Asakiyume mita

I feel very proprietary about the boardwalk near our house because I helped it get built (in a roundabout way--I didn't actually help build it). So, when someone leaves a crumpled-up can of soda or a Dunkin Donuts coolatta cup on it, I pick those things up, and I try to keep the marsh it goes through clear of rubbish, too. I love the marsh even more than the boardwalk.

When I saw some mischief makers had managed to push a shopping cart over the boardwalk rails and into the long grass in the marsh, I was frustrated. It would be very hard to fetch the shopping cart back out: everything's overgrown right now, including the sharp-thorned rosa multiflora and the poison ivy.

This was the situation:



The sides of the boardwalk are chain-link, so it's extra hard to get the cart up (and it must have been hard to push it over into the marsh, too)--you can't just reach it onto the boardwalk; you have to get it up over the guardrails, which are about my chest height.

I thought that if we had metal hooks and ropes, maybe we could get it up. So I bought some at the hardware store, and the healing angel and I cut the cord and threaded it through the holes in the hooks.



Then we tried fishing for the cart, and we caught it! And we were able to turn it rightside up. But it was VERY heavy. Heavier than I was bargaining on. So I checked, and seeing that there wasn't any poison ivy or other pernicious plant in that part of the marsh, I went out to the road, climbed over the guard rail, and went under the boardwalk into the marsh. I was thinking maybe we'd have more luck just pushing it out from underneath the boardwalk, straight onto the road, rather than trying to lift it over the boardwalk's rails.

Here's us fishing for it. The healing angel is actually rail thin, not beefy the way I've drawn him, whereas I'm more middle-age rounded than the aspirational me I've drawn.



Fortunately it's been pretty dry this summer, and where I was walking was muddy but not actually flowing. I was wearing flip-flops. Once underneath, I trying pushing the cart in the direction I'd come, but it wouldn't move. Hell, carts can be hard to push on smooth supermarket floors if their wheels get jammed, and there was plenty of long grass and mud to jam its wheels there.

So we were back to our original plan. We realized we could inch the cart up bit by bit if I lifted and he pulled, and in between pulls he tied the ropes to the chain-link. We got it up pretty high, and at just the right moment a family came walking by, and the father was able to grab the handle, and between him and the healing angel, they got it back onto the board walk.

Here's us before the family came along


Then I pushed it back to the supermarket while the healing angel rolled up our cords into the neat bundles in the photo.

I felt so deliriously pleased with myself! I saw a problem, thought up a solution, got the bits and pieces needed for the solution, and tried it, and it worked. I don't know if that's ever happened before--not with some mechanical, technical thing, anyway. I know it's a stretch to count this as mechanical or technical, but I do. And the healing angel seemed pretty pleased too. And we did it together! And we enlisted help from passersby. It was good, very good.

And now the marsh is no longer hampered by a shopping cart. It's all just long grass and song sparrows again. Yay!

The article I wrote on the problems with money bail is live now.

Guilty until proven innocent: the problem with money bail.

That's what Desmond Coutinho, fiancé of hunger striker Irom Sharmila, wrote in a letter I received a day after seeing news stories about his being assaulted and imprisoned in Manipur, where he'd gone to be near Sharmila and advocate for her.

I'm worried about him. He's a complicated person, and the situation with Sharmila is complicated.

( very brief background on Irom Sharmila )

Reality, though, proved different. Desmond turned out to be very volatile, given to abusive criticism of people he opposed. It was easy to see how and why people dismissed him as a crank--but that's not an accurate assessment of him either.

He's been writing to Sharmila since 2011, and she's been writing back; he's visited her; they've talked. They have a real friendship--this is clear not only from what he says, but from what she says. It's not just him claiming to be her fiancé; she declares it too. Is she being duped or taken advantage of? To suggest that is to say that she's not capable of good judgment, herself; that somehow other people know better than she does--but she's the one who's had the correspondence. Her feelings are based on her experience.

And there's more to Desmond than his anger; he's also thoughtful, introspective, funny. He and Sharmila talk about books, philosophy, religion, politics. Furthermore, she knows about his moods; they've talked about those, too.

Many of the people surrounding Sharmila see Desmond as a threat to her protest, or as someone who's just seeking glory for himself. As for the former, they don't need to worry: Sharmila is 100 percent committed to her cause. But she'd like to be free to love, like other people love, and she is frustrated by people trying to prevent or deny her affection for Desmond. As for the latter, all I can say is that in every communication I've had with Desmond, he's been focused on her, and her welfare, and her cause, and, yes, their future together--and not at all on himself.

If Sharmila should give up fasting--not at all likely, but if--that wouldn't need to be the end of the campaign against AFSPA. Even though she's a powerful symbol of the cause, the cause is still bigger than she is. And contrariwise, if she were to die for the cause, that wouldn't necessarily help it. It would, however, be the loss of a unique soul, and a tragedy.

Sharmila deserves better treatment, both from the government and from some of her supporters. The government has kept her isolated and limited her contact with people. There's no reason for that; that's just a form of abuse. And those of her supporters who oppose her friendship with Desmond should ease off. If the fight against apartheid in South Africa could survive Nelson Mandela's divorces and remarriages, then surely the fight against AFSPA can survive Irom Sharmila's commitment to Desmond Coutinho.

I hope once Desmond has finished his 15 days in jail, he's able to visit with Sharmila some more. I hope both the local activists and the local government will leave him alone. I hope the fight against AFSPA can continue, and that Sharmila's life can open up in positive ways.

I've been paying attention to the leisurely flow of Kilauea's lava toward the village of Pahoa, and over the weekend, they had a story on NPR about the possibility of diverting the lava. They had on John Lockwood, Volcanologist and Lava Diverter, to talk about it.

But, as the report noted, not everyone thinks the lava should be diverted. One woman said,

You cannot change the direction. It's Mother Nature. It's like me telling you, "Move the moon because it's too bright."

The photo of twin rivers of brilliant lava that accompanied the NPR story was actually from an eruption of Mt. Etna (whose diversion Lockwood consulted on), so I searched for a picture of the current flow, and found this one on the blog of Cassie Holmes, whose sister lives in Pahoa:

[picture no longer available as of 2018]

She's been documenting the slow advance of the lava, and offers her own reflections on living with an active volcano:

Puna will always be my home and no matter what happens with the lava I will continue to go back, even if it means hiking over freshly cooled lava to get there (September 17)

and

“Why would anyone want to live on an active volcano?” That is the question I’m hearing a lot right now, but first let me ask you this – Why would anyone want to live where there are earthquakes, tornados, fires, droughts, hurricanes, floods, and tsunamis? Anywhere we choose to live there is some kind of natural disaster that could happen, it’s just mother nature. (October 29)

(source)


And I think, Yes.

Sesame oil, peanut oil, olive oil--they have really distinctive tastes. Sesame oil really tastes like sesame, and peanut oil has a peanut taste, and olive oil doesn't taste like pickled olives, or brined olives, but it tastes the rich and fragrant way it smells.

Palm oil has a really distinctive taste too. When I tasted Flo's Nigerian fried beans, cooked in plenty of palm oil, it was the first time in a long time that I tasted something so completely *new* and *different*.


Nigerian fried beans from All Nigerian Recipes

Palm oil has, to me, a green taste ( which is funny since it's bright red), green and deeply warm. It tastes the way leaves baking under the midday sun smell--and mix that smell with the smell of hot, warm earth--that dusty warm smell. That's how it tastes to me. And it has a lingering feel in the mouth, the way peanut butter does--but not quite that sticky.


Do I like it? At first it nonplussed me a little because the flavor was so unlike other oil flavors I've experienced, but I enjoyed it. And today, going back for leftovers, I felt less tentative, more enthusiastic. Tastes: BROADENED.

Here is an oil palm plantation (photo from Azran Jaffar's article on a prizewinning smallholder's plantation)



Apparently there are two types of oil to be had from the oil palm. Red palm oil, the kind I used, comes from the fruit. A golden oil comes from the kernel.
Photo source here

One of my earliest memories of Internet goodness is of searching for a recipe for wild mushrooms--this would have been sometime between 1998 and 2005--and finding one offered by a guy who identified his location as Turkish Kurdistan. We had a brief back and forth, and I thought, Now this place is personal to me. I know someone there. I know he used to pick wild thyme with his grandmother.

Fast forward to last summer. One of my best memories from Timor-Leste was of being served deep-fried plantain chips, homemade, and of sharing the leftovers with friends. I wanted to make those myself, to feel close (because eating food brings us close) to Timor-Leste. And the best recipe I found? Was a Nigerian one.



So easy to follow, so clear, so pleasant! (And the recipe was a success)

Not only did this bring me close to Timor-Leste, it made me feel close to Nigeria. I had one previous experience with Nigerian food: akara--wonderful, croquette-like deep-fried items, made with ground black-eyed peas, with onions and hot peppers to flavor it. I bought some at a local market, loved it, wanted to know how to make it, and had found recipes online, but was stymied by one key detail--getting the skins off the black-eyed peas.

Oh My God, the time that took. I'd soak the black-eyed peas, and as they expanded, the skins would begin to come loose. Then I'd rub them together in the soaking water to get more loose, and then I'd strain off the skins (which would float), while trying to keep the peas themselves from pouring out. It was such a slow process! I mean, kind of relaxing, too, if you have nothing else to do, but. . .

Well, Flo, the woman behind All Nigerian Recipes, has the answer for that, too:

( two videos about getting the skins off beans )

So by this time I'm really loving this Youtube channel, loving the recipes, loving the fact that Flo responds to comments--and loving her personal videos, too. Like this one:



Pretty cool, right? Not only does Flo put up fabulous cooking videos, she also has an *intense* day job!

And because the Internet lets us make friends with people all over the world--just write hello, just hit send--I thought . . . maybe she would let me interview her.

Then I checked and saw that she has close to 30,000 subscribers. Her top video has more than half a million views, and her top ten videos all have over 100,000 views. I'm not the only one who loves her. So then I felt more hesitant about getting in touch. . . . But I overcame that and wrote to her, and she said yes!

So come back on Monday, everyone, when Flo will answer my questions about cooking, YouTube, and self-publishing a cookbook.

Meantime, enjoy her channel and maybe have a Nigerian meal tonight.

Video List Here!

I've lived in the United States, England, and Japan--all countries that are well-off. I've never lived in, or even visited, a so-called developing country before. There are lots of different narratives about developing countries; what stories get told depend on the purposes of the teller--unsurprisingly. The hard facts of life in Timor-Leste didn't escape me--not just (just!) the trauma of recent conflict, but also the high infant mortality and food insecurity. But there was so much that I saw that was cheerful, vigorous, optimistic.

Twice a day there was a rush hour in Ainaro--foot-traffic rush hour, as kids streamed in to school. They were smiling, chatting with friends, looking sharp in their uniforms. Many of the teachers are unpaid local volunteers--now, you could see this as a problem (unqualified teachers), and yes, it would be good to have teachers who've been trained as teachers, but on the other hand, what dedication and sense of service that represents! And it seems to me quite likely that some of those volunteers are very good teachers.

Most people in Timor-Leste are subsistence farmers, but in Ainaro I also saw a carpenter's shop...

They're making a cabinet (frame on the left). The day before, they were making a bed frame.



... and next door to where I was staying was an auto repair shop, and up the street was a van out of which Timor Telecom operated--the women there are fluent in English and got me set up with enough pulsa that I could phone home.

And some women earn money weaving tais, traditional textiles whose patterns vary depending on the region. This woman told me she could weave my name into the one she was making (but I was leaving too soon).



There was also the bakery, a couple of restaurants, and several copy and photo shops (these were popular with kids)--and these are just the things I happened to notice.

Here are some shops selling clothes



Everything's just very labor-intensive, though. People were cutting the lawn across from the classroom with hand sickles, for instance.

As for play, I saw girls doing what we called Chinese jump rope when I was a kid, and everywhere little kids, boys and girls both, rolling tires with sticks:



There are stone-lined water-runoff ditches along the roads, and I saw children playing in these too. One boy had a big palm stem that he was driving like a truck, making truck noises, along the edge of the gutter.

There's a football (soccer) pitch in the center of town, and in the late afternoon, I saw older boys and men playing on it. There's also a pool hall, and every evening someone's having a party--all the students talked about them. Several of the guys played the guitar, and several of the girls sing, and everyone seems to like dancing, including the newly ordained priest. Cockfighting is also popular--it goes on at the Saturday market (I saw the crowds gathered round, but didn't actually get up close to see the fight.)

Overall, people seem hopeful; they have plans, they're doing things. That's my narrative, anyway :-)

The day after I arrived in Timor-Leste, I made the six-hour journey up to the mountain town of Ainaro. I rode on some vehicle which was not quite an anguna (term borrowed from Indonesian: an anguna is a pick-up truck with seats in the back, so people can ride in it) and not quite a bus--it was open-air, like an anguna, but with seats facing forward, like a bus, rather than parallel to the side of the vehicle, like an anguna. There were sacks of rice on the floor, for delivery along the way, and other goods loaded on the roof. We started out from the market in Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste, with people filling all the seats and sitting on the floor (on top of the rice) and hanging on the back, and we picked up more people as we went.

Some of the young people who hung on the back



There was music playing--here's a taste of it:



(If the embedding doesn't work for you, you can find the 14-second video here on Flickr)

Here's the sound system:


Early on, we passed the Santa Cruz cemetery, where, in 1991, the Indonesian army killed some 250 people who were demonstrating for independence (more on that here, courtesy of Wikipedia).


Victor, the man I was sitting next to on the bus, asked me if I knew the story of the cemetery. We communicated with my very rudimentary Tetun and his equally limited English. I think with grave face more than with words I was able to convey that I did.

Victor



We bounced along, and eventually had a rest stop. This enterprising twelve-year-old (age is one of the questions people in Timor-Leste like to ask and share, at least with foreigners), engaged me in conversation in English and introduced me to her mother.



I shared round my big 1.5-liter bottle of drinking water (purchased in Dili for fifty cents). Meanwhile, some of the younger boys were eating what looked like puffed pork rinds, dyed green, probably purchased at the little shop where we'd stopped.

Along the way I saw lots of little roadside stands with 1.5-liter water bottles like mine recycled, filled with... tea? Something pale and golden, and sometimes also something dark dark brown. No, not tea. Can you guess? I realized what it was when I saw someone with a cloth-lined funnel, pouring some into his motor bike. Yes: gasoline (petrol), and also diesel. No gas stations along the road, but lots of these little roadside stands.

More tomorrow or the next day... I have tabs open on so many of your entries, and by now you've probably all posted new ones. With time I'll get back in the groove! And in time there'll be more (I hope, I intend) than just-the-facts-ma'am reportage. Maybe I'll alternate? Some posts that are reflective and some that are pictures? Or take things as they come... Anyway, do feel free to ask questions!

in which to seek your fortune



Every single moment of that video is poetry and story:



map your future in your dreams:



Add feathers, so your hopes will soar:





Prepare your net ...



... to catch the sky itself



You may have moments of doubt



... but do not be afraid. The wide world awaits.

I was walking balanced on a train rail this morning and thinking about how I can do this so confidently, so easily, because if I fall, it's just four inches to the ground, but if this same rail were over a chasm, I'd never be able to manage it. I'd freeze with terror.

If I could have the same confidence walking over a chasm that I have balancing on the rail--wow, that would be marvelous.

But I do sometimes fall off the rail, so I'd probably fall into the chasm. But, until I did, I'd be as joyous as Philippe Petit.

So then I started thinking about when I'm walking around in my own house, not balancing on anything. What if, unbeknownst to me, really I'm on the thinnest of rails--or even a wire--and at any moment I might fall?

The Curious Case of the Woman Too Terrified to Walk

No, better the other way, definitely. Better to be as carefree at great heights as if the ground were only inches away.

.... subject change.

It's the season to gather stinging nettle shoots, and I did, not to make shirts for wild swans (or skinchangers, csecooney!), but for soup (soup that I will go make, soon as I post this entry). Two kinds of chickens watched me as I gathered: russety red ones (probably Rhode Island reds), and salt-and-pepper ones (probably Marans).

Back at the house, a squirrel has been gorging itself on willow blossoms all day. Feasting on flowers. What a season!



ETA I stung myself on the stinging nettles, putting them into the pot. Just a little. Just enough to be fun and to make me think, *yes*, these are stinging nettles.