Bill Writes
My sister, Ann, happened to wake up at 6:30 AM and decided to give me a call. It was 8 PM here, so her timing was good. In the conversation, I related the following incident. . .
White powder is carefully poured
by hand to make these intriguing
designs in front of gates,
driveways, and walks.
The previous day, we had our big meal of the day in a restaurant in the early afternoon. That evening, Sandra wished to write her sister, so I decided to put together supper.
I started off making vegetable juice. This involves washing and scraping the carrots, beet and cucumber, and running them through the juicer. That is followed by cleaning up the juicer and scrapings, mixing my share with spirulina and drinking it down.
Bel-l-l-ch!!
We had purchased a coconut, so I tackled that next. I have found that coconuts are a bit of a challenge, but there are 3 spots near one end, one of which is quite soft. I dug into it with the point of a knife, now permanently bent, until I had bored out a small hole. I found the next softest one and punched through it with the awl of my Swiss Army knife. Carefully upending it, I managed to get most of the milk into the cup.
Now the big test – cracking that sucker open without smashing my hand or spreading coconut all over the kitchen. No hammer. What to use?
Aha! I remembered that we had found two fist-sized rocks in the bathroom which, the landlady had explained, are for scraping calluses off the feet. After wearing sandals every day for a while, I will probably need to use one but, for now, one will serve my immediate purpose. Selecting the most wedge-shaped one with my right hand and holding the coconut in my left, I proceeded to whale away until it cracked open.
I am happy to report that I did not smash my hand.
After that, it was just a matter of time, actually quite a bit, to separate the meat from the shell.
A privately owned public phone.
The owner gets a share of the
revenue for calls made on his
or her phone.
Next, the omelets/scrambled eggs. Garlic is grown small here with little tiny sections, so peeling and chopping that took some more time. Putting the rest of them together went fairly well.
While the eggs were cooking in their pans of water, I blended the coconut milk with papaya, orange, banana, apple and coconut meat. It turned out to be delicious!
Over 90 minutes after I had started, we finally got to sit down to eat. Needless to say, Sandra had finished her letter long before, but was wise enough to stay out of my way.
After eating, we double-teamed the disaster in the kitchen. I gathered all the bits and pieces together, put them in the garbage and washed the dishes. Sandra cleaned.
When I reflected on all this, I realized that if I had done all this in our old home in Canada, I would have been frustrated and irritable. Here, on the other hand, I had enjoyed myself. I realized that I don’t feel the pressure, self-imposed as it was, to be doing something else more productive.
When I had finished, Ann told me she had received a letter from our Aunt Ruth, in which she wondered why we had to come so far from family and friends to heal. Then Ann said, “Now I think I understand.”
The rational we used for coming here is that it would be much more difficult to live in Canada on the disability pension I am receiving. What has just been related indicates it goes deeper.
However, for some reason I don’t really understand, Sandra doesn’t quite feel the same way about my messy kitchen interludes as I do. . .