cheese or yogurt. It all seems too heavy for 80-90 % humidity, and dairy products here are often loaded/"fortified" with sugar and vitamins. Instead I have been eating chicken (main source of protein here, despite the sea) if other people offer it. And who could resist empenadas de cangrejo (crab)? 

But what I like best of all is still a veggie burger with peanut sauce from my own kitchen. And pure beans. I eat about a pound of dried beans per week. Linda, my host mother/landlady, has a 20 lb pressure cooker from Japan named Happiness (no joke), which I think could provide shelter in the event of a hurricane. 

Exciting vegetables are rare. Only cabbage, pumpkin and carrots can be found easily (along with potato, yucca, yam and co., which I don't consider exiting**). Broccoli and spinach and basically anything green play very hard to get. 

But the lack of vegetables is compensated for by papaya, yellow pitahaya or dragonfruit, passion fruit (two kinds: granadilla and maracuja), mango, avocado, Colombia's national fruit lulo and of course various sizes of banana. And coconut, how could I forget coconut milk, water, flesh and oil. (Anyone who squanders coconut oil on tanning should be sentenced to years of cracking open, de-hairing and grating coconut.) 

Despite all the culinary delights of the island, I miss apples. I do. I was in the Northern Hemisphere for the beginning of apple season, but I didn't get my fill. So, if you can, go eat a Boscoop, Elstar or Albemarle Pippin and think of me! 

* This is one of the rare places on the planet that is still at least 200 km from the nearest McDonald's. Ojalá it stays that way. 
** I have happened upon one new exciting vegetable, arracacha, a cross between a carrot and a Jerusalem artichoke.

Wot da island it give me

In the US, after this week's trick'r treaters disperse, we all know what will follow: the inauguration of the Christmas season. 

In honor of the occasion I have begun composing in poor San Andrés creole to the tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas". My song is entitled "Da Twelve Weeks Caribe". (Caribe is Spanish for Caribbean.)

It goes like this: "In da first week Caribe, da island it give me...

... a Biosphere Reserve.

In da second week Caribe, da island it give me...

... two skinny trees.

In da third week Caribe, da island it give me...

... three li'l shops.

In da fourth week Caribe, da island it give me...

... four piknini playing."

To be continued! / No te muevas! 

Who's got the last laugh?

In Colombia I am rediscovering the joy of the early stages of learning to speak a new tongue: many opportunities for a good laugh.  

The lowest hanging fruit is foreign words that sound like things a potty mouth would say.

Kaffeefahrt

One of Mark Twain's favorite German words was aß, meaning  "ate" in German, but in English where the eats come out. (The ß is a not a B, but a double s.) I always liked Kaffeefahrt. The Animaniacs wrote a whole song about Lake Titicaca.

The Colombians have a joke, "How do you say pañuelo (tisse) in Japanese?" The answer is "saque mocito."  

Sacar is the Spanish word for remove, and saque - pronounced like the Japanese alcoholic beverage sake - is a form of the imperative. The rest is what you remove with a pañuelo.

I appreciate the humor of pretending to speak Japanese by saying "sake", but I also appreciate that it's funnier (in the pitiful sense) for a Japanese person that "sake" is about the only thing I understand.

The German expression "Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof" ("All I understand is 'train station'") expresses being overwhelmed upon immersion in a new linguistic world. It is a healthy form of self-deprecation that keeps laughing at others in perspective.

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Indeed, learning a language gives you plenty of opportunities to laugh at yourself. 

In German the word for shooting star (Sternschnuppe) is easily confused with star dandruff (Sternschuppen). In Spanish, "Quieres una galleta?" (Would you like a cookie?) sounds a lot like "Quieres una gallina?" (Would you like a chicken?). I have made both these mistakes, as well as realized too late that it is avena (oats) I like to eat, not arena (sand).

Wanna cookie? (These chicks are neighbors.)

Accents can cause amusing confusion, too. My French colleague often says that he is angry when he wants to go for lunch. Could be that he is sick of his databases and ready for a break, but I think he means "hungry". Childish (in the vein of Lake Titicaca) but entertaining is also asking a native Spanish speaker what s/he puts on his/her bed to cover the mattress (did s/he say sh*t?). 

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Whether it is because the sounds of a foreign language remind us of words we know, or because foreign speakers confuse deceivingly similar words, interacting across linguistic boundaries provides plenty of entertainment. 

And everyone has a turn to laugh.

Is there no wind in Germany?

Being in San Andrés trying to get a project underway with limited institutional support has confronted me anew with the importance of being able to sell an idea, even if you aren't yet fully sold on it yourself. Confidence is contagious and spreading it at the get-go is often what makes projects successful. 

Here's hoping that turning 30 brings a bit of extra confidence and calmness. 

In Germany the US is known as a place where everyone is adept at selling herself. We are believed to imbibe (over)confidence with our mothers' milk. A German acquaintance once told me, "Yeah, that's why the US produces so many good actors, because everyone learns to be an actor in mastering his daily life."

In my opinion (over)confidence is not a matter of culture, but seems often to exist in inverse proportion to ability. As in: the more you know, the less you think you know. And vice versa.

I related a while back in a story about buying a compact fluorescent light bulb, in which I was assured by a store employee that I didn't need to test it before buying it, because it didn't rattle when shaken. His salesman savvy was incongruous with his peach fuzz goatee and poor information. Another example was related to me in a talk by Pat Mooney, a Canadian environmental activist from the ETC Group. Upon visiting an experimental plot of the Amflora GM potato, a researcher giving him a tour proudly cited a chest-high fence around the field as complying with a court issued requirement to protect other fields from contamination. Pat Mooney quipped, "Is there no wind in Germany?" But it didn't seem to shake the woman's confident air. Or, finally, how about those Wall Street CEOs who still "strut around Congress"?

It is stories like that that make me recall this passage from Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers:

O ein Bissgen leichteres Blut würde mich zum glücklichsten Menschen unter der Sonne machen. Was! Da wo andere, mit ihrem Bissgen Kraft und Talent, vor mir in behaglicher Selbstgefälligkeit herum schwadronieren, verzweifl' ich an meiner Kraft, an meinen Gaben. Guter Gott! der du mir das alles schenktest, warum hieltest du nicht die Hälfte zurück und gabst mir Selbstvertrauen und Genügsamkeit!

Loosely translated: "A little lighter heart would make me the happiest man under the sun. I see fools bask in self-admiration while I cast doubt on my strength, my talents. Oh Lord, Thou who bestowed these gifts upon me, why didn't you keep the better part of it and give me guts and peace of mind instead!"

Ten Fun Facts about Mango

1. Mango juice can stain your chin yellow. 

2. Your nose, too.

3. Today most mango eaten on the Island of San Andrés is shipped from Barranquilla or Cartagena.

4. When grown-ups here were children there were so many that they fed them to pigs. On SAI's less inhabited sister island Providence, mangos still litter the way. 

5. Many mango trees on the island are losing a battle with the hibiscus mealybug.

6. Sanandresanos like to eat green mango. They are about half the size of ripe mango, crunchy and salted.

7. Colombians like to eat mango with the peel (see comment).

8. Eating mango can make your skin more sensitive to UV rays.

9. Mango harvest in San Andrés is once a year, in August. 

10. Mango is delicious.

Note: I am sorry if I have given the impression that any of these statements are factual.

First impressions of San Andrés Islas, Colombia

I don't want to unnecessarily promulgate any single stories à la Chimamanda Adichie, or lugares comunes (lugar común is the word for stereotypes in Spanish - common places), but I have a couple of general observations to make about the new place I have chosen to hang my hat.

First, regarding punctuality: Before getting here we learned that whatever time you arrange an appointment, in Colombia the policy is to show up an hour later. But we are discovering there are other rules in San Andres, too. For example, if it's raining, all bets are off. Any arrangement made concerning leaving the house is cancelled. 

In the first couple of weeks I found the rain here to be foremost a relief. For me, the sound of rain aroused a desire to leave the house. A long, cold shower without guilt of wasting water!! A brisk walk without getting winded! 

But yesterday came one of the first fabled October rains, the kind that penetrates the densest canopy and renders lower lying roadways impassable. The kind you can hear coming five minutes before it arrives. In that kind of rain, I understand the all bets off policy. Oh, the lightning is kind of a deterrent, too. 

Still, it is rather discouraging to find out after you have left the house and put up with a downpour, (and you can't reach the person who you're supposed to be meeting) that your aren't going to be met until the rain stops.

This is not a low-lying area.

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Fortunately, Colombians are very warm in general and, especially here, people want to help. 

Though the "a la orden" (something like "at your service", what everyone who invites you into her store, office or home says as a welcome greeting) might seem off-putting at first for its formality, it is sincere.

We already had one guy drive us to a supermarket we couldn't find after we asked him for directions. Since we couldn't both fit, he took each of us separately on his motorcycle. George. Good man.

Another friendly stranger spent close to an hour racking his brain and calling around to find out if there is any way to procure used bikes here. All we did was walk into his arts/crafts and souvenirs shop after seeing bikes for rent on display. Unfortunately he came up empty handed, but the feeling of being helped to that extent by someone with nothing invested in our finding bikes, was about as important as having a bike. 

Looks like we won't find bikes, but there's always the bus.