Kakae

I’ve eaten REALLY well this week. Which made me realize… I haven’t written about food yet. I lose track of what I’ve shared and what I haven’t and I’ve been here long enough that I’m starting to forget that my life is not normal by American standards. Most of the reminders of this come when I talk to Mom on the phone (“Why did you boil the bananas?”)

So here you go: The Food Blog.

In Vanuatu there are two food groups: aelan kakae (island food) and waetman kakae (white man’s food), also sometimes called rabis kakae (rubbish food).

Aelan kakae consists of:

• root crops (manioc [cassava], taro, kumala [sweet potato], and yam) – every island has a different dominant root; there’s a lot of yam up here, but I’ve heard on Maewo it’s all taro.
• some greens – namely aelan kabis (island cabbage, which is spinach, “Chinese spinach,” or bok choy in the USA), several kinds of other leaves that can be cooked
• laplap (keep reading)
• all-the-time fruits – coconuts, popo (pawpaw; papaya), bananas in several different varieties
• seasonal fruits – mango, oranges, pamplemus (grapefruit), breadfruit, pineapple
• fish

The favorite cooking technique is just boiling. Things are also fried in palm oil, and sometimes root crops are cooked by literally just setting them on the fire for a while, then peeling off the burnt skin.

The largest kind of banana is a cooking banana, which you boil. If ripe, it just tastes like a hot banana. If unripe, it tastes more like a potato. You can also boil all the other kinds of bananas, which doesn’t really do anything but soften them. Then there are fried bananas, banana cake, banana pie (basically bread with sliced bananas on top), banana pancakes (which apparently only I make), peanut butter banana sandwiches… When I come back to the States I don’t plan to eat a banana for a lonnngggg time.

Anything can be “milked” by “scratching” or grating coconut meat, mixing it with the coconut water, and squeezing it over the top of the food before cooking it. This is literally coconut milk. (A lot of people are surprised that the inside of a coconut is filled with a clear juice, not a milk.) The coconut meat itself is then thrown out (unless you’re a certain bearded Banks PC legend, in which case all the Ni-Vans think you’re crazy anyway, so go ahead and toss it in the pot) though you can toast it and/or use it in baking something else.

Laplap is a dish made with any of the above root crops or bananas. The roots are “scratched” or grated on either a rough stick or a piece of tin with holes punched in it. The resulting mush is mixed with water (or coconut water) to the right consistency (mushier) then spread onto banana leaves. Your average circular laplap is 1-2 inches thick and has a diameter of probably 18 inches. Sometimes the layer of mush is topped with a layer of aelan kabis and/or coconut cream (or, rarely, beef – this is called tuluk). Then it’s all wrapped up in the banana leaves and baked in a stone oven: a layer of hot coals, then the wrapped laplap, then a pile of heated rocks on top. The laplap is done after about an hour, or when it has a slightly chewy consistency… sort of like gummy bears. Sometimes the outside is golden brown and crusty – most Ni-Vans call this burnt, and most Americans call it delicious. You cut it into squares and voilà, laplap! You can also boil laplap by wrapping about 2 cups of the mush in banana leaves and boiling the little packets.

All Peace Corps Trainees instantly declare that they hate laplap, yet somehow by the time we reach swearing in we at least sort of like it (if not LOVE it) and have a favorite. My favorite is “milked” laplap manioc. I also had a great banana laplap here in the Banks that was apparently Vanuatu-Solomons fusion cuisine. (It had slices of bananas baked into the top of it!)

Chickens roam aimlessly here, but nobody ever eats them. And they only sometimes find the eggs. So what’s the point of the chickens? Don’t ask me.

There’s beef for one of two reasons:

1. There are enough people to eat a cow (workshop),
2. There’s some kind of celebration (marriage, death, holiday) at which there are enough people to eat a cow.

But even then, you always go fishing first. If somebody manages to catch a 6 foot tuna, there’s no reason to kill the cow.

Back home we eat beef all the time: steakhouses, burritos, McDonalds anyone? Here, I can count the number of times I’ve had beef at site on one hand: my welcome in November, provincial teachers’ workshop in March, Easter, death ceremony (papa’s mama’s sister), and this week (which I’ll get to). Plus Christmas and a marriage at Kerry’s site.

White Man Kakae:

• white rice (eaten at every meal)
• macaroni (ramen noodles)
• tin mit (Oxford corned ‘beef’ – a relic of British explorers)
• tin tuna (more like cat food than tuna. Certainly not Starkiss.)
• tin fis (mackerel in tomato sauce, bones usually included)
• Breakfast Crackers (like really thick, strong saltines without salt)
• peanut butter
• salted peanuts (with MSG)
• Twisties (Fijian Cheetos)
• cookies
• and other assorted long-life foods depending on the remoteness of your island.

Living in a provincial center is great and sucks at the same time. Here’s why:

Aelan kakae is sometimes non-existant. In order to eat fresh produce, you have to go out to the garden to get said produce. A lot of gardens are actually large plantations up in the hills, and going to them is a full day process. In most of Vanuatu, agriculture is still the main economy, but it’s a problem in provincial centers because most of those people have jobs and don’t have time to go to the garden during the week. In fact, our local boarding school gets their food shipped from West Vanualava which is only accessible by boat. Hellooo, transportation costs. I am probably one of the few rural Vanuatu PCVs that can say that after 6 months, I still have not been to my host family’s garden.

Port Vila, Luganville/Santo, and Lenakel/Tanna are lucky enough to have nice markets, so at least those places have access to good stuff – but it’s still probably cheaper to buy rabis kakae. Unfortunately, we’re not cool enough to have a market here in the Banks. (I’ve never been to Lolowai or Norsup. Any input, guys?) At the beginning of the year, there was a family coming down from the hill and selling aelan kabis twice a week in front of the store, but that stopped about 6 weeks ago. Around that same time, the little market shelter fell down, giving up its month long battle of surviving with hurricane damage. I don’t know if these two events are connected.

The nice thing about living in a provincial center is that my local store has a lot more options than the outer Banks islands have. For example, I can get peanut butter, ketchup, [really bad] instant coffee, Milo, Lipton, baked beans, powdered milk, and sometimes Coke or Fanta at site. Once in a while we even have eggs at 60-70 cents each. They go fast, so I buy 10 every time I see them. They’ve also started carrying two types of canned veggies here (peas and mixed) at US$3 per can. I don’t have to ship a lot of things from Vila like a lot of other PCVs (which is good, since it’s logistically impossible to ship to the Banks). But I do still bring back some things when I travel: Nutella – I need my chocolate fix, honey, spices, pasta, dry beans, dry soup powder, popcorn,… I also bring back some cheap bulk items like 1kg jars of peanut butter to save money, since transportation up here (or lack thereof) makes for major mark-ups.

Another thing that really affects food here is the lack of electricity. When it’s consistently 90 degrees and you don’t have a fridge, leftovers can’t really exist. Food safes keep out the rats, but not the bugs and definitely not the Torba fireants which descend upon anything edible within an hour. I have successfully kept laplap for 24 hours, bread for 2 days (stretched it to 5 by cutting off the new mold every day), and banana pancakes for 36 hours. Cut yam lasts a couple days, as long as you cut off the part that was exposed to air. Boiled yam lasts 12 hours. Rice & beans lasts one day, as long as you seriously cook the heck out of it before the 2nd meal.

Uncooked aelan kabis wilts within 24 hours and starts rotting within 48, which is a problem because they sell it in huge bunches. When the “market” was running here, I bought a bundle on Monday morning, then ate island cabbage for lunch and dinner, then lunch and dinner again Tuesday, and sometimes lunch Wednesday if it was still good. I would have also given some to Nicole, and I would probably still have some to throw out on Wednesday. Needless to say, I’ve learned a lot of different ways to cook it.

But basically, any way you look at it, every PCV in Vanuatu has the right to complain about his/her food options. Those of us in the outer provincial centers are sick of ramen noodles and peanut butter. Those way out in the bush are sick of taro and cabbage. And of course in Vila there’s the money issue. We’d all love to just switch places with each other for a day. And not everyone learns to LOVE laplap.

Seriously though, I’ve fattened up this week. First, my boss came back from Santo with beef and brought me some – a really thin steak perfect for skillet frying. So that was Monday and Tuesday dinner. Then the Preschool Coordinator has been running a small workshop in the office conference room, and workshop culture in Vanuatu is great regarding food. Every day of a workshop there are two tea breaks – one in the morning and one in the afternoon – with coffee, tea, and cookies, then lunch is always provided. And there’s no Subway or Chipotle to cater here – the facilitator’s family or volunteers cook aelan kakae all morning, then bring it out for lunch. I’m not participating in the workshop, but there’s enough to feed everyone in the office anyway (they caught a giant tuna and several large red snappers), plus they use lunch as a thank you gesture for the use of the conference room. So even though I haven’t gotten a mid-day break away from the office this week, I’ve gotten great food!