Our D.I.Y. World

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

from http://www.bespokespices.com/curry-powder-recipe.html

(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.