First day at work
Feb 14th, 2020 (Valentine’s Day) – Lakatoro
So today I had my first day at work. It wasn’t too exciting, I just spent the day reading through dozens of policy documents, all of which will feed into the investment policy for Malampa province, which is one of my assignment goals.
In the above photo, that’s pretty much my entire office, which is across the entryway from Kevin’s (my counterpart). I’ve never had my own private office before, and quite like it, apart from the ants.
The office location is on top of a hill, and all the government buildings are grouped together in a sort of government compound. It’s no surprise that they are in the nicest part of town, and the grounds are well kept with some beautiful trees dotted around.
Then after work, I picked up a few more things from the market, which is at its busiest on Fridays, as most of the island closes for the weekend. I came home and hung my mozzie net. There was one here, but it didn’t reach to the ground, so I kept having to try to tuck it under the mattress, which wasn’t successful. My new one is great, though. And then I rose to my self-imposed ‘made in Vanuatu’ challenge, and cooked myself dinner using only local ingredients.
It was pretty successful, although those yams are pretty flavourless, and taste like great big blobs of dried starch – I think it would have been better if I’d diced them into much smaller cubes so they could pick up more of the lime flavour. Ah well, next time I’ll know. Particularly impressed with how spicy the fresh chilli was – I only used a single one out of my bag of about 50, and it was plenty hot enough. Don’t know how I’ll get through the whole bag before they rot! The green beans were the biggest winner of the day, tasting fresh and sweet.
Not too sure what I’ll be doing for the weekend, although missing my darling wife so much this Valentine’s Day, so tonight I’m going to extend my data allowance and see if I can stream a romantic movie, wishing she were here with me.
11 thoughts on “First day at work”
Is it the sort of yam you are meant to boil into starch balls and use to mop up hot curry? Tricky things yams.
So today after chatting with the mama next door, I discovered they weren’t yams, but taro. Tonight, I tried thinly slicing them and frying them in coconut oil – wasn’t a huge success. Will keep giving it a go till I figure out, though, as is clearly an important source of carbohydrate for the locals – tons of stuff for sale at the market.
https://www.greenschool.org/
Pogs, do you know about this movement? Wondered if some of these ideas might work
Yes! A friend of ours tried to convince Jen to either join them or set up a similar school. It’s the sort of thing which could get legs on Efate (the island with the capital, Port-Vila), although simply due to logistics of getting here, would be a hard sell to set up here on Malekula.
Try thinly slicing the yam and frying it in coconut oil. I think that’s what they used to do with breadfruit (large starchy yam-like fruit that grows on trees) in Kiribati. Maybe you could even make a batter for them like Scottish potato fritters.
Huh, great minds – that’s exactly what I did tonight. Wasn’t a huge success -they seemed to burn rather than crisp. Maybe I should parboil them and then shallow fry them. Oh, and turns out they’re taro, not yams. I’m told it can taste quite nice if boiled in coconut milk. Only problem is that I’m going to have to make my own coconut milk, as it’s impossible to buy here.
There must be prodigious supplies of coconuts
Indeed. Coconut plantations as far as the eye can see. Plenty of coconuts. They just don’t bother processing them into coconut milk/cream/oil and then on-selling the product. Same with cocoa. Can probably get hold of the cocoa beans (admittedly I haven’t actually seen any for sale, but I’m told it’s Malekula’s #2 export after copra), but I haven’t the foggiest of how to turn a fresh cocoa bean into cocoa powder. Needless to say, every store sells imported cocoa powder made by Nestlé. It’s a real problem.
Soy sauce makes everything taste better.
Another thought viz a viz the taro – how about pretending its potato that needs a lot of cooking? You might be able to make the Vanuatan equivalent of colcannon with local greens??
Will likely try that next. The portion sizes from the market are enormous, so even though I’ve been cooking taro nearly every meal, I still have a plentiful supply!