When
December 2013 ran out, and along with it our calendar, I got to work on
constructing my own page for January. As I measured the blocks that would
become days, and pulled out our magazines, scissors, and colored Sharpies, I
had one of those fleeting thoughts: In a world with no Wal-Mart.
I
realize many of you would welcome such a world. But it would be an honest
assessment to say that Wal-Mart is a place we all like to make fun of, but
which is actually very convenient, and actually fairly good.* The moment you
find yourself making your own calendars by hand (even though this way, you’re
able to make it an American/Ethiopian calendar—it being always handy to know
what month and date and holiday it is in “Ethiopian time”), or meandering
through dirt roads at night for a half hour, asking the kids where the house
with the cows is—you need milk—(even though the stars are glaring and beautiful
on this night, and you’re holding the hands of kids you don’t know as they
guide you from house to house, thinking Wow, I am a walking Peace Corps
magazine) because there’s nowhere you can
“swing by” to pick up things as simple as a calendar and milk, that’s the
moment you’ll be missing the convenience of places like Wal-Mart. CVS. Target. As
romantic as cow-searching by starlight truly is.
Our
do-it-yourself projects usually have the potential for two things: 1. Making us
miss America’s conveniences, and 2. Making us think, Well, who needs all
that? I have two hands.
We’d
like to welcome you into our world of using our two hands and two hours, when
we can’t swing into any parking lots for easy errands.
A frame for an Andrew Luttrull original
We bought a hideous wooden frame from a frame shop on our
main road. It maybe took them five minutes to make; the wood was still
splintering. Not in the, “Well, this is cutely rustic” way. Trust me. So we
pulled out all the pretty fabric I brought along from America, and some yarn.
And after about an hour, Daniel had created this lovely frame. I do plan on
bringing it back with us, by the way.
Warm hats for a cold trip in a hot place
We don’t have winter-wear here, as you might’ve guessed.
Adwa is hot. A sweatshirt is the most we’ll ever need. But we didn’t anticipate
we’d be taking a very cold trip up a very tall mountain, sleeping with the
wind. Next Tuesday we leave for a 5-day trek through the Simien Mountains, to
summit Ras Dashen, Ethiopia’s highest mountain (and the eastern peak of an
enormous volcano, according to Wikipedia). At an elevation of 4,550 metres
(14,928 ft), we’re going to be freezing up there. And while I admit we’ll keep
our hands warm thanks to Lauren and Wal-Mart (I admit I haven’t attempted
glove-making), I’ve made us each a winter hat, and am now making Daniel a
scarf. Next week we’ll be thankful for my Waco ladies who taught me to crochet,
and to love it. (If you are concerned for our safety—especially when you hear There
will be men with shotguns guarding them on the trek, to protect them from the
wild baboons—fear not. Remember our post
about climbing Adwa’s Soloda Mountain? The same Joe who saved our lives from
plummeting down a cliff is the one leading this trip.)
Curry Powder
We rotate the same fifteen to twenty meals here—which is
somewhat hard for me. I pride myself on making at least one new recipe a week,
back home. In America we’re constantly trying new dishes, complicated, in-depth
dishes, for the sake of adventure and accomplishment, and because we know that
half of our favorite meals we probably haven’t tasted yet. There’s a world of
cuisine to experience in a lifetime; I just can’t stick to the same rotated
recipes. But here we have no choice. The recipes we stick to, though, are good
ones. Pizza on the stovetop. German spaetzles and sauerkraut. Gnocchi.
Minestrone.
When we discovered vegetable curry here—it was glorious. One
of those “favorite meals we hadn’t previously tried,” knocking us off our feet.
And now it’s a weekly favorite: one we’ll certainly continue making in the
states. When we couple this with our homemade yogurt (you should try that too),
it’s heavenly.
But we can’t get curry powder here. We can get it from the
capital, but at a price we’re not willing to pay. So every two months Daniel
replenishes our homemade blend, which our friend Christine described as, “India
in a bottle! It smells amazing, way better than the store stuff.” The recipe is
below, if you’re interested.
The irony: it is way cheaper for us here to buy all the
whole, dusty spices from burlap sacks on Saturday Market Days, and grind them
ourselves, rather than buy a 60-birr pre-made container in Addis Ababa. At
home, though, it’s cheaper to go with the pre-made. If you throw a bunch of
spices in your cart that begin with the word “whole”—and you need four or five
of them, your grocery bill jumps up at breakneck speed. So, in case you’re
wondering: Yes, we plan on bringing lots and lots of this home with us, to last
us awhile for cheap. The difficulty: it takes Daniel a little over an hour to
pound all of these spices by hand with a heavy, iron rod.
We’re eating the good stuff for cheap here, in general.
Organic vegetables. Organic peanut butter. Eggs straight from the chicken. Free-range
chickens. Homemade curry powder. We’re getting spoiled for two years, in terms
of cost. We’ll likely have to go home and return to the cheap stuff (even
though Jif now tastes like straight, salty, SWEET candy to us).
Recipe for Curry Powder
(makes 7-8 Tbsp)
3 Tbsp coriander seeds (cilantro seeds)
2 Tbsp cumin seeds
10 green cardamom pods
10 cloves
2 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
Lightly toast the whole coriander, cumin and cloves to
release lovely flavor & aroma.
*
Break open the cardamom pods and extract the seeds
*
Grind these along with the other whole ingredients in your spice grinder
*
Sieve into a bowl
*
Mix in the pre-ground powders
*
Store in a cool dark place in an airtight jar. Use within 3 months.
Recipe for Vegetable Curry
1 onion, chopped
1 cup water or stock
1 Tbs flour
1 cup diced vegetables (potatoes, carrots)
salt & pepper
½ Tbs curry powder (we use 1 Tbs)
½ cup tomatoes, diced
3 Tbs milk
1 Tbs corn starch
Brown onions in oil. Add flour and water/stock. Add
vegetables, salt, pepper, and curry powder. In small bowl, mix tomatoes, milk,
and corn starch, then add to pot with vegetables. Simmer 45 minutes until
veggies are tender, and sauce is thick and glossy. Serve over rice or noodles.
(We serve it over Persian rice: turmeric-spiced rice baked in an oiled pan on
the stovetop for 45 minutes after already done cooking, to result in crunchy,
delicious rice. Courtesy of our dear Persian-American friend we met in Adwa.)
Liquid Soap! Soap in a bottle!
When my sister gave us a bottle of Bath & Body Works
“garden herbs” liquid hand soap to bring back with us, she didn’t realize the
magnitude of the gift. Neither did I. After returning from the states last
summer, I hesitated awhile before bringing out the soap. The sooner we use
it, the sooner it’s gone, I thought: my
same mentality pertaining to every single care package. And the inevitable
eventually happened: the soap ran out. But, I thought. But, but, but. We still have a bottle! I started looking up tutorials and recipes for how
to make your own liquid soap.
It was certainly an experiment. It took a few days of
stirring and waiting and testing to get the same original batch the correct
consistency. But once it was “just right”(we learn our best practices from
Goldilocks), it filled a soap bottle, a large container, and a large empty mayo
jar. One teensy tiny 6-birr bar of
Ethiopian soap has now lasted us four months and counting; it’s a sudsy
fish-and-loaves miracle. One that, for the sake of cost, I’ll continue to
practice in the states. Why not make your money go further when you can?
The recipe is fairly simple, if you want it:
Recipe for Liquid Hand Soap
Time Required: 10 minutes of hands-on time (not true, unless
you correctly guess quantities first try. Granted, your soap packaging would be in English and would likely
list the weight.)
1. Grate or finely chop a bar of soap (about four ounces of
soap).
2. Bring four cups of water to a boil.
3. Turn off the heat, and add the soap. Stir to melt the
soap. Continue stirring until the mixture is fully combined. At this point the
mixture will be very liquidy.
4. Allow the mixture to cool for at least 15 minutes. Then,
stir again. At this point, the soap should be slightly thicker.
5. Allow to cool for another several hours or overnight.
6. Stir to check the consistency. If it seems too liquidy,
reheat and add more soap. If it seems too thick, reheat and add more water.
7. Once you're satisfied with your soap, add a few drops of
essential oil and coloring, if desired.
8. Then, pour your soap into dispensers, and enjoy.
Tips:
1. Want
to make a bigger or smaller batch? Just use one cup of water for every ounce of
soap.
2. This
recipe stores well. Make up a big batch, a few times a year.
3.
Results will vary depending on the type of soap used. Tweak the recipe until it
meets your needs.
4. For a
super-smooth consistency, run the finished soap through a blender before
pouring into dispensers.
How to Open a Wine Bottle Without a Corkscrew
We learned this trick from our friend Aaron, during Peace
Corps Pre-Service Training. We’ve been doing it ever since.
This did go badly, once (on Thanksgiving). I think it’s because
our friend was using my very-torn-up Toms. And Toms have very little heel
support, to begin with. (The heel strength is key.) The bottle broke open and
cut his hand, and wine was everywhere. Thankfully, Tyler didn’t need stitches.
We need to stick to dress shoes.
How it’s done: Place
the bottom of the bottle in the heel of the shoe. Hold the neck of the bottle
securely with your right hand, and the toe of the shoe with your left. Knock
the heel of the shoe against something firm, like a concrete wall. After some
pounding, the cork makes its way out.
Sure, it makes wine-drinking a little less elegant. A little
more dangerous (which some wine-drinkers may covet). But, all the same, at the
end of it all, what you have is an open bottle of wine.
Sidenote: Ethiopian wine is really, really, very awful. Half
the time we buy it, it’s already vinegar. So your at-home wine-in-shoe
experiments will come out better than ours, every time.
Pumpkin Puree
I love holiday traditions. Carving pumpkins, dying eggs,
frosting snowman cookies—these are some of my favorite activities. I’m going to
guess that the first time I make a gingerbread house (cough, next Christmas), I’m going to love that just as
much.
I thought pumpkins were for looking at. For jack-o-lantering
beecha (only). Not so!
I have a new addiction at Market. Anytime I see a pumpkin, a
perfectly sized round pumpkin, mind you,
i.e. a cute one, my personal rule demands that I buy it, regardless. This has
resulted, as you can guess, in a house full of too many pumpkins. Part of the
reason we love to buy them is everyone’s reaction. Maybe it’s because the word
for pumpkin is so fun to say (dooba),
but Ethiopians can’t help but say it. If we have a dooba in our hands, they
tell us. They all tell us. For once, Ferengi! Money! is replaced with Dooba!
Dooba! Dooba!, and we love it. Carrying it back from market, I’d guess we two
wear smirks that goad Look what we have, just waiting for them to say it.
As the girl who always chooses pecan pie or cheesecake over
pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving (but eventually eats a slice of pumpkin too, just
out of loyalty to Thanksgiving culture), I’ve found a pumpkin pie I can get
behind. It doesn’t involve any cans—only a dooba.
We always have bags of dooba puree in our freezer, for
pumpkin bread, and now pumpkin pie. It’s lovely. Daniel tells me he thinks his
neighbor Jil has always made pumpkin pie out of jack-o-lanterns. I have it in
my mind to get her pie recipe as soon as I come home; making your own puree is
about as satisfying as doing anything else homemade when there’s a substitute
box at the store. The power to shirk boxes and cans can be a beautiful one.
Garden Trellises from Home-made Clothes Hangers
The hangers are home-made to begin with. This adds to the
hilarity. It took us months to find clothes hangers in Adwa. When we did, they
were fashioned by hand from thick, metal wire, and were quite expensive for
what they were. All things metal and plastic and ugly are. All things clay and
beautiful are not. (Ten birr per hanger, seven birr per gorgeous Ethiopian clay
coffee pot. Conversion to USD: 52 cents per hanger, 36 cents per clay pot.)
When the time came to start our garden, the hangers served a
second purpose. I was closing my eyes, clicking my heels, and wishing for a
Lowe’s or The Home Depot to just pop up down the street. Every time we needed a
wrench or a hammer—or now, trellises for our snow peas—wouldn’t be a problem
anymore. We’d have a solution. (Spoiler: no Home Depot appeared.) But what did
happen was, my husband grabbed some hangers and started twisting, pounding,
jumping on. These wires were thick. It would be super easy to do with a normal
hanger from the USA, but these were hefty home-made jobs, like I said. As a
weak woman who’s never been able to bench-press the adequate amount in Gym
class—though can hit a triple or home-run quite easily (are different muscles
required?)—I couldn’t make the wire budge an inch. I don’t know how Daniel kept
at it. But he did. And what we had when he was finished were fully-functioning
trellises.
Baking!
You already know how we do this. We must’ve told you 1,000
times. But it’s still a miracle to me that it works (or, mostly works). Four
tuna cans and a little pan within a big pan later, and what’ve we got?
Oh yeah. Red velvet cake. Lemon cake.
I still miss ovens. Dearly.
Teaching Aids
What do teachers do without teacher stores? Without internet
and a free printer, hooked up to the same computer? Without laminating
machines? I’m not really sure. But this is what we do. We make our own teaching
materials (flashcards, games, posters) by hand. If we’re lucky, they’ll be more
than one-use only.
This is an excerpt from a six-set household vocabulary
matching game I made for my English clubs. The next set I am working on is for
alphabet practice. O matches Oranges, U matches Umbrella, E matches Egg. The
students love these. (In the second photo you can see Tsegabirhan, Rahwat,
Birkti, and Adahanum playing the matching game.)
Daniel recently needed a phonics-learning songs for his
weekly Saturday phonics trainings for the elementary teachers at the Catholic
school. What did he do? He wrote his own songs and then recorded them himself,
complete with melody and background vocals. They’re perfect.
* * *
Though living in a D.I.Y. universe can be inconvenient in
some ways, it’s almost always refreshing. It’s an organic, simple sort of life
that becomes addicting once you’re given a taste of it.
Here’s perhaps my favorite D.I.Y. anecdote:
Two nights before our friends arrived for Thanksgiving,
Daniel and I wanted to make mozzarella in preparation for the festivities, via
a cheese-making kit my parents gave me for my last birthday. It was all set:
Misilal would come get me at 6, the milk-fetching time (i.e. the cow-milking
time), to show me the nearest house we could buy from. The two of us walked in
the sunset, turning down dirt roads I’d never seen before. How will I find
this again? I kept thinking. Right,
left, right, another right. I tried
memorizing the path, all the while Misilal is saying lots of things to me I
don’t understand, and I nod and smile, say Ishy (Okay). Similar to Meron, Misilal always talks to us
in quick, fluent Tigrigna, maybe not noticing our horrified, confused stares as
we try to keep up with her. But, unlike Meron’s new counting skills, I’ve never
heard Misilal say anything in English.
When we got there, we were sat down, next to a cat and a
cute little kid, while the Mama milked three liters for me out in the back.
Then a girl brought Misilal and I something black and tar-like, in a block, on
a plate—it was four minutes before I was sure it was food. I waited to hear the
word bilee, (eat), because I didn’t know
if it was a strange snack or a cow turd. (I can’t tell you enough how much this
looked like a cow pie—and given the environment [cows!], I just had no evidence
otherwise.) Four long minutes passed of Misilal and I looking at these plates,
Misilal giggling, watching me, me asking what it is, what’s in it, and no one
answering, just shrugging, squinting their eyes, and giggling. Eventually they
say, Eat.
And it was weird. It was warm and mushy, and reminded me of
a taste—maybe Ethiopian butter—I remembered from our early days in Sagure. But
I kept eating it (giving some to the cat), until it was mostly finished. It was
weird, but strangely good. Filling and warm, which I think were the very two
purposes of this odd food.
Half an hour later, I’m back at the house with three liters
of warm milk, and three hours (boiling and temperature-checking and straining
by candlelight) later we have a batch of milky mozzarella cheese.
Note: When Daniel and I tried finding this house again, what
happened is recounted in the first paragraph. I got us quite lost, and we
sought the help of children.
Footnotes:
*Shout out: Wal-Mart kindly donated $100 worth of supplies
(S’mores! Basketballs!) to our girls’ camp last summer and have always donated
to my clothing-the-homeless projects. Wal-Mart’s heart is big.
