Thanksgiving Tha Thom Style

November 24th marked our second Thanksgiving in Tha Thom. We remember craving the wonderful tastes of home cooking last year, but since we weren’t able to make such a meal we opted for introducing local residents to pancakes. If you want a reminder check out Taste of Home.

This year we find ourselves living in a beautiful home, blessed with a garden, market with varying vegetables and fruit, a large cooking area plus a NEW addition of a gas stove! With such wealth we decided to try our hand at making our own Thanksgiving meal – Tha Thom style.

Cooking and Listening to Toons

During the dry season the local market is a beautiful burst of colorful, local, fresh produce, but finding the necessary ingredients for our meal required some searching. After looking we located some HUGE sweet potatoes from a nearby village (American football size), various produce from the local market and of course a turkey - ours weighed in at 6 kilos (13 lbs)! Sadly no potatoes or squash were to be found, but an MCC'er was able to bring some from Vientiane.

Spit Roasting our Bird

After cooking all day long, our landlord, his wife, two children and father joined us. We feasted on mashed potatoes, squash, stuffing, turkey, gravy, pickled kale (and some real pickles, too!), bread, sweet potato with pudding and of course ‘squash-kin’ pie! Oh, and it should be noted that there was also sticky rice at the table – no Lao meal could be complete without it! Everyone seemed to enjoy the food, but I was most impressed that Pa (our landlord’s father) tried every dish at the table.

Feasting with Guests

We are certainly thankful to be in our own home. What a blessing to share with our neighbors, to feast and celebrate together.

Coffee from Scratch

A sweet perfume permeates our yard in the evenings. The coffee trees that crowd around our well and chicken coops are in full bloom. The smell is strikingly similar to honey suckle. Interestingly, even though the trees are flowering they also sport a ripe crop of coffee cherries at the same time. It’s very strange how seasons for fruit work here in the tropics. Ever since moving into our home I have been eyeing the coffee trees and wondering when I should try to make homemade coffee from scratch.

Fruit and Flowers

Last weekend began the adventure. Standing atop the well cover I managed to harvest a large pot of the red coffee cherries. I then added water to the batch and agitated the mixture with a stick of wood throughout the day. The cherries then loosened their hold on the precious green beans stored within each fruit.

Pot O'Cherries

The next step was slightly tedious, slimy and used quite a bit of water. Coffee beans sink in water and thankfully the fruit floats making for easy separation. Once the green beans were separated I dried them for two days until the seed coat was brittle.

Tedious Processing

Then came another tedious process to shell each seed. To speed up the procedure I used a large mortar and pestle to crush the seed coat then, by rubbing the seeds, the bean would finally emerge. It would be neat to see all the machines that do all this busy work…but there is something rewarding doing it all by hand. After all this processing the large pot of cherries had yielded only one small peanut butter jar of beans!

Finally the roasting could commence. Our cast iron pan worked wonders and after much stirring produced a batch of aromatic black/brown roasted coffee beans. This unique roast is one of a kind and will probably never be perfectly replicated…thus I dub it the “Tha Thom Roast.” I then use the crucible and pestle once more to achieve a fine grind from the freshly roasted beans.

'Tha Thom Roast'

The final step before a hot mug is the brewing. Since we don’t have a coffee pot…a stove pot suffices…simply add coffee grounds and boil! There is certainly something to be said about freshly made coffee. Probably can’t get fresher than this since the cherries were still on the tree a week ago! The flavor is slightly bitter with a zingy aftertaste…and a coffee aroma that makes the mouth water for more.

From Flower to Cup

Driving Test

Living in a different culture from your own leads to some interesting adventures, and many times those interesting adventures come from places you’d never expect. I recently experienced one such escapade while taking my moto driving test with two other MCC volunteers.

Driving the Figure-Eight

Before taking the test we were given a study book of Lao signs and various ‘rules of the road.’ We also practiced the figure eight obstacle course that is part of every test.

On the testing day, we arrived with plenty of time to run through the obstacle course a few times to refresh. We then made our way to the testing room, received our queue number and waited with over a hundred others. In the front of the room was a large screen playing videos. I thought it would be of traffic rules and safety on the road, but I was wrong. My already weak stomach was weakened even more by video after video showing traffic accidents, the majority real life scenarios and graphically R-rated. If they were trying to scare away the weak ones, it almost worked on me! Then the videos changed to accidents in general: wrestling, airplane, helicopter… and we wondered, ‘What do they have to do with taking your driving test?’

We were then introduced to Lao Laws, driving rules and refreshed signs and driving scenarios. This part was very difficult to understand, partly due to the echoing sound system and also to my poor comprehension of Lao driving vocabulary. I hope there wasn’t anything too important!

The testing began. As we received our test booklets and answer sheets, I got a bit scared. There was no way I was going to be able to take this test as a written test! Thankfully they also offer the test orally, so I, and the two other MCC volunteers, separated from the group and waited in a side room.

In a short time a facilitator came and tested us personally. The test itself was quite easy, but the combination of trying to understand the question through broken English and use of British vocabulary often threw me for a loop. The question I found most hard was, ‘What... to do… when you come... to zebra?’ I racked my brain, ‘What is a zebra? Are there even zebras in Laos?’ Apparently he was referring to zebra crossings, an English term for pedestrian crossings.

With the oral test finished, I took a picture, donning a black suit coat as the photographer felt I should look more professional, and made my way to the obstacle course.

The final step in acquiring my license was to drive a figure-eight on a small piece of concrete. All I had to do was follow the painted lines, not put my feet down and not get intimidated by the hundred person audience (others taking their test) or the uniformed facilitator watching closely.

With everything completed, I received my printed license a week later.

100 in Unison

The sound of 100 students brushing their teeth isn’t quite deafening, but it is a sound that certainly gets your attention! This week the nutrition team held a training at one of the village schools about dental health and the 5 food groups (we have 5 here since dairy isn’t ever on the menu). The training was special for two reasons. Firstly, it was the first training I attended where dental hygiene was discussed. And secondly, it was the first training where the team used puppets to convey their lesson about the five food groups.

Puppeting

The puppet show was something we have been trying to implement for a long time. Back in September an MCC staff member who has experience with dramas and puppeteer-ing came to Tha Thom and did a one-day workshop on the topic. Ever since I have been excited and hoping the team would be interested in trying a new way to interact with our target audience. Two weeks ago they asked me to write a story for them to present. The turnaround was short, but thanks to MCC translator, Bounpheng, we were able to crank out a short script for presentation this week!

Teacher Inspecting a Puppet

The concept of puppets to convey a message isn’t new in Laos…in fact we hear that in some parts of the country it is a traditional technique. The team’s first presentation went well! The kids enjoyed it and we hope learned the basics about why eating food from the 5 food groups is important. I hope that we can use more shows like this in the future to engage the audience more.

Lines of Brushers

Following the show, out came the tooth brushes. The students each fetched a glass of water, filled it at the tap and lined up in the school yard. Brushes were distributed as was the paste…some instruction followed…and the scrubbing commenced! For some students this was their first time ever using a tooth brush!

Student Inspecting a Brush

Tooth Paste Mustache