Lian's Graduation Day!!!

Being away from home for almost a year and a half is mostly a big adventure, but there are somethings that are really hard to be away for. Today is a very hard day- my little sister Lian is graduating from college, and I can't be there to cheer as she walks across the stage, give her a hug afterward, or share a round of celebratory drinks that should most certainly follow her big day.

Since I can't be there in person, I'm going to have to use my blog to celebrate Lian from afar, as any really proud big sister would do. You see, Lian isn't just graduating from college, she is graduating summa cum laude, with a 4.0, all applicable departmental and university honors, with a degree in Theater Education, a minor in English Literature and a certification in secondary education.


Before you get an image of a goody-two shoes student, you should know that my sister is an up for anything kinda gal, most apt to be found in a pair of cargo pants or jeans spattered in all colors of paint, Laura Croft type work boots, and wielding several knives for work purposes...

These are wonderful qualities to have in a sister, b/c she does things like help paint your kitchen!

Lian also worked nearly full time throughout her time in school, meaning that she is graduating debt free (a serious accomplishment these days), though it sometimes made it difficult to hang out with her when she came into contact with horizontal surfaces...

Before you get too far thinking that she is the acting/ dancing/ singing type, you should know her side of theater is the technical design, lighting, scenery construction, painting, props and costumes side of things. Though she does have a flair for the dramatic and humorous. I suspect this will go over well with her future students...

So basically, Lian's a bad-ass. It's hard to believe that this little girl I grew up with (and at times bossed around...err, sorry!) is finished with college. I have a particularly bad track record with Lian: when she was chosen to sing at a huge and prestigious event in Baltimore when she was 12, I not only missed it, but caused the rest of our family to as well because it was also the first day of my freshmen orientation for college several states away. I then went on to graduate from college the day before Lian turned 16, causing her birthday to be a truncated celebration of eating birthday cake from tea-cups and coffee mugs in the family camper van parked outside Gypsy Central (my house in college), hundreds of miles away from her friends. When she completed her AA degree at 19, I missed her graduation because I was in St. Lucia, doing preliminary fieldwork. Though she did come visit me a few weeks later!

Once again, I'm far, far away, but I just have to say-

Lian, I'm so proud of you and happy that you have found and really succeeded at these things that make you happy. May you continue to flourish and grow in the years to come!

Happy Graduation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Return of the Banana

So my blog posts have mainly been limited to extra curricular activities and holidays for a while now. In part because these are more fun and provide better pictures, and in part because the banana industry is still recovering.

In fact, since Hurricane Tomas, October 30, 2010, bananas have not been exported from St. Lucia. This has meant no real income for banana farmers and those who depend on the industry for their work (packing, shipping, laborers etc.) and the rise of banana theft, or pradial larceny and development of a black market for local bananas.
Actually, the local banana shortage has emphasized the importance of green bananas to the local diet and underscored the role of green bananas or "green fig" as people call them here, in the food security of the country. Farmers are regularly having 60% or more of their bananas stolen during the night. The problem is two-fold: Firstly, it has increased with the passing of Tomas and the economic troubles that linger from the hurricane. Secondly this crisis has actually exposed an ongoing relationship where the very poor (and the strung out druggies or Jombis as the farmers call them) take green bananas for eating and to sell on the black market. Before Tomas, it didn't matter very much, because farmers were growing more bananas than they could sell, but since Tomas, the thefts have drastically increased, while farmers have very few banana trees mature enough to produce a bunch, so the thefts have a lot more impact these days.

The good news is that this situation will soon change for many farmers. Although some farmers won't be able to harvest until Sept or even Oct this year, the first harvest day for export is in two weeks, and everyone is getting excited about it! Many farmers are also replanting the acres that were so damaged from Tomas that the roots from their bananas were actually killed. One of the things I've been doing lately for participant observation is replanting and deflowering {insert joke here} with the farmers. I took some photos one day to document what goes into replanting. One day soon I'll do a post devoted to the 9mth lifespan of the banana, but for now replanting!

Tools need for replanting- fork for digging holes, small shovel for filling them in, cutlass (aka machete) for just about everything. A cutlass is seriously the most versatile tool ever.

A row of newly planted plants- in a few weeks they will send up new shoots and leaves!

Young shoots that have been dug up elsewhere with their roots intact.

First- place new plant in a hole

Second- fill the hole in with surrounding dirt

Third- firmly step around the base of planted banana (that is my foot!) and then repeat Step Two.

Fourth- using both feet step/dance around the banana in a circle to ensure that the ground is firmly packed around it.

Fifth- care for plants and wait appx 9 months and you will have full grown plants with fruit (inside the blue bags)

Young bananas with the flowers still on the butts of each fruit (or "finger")... we are about to pull each of these flowers off for the deflowering process. It leaves your fingers very sticky from the banana latex!

A Belated Guest Post! (Evan and Ariel)

So St. Lucia. What an awesome island!  It was a nice flight in, we came by way of JFK, and really cool to fly over the various Cubas, Haiti's, DRs, whateverthoseislandswhere to get there.  Stepping off the plane into a caribbean island to be welcomed by friends is an awesome day any day.  Highly recommended! 

First off, Jules and Caela are obviously awesome.  Hanging out with them can make a thursday at a steak and shake awesome, so add in the back drop of an incredibly beautiful island and some vacation time and, well, it's pretty great.  

I was really looking forward to some basic beach time and, of course, hanging out with Ariel in a swim suit so we did not explore the island or the towns as much as some people might want to.  However, the drive to and from the airport was beautiful and a lot of fun.  The girls make great tour guides (ridiculousity+knowledge = awesome) and the recent history of the island and the impact on Caela's research is very interesting.

Caela's house is beautiful - nicer than I expected, really.  It was a great setting to hang out together, cook good food, and play with a machete!  I got to open coconuts with a machete!  = fun.  Fried bananas, as mentioned in another poston this blog, also very tasty St. Lucian fun.

We tried many different beaches and venues on the island and our two favorites were at the opposite ends of the spectrum.  There was a beach beneath an expensive hotel that while public, like all St. Lucian beaches, was relatively more hidden and exclusive (and occupied by a crazy expensive bar) than any other we went to.  Beautiful, beautiful spot.  Though very wavy and windy the day we went there.  

The other beach was a much more relaxed family beach.  Totally public, lots of locals, and shandys and beers for a couple St. Lucian $ easily available.  We enjoyed hanging out there and walking the beach to see the various resorts and sights.  

We were in St. Lucia over New Years, but we spent it pretty quietly.  There was a giant island wide street party going on, but it was a bit overwhelming and more intense than we wanted.  Instead, we had a great dinner, some of us fell asleep immediately afterwards while others played pool with interesting bar-flys in the restaurant, and then went back to Caela's to watch the many fireworks from her porch.

It was a good vacation and particularly interesting in the context of my upcoming Peace Corps service in South America.   First, I found the need to ration water (and boil our own) fascinating and was a brief glimpse of the adventures awaiting me (in 2 weeks.  Ahh!!)  Second was just the in depth understanding Caela was gaining of local culture and government.  She is there to study people's way of life more than to directly help them improve it, but still you can see opportunities.  Perhaps more importantly, you can also see some of the wealth that shouldn't be ignored or lost during that work to "improve."

It was a great trip and a fun vacation.  Highly recommend visiting Caela, but that's true anytime anywhere!  Still, hard to go wrong with that kind of setting.  Just bring some sunscreen when you go!

Thanks for having us Caela!

Let's Go Fly a Kite!

 I'm home sick with a mysteriously swollen face & meds that turn me into a narcoleptic. Thus I am using today to catch up on some blog posts I've been meaning to do for a while now between naps...

Easter was a huge holiday here in St. Lucia, everything closed for about a week surrounding Good Friday and Easter Monday (yes, the day that comes after Easter Sunday). The lenten period is not observed nearly as much as it used to be, (Traditionally people would celebrate carnival and have crazy parties before Ash Wednesday and then be abstinent for the full 6 weeks building up to Easter in addition to not eating/drinking meat, alcohol or other indulgent food and drink) however there was still a notable drop in music at night, parties and general air of calm that filled the weeks preceding Easter.

By far my favorite, and the most unexpected tradition is kite flying!
Starting about a month before Easter, people would come to the beach with "practice kites" that they had made and were trying to get the balance of tail to kite ratio just right:

practice kites April 2, 2011

Easter Monday is kite day, a tradition outside St. Lucia as well, you can find many kite enthusiasts all over the East Caribbean,  I'm told flying is especially popular in Guyana and Barbados.
The following photos are from Easter Monday by Gros Islet beach (the town I live in) where a kite festival/contest was held all afternoon accompanied by lots of music, great food and swimming. It was a pretty magical day.

kids with hats and kites were abundant!

J with our kite

Some people took the distance that their kites were out very seriously- these guys are reeling their kites further OUT to sea! Some peoples kites were so far away they just looked like specs or tiny insects far far away...

Getting a good launch is key, our kite spent a lot of time getting to know the ground at first.

Being the only foreigners in attendance, Jul and I each were interviewed for the local TV station...

Most kites were home-made, but a few were just massive shapes like this parrot!

Determined kite launcher at work!

Massive kite being prepped for launch w/ a gated hotel community in the backdrop

No one is too small for a kite!

*sings* "...up through the atmosphere, up where the air clear, Oh let's go fly a kite!"

This little guy wanted a lot of photos with his beautiful kite, I obliged :)

Staging the launch

Up, up and away!

Small dots on the clouds are kites with Pigeon Island in the background

Kite frame.

Music, food, drinks, beach and kites, is there really a better way to spend the afternoon?

             Well, you could throw in Gamber and a rainbow ;)  Those specs in the background are more kites...

Dusk and kites (look closely for the specs, they're there!)

In addition to kites, the other thing worth mentioning about Easter traditions here in St. Lucia is Pennepis. Pennepis are baked, crispy ginger biscuits that are made and sold on Easter here in St. Lucia and I had heard about them in advance of the holiday. I wanted to attend Easter mass at the local Catholic Church to observe and participate in the local goings-on so I bribed my companions to accompany me with the prospect of delicious ginger baked goods post-service. The hunt for the elusive and enormously popular Pennepis took Julianna, Amber and me all over the town of Gros Islet. It seemed with each corner we turned someone had "just seen someone selling them" or "just run out" of the delicious ginger biscuits. In the end, we failed to find a single Pennepis, however two old men playing checkers successfully sold Jul two fish cakes under the billing that they were "cookies" and only informed her of their fish content as she walked out the door of the bakery. The fish-cookies were actually pretty good, but not Pennepis, so I tracked down a recipe that I'm going to try soon. Here it is in case any of you would like to have a go: 

Pennepis

Ingredients:

½ lb fresh ginger

1 cup sugar syrup with spices

Ok, so this can be anything from ½ cup water, ½ cup sugar to ½ cup water and 1 cup sugar 

As to what spices – cinnamon, nutmeg, maybe anise and a little clove (traditional spices here), about a total of 1-1.5 tsp combined

1 ½ cup all purpose flour

1-2 1 Tbs of butter

Instructions:

Finely grate your ginger (scrape off the light skin with a knife first)

Blend in the sugar n spice syrup

Take 1 cup of the mixture and mix into flour and cut/mix in butter – knead until it is very smooth.

Spread/Roll out into a very thin layer – 2-3 mm. You can roll little rounds or long ovals – your choice.

Bake in medium hot oven and “keep a watch, it burns fast”. 

I'll make modifications to this recipe once I try it, I realize all steps are not super clear!

Guest Post: Julianna Boils Green Banana

Check out these green bananas (or, green fig, as they are called here).

You can't mess around with the greenness.

If they aren't definitively green, they might end up tasting like you've boiled a banana with your potatoes and no one needs that.

So, green bananas taste kind of like a potato in that they are sort of generically starchy, much like makabou chips. They can be put in soups in place of or in addition to potatoes, carrots and other "ground provisions", used in what is essentially Caribbean potato salad (Green Fig Salad) or just boiled and salted and buttered like a potato. Judging only by the taste, if you didn't see that it looked like a banana, you wouldn't know it was one by flavor or texture. It does take a minute to get over the look of butter dripping from a banana though. Or finding banana chunks in your soup.

I'm not sure if you can boil makabou, I would imagine so. You can fry green banana chips like you can plantains or makabou. For instructions on how to fry green bananas, replace the word "boil" with "fry" as you read the instructions further in this post. Or, a better idea would be to check out frying makabou chips and replace "makabou" with "plantain" or "green banana".

Cultural lesson: St. Lucians think we are silly for only eating yellow bananas and being largely ignorant of green ones. Green bananas are a staple here. They are cheap, too. A bunch of 6 (which is a hilariously small amount to buy here, according to the vegetable market vendors) is between 1 and 2 EC (Eastern Caribbean Dollars) which is between $0.40-.80 USD. Yellow bananas are uncommon and more expensive and one has to deliberately seek them out. As of yet, we've only found them in the groceries rather than in any of the numerous vegetable and fruit stands. That being said, many bakeries have banana bread (yum!). Interesting, no?

Nutritional facts about green bananas: They contain something (fatty acid chain something) that allows for better absorption of other nutrients. And potassium of course. About 15% of your daily potassium needs are met with one boiled green banana as well as about 3.5g fiber and a respectable amount of B6 (source: Googled "Green banana nutrition"). Coconuts, though, have about double the potassium of a banana. (An epic guest post all about coconuts is in the works.)


On to actually boiling the bananas:
In order to boil the green bananas you'll need a decent knife, cutting board, a fork and a pot of water. First, start some water on the stove for boiling. Enough to cover the peeled bananas by an inch or two. (By the time the bananas are peeled it should be at/near a rolling boil.) Next cut off each end of the banana and cut a slit down the length of the banana for ease of peeling with your fingers and thumbs.

Oh, also, be prepared for what's called banana latex.

Shiny stuff is banana latex. Sticky!

It exudes from the green banana when you cut it and it gets everywhere. It's sticky, can stain your shirt (even though it's clear- weird, right?) or cutting board and is a total bear to clean. So, be prepared to wash your hands and knife quickly and with some frequency, as the sooner the latex gets washed off, the easier it is to remove.

Peel each banana, just like you would a makabou or plantain.

Now, for no reason at all I cut mine in half.

Senseless chopping.

It's just become habit. If there is a culinary benefit to doing it, I can't tell you what it is.

As you can see from the immense pressure my thumb is putting on this raw green banana, it is quite firm.

Firm like raw potato.

The bananas should get boiled for about 10 minutes (+/- some minutes) until a fork can stab them pretty easily. I like mine cooked enough that they can get stabbed by the fork with ease, but they hang on to the fork easily enough that they can be served out of the boiling water without the painful burns that come from an overcooked banana slipping off a fork and spattering back into boiling water.

Fork firm = Spatter free serving.

They can be cooked until they are so soft they fall right off the fork. That's just gross. Don't do that. I mean, I suppose if that's how you like your green bananas (or potatoes) go right ahead. I said it was gross, not wrong.

The final product, complete with butter and salt:

Ta Da!

Looks a little funny, right? I'm telling you though, it's delicious.

Also, since green bananas have a generically starchy flavor, they are fairly bland. I'm a girl of simple taste, so butter and salt are sufficient. I'm made to understand that most folks like some zest. Feel free to add a favorite hot sauce or condiment to your bananas! You could probably even melt cheese over them, but I'm lactose intolerant, so I won't. If you do, let me know how it is!