Cultural afternoons

The trainees in my group are in split into 5 different communities. There are 4 groups in native Fijian villages (koros) and 1 group in an Indo-Fijian settlement. Every Friday we have a 'cultural afternoon', at which all of the 25 trainees get together in one of the 5 communities. We're currently in week 4 of training, so readers who are math-savvy might be able to figure out that there have been 3 cultural afternoons so far. They have all been at Fijian villages, meaning they were all pretty similar. The trainees living in the village hosting the afternoon perform a meke, which is a traditional Fijian dance. There has been a lot of variation in the mekes put on by the different villages, and I don't know if each village has their own or what.  They consist of people drumming, singing, or background music from speakers. Sometimes all three. There is also a big meal served, the content of which has been refreshingly diverse. The different communities have broad similarities in their cuisine (Indo-Fijians eat a lot of roti and curry and native Fijians eat a lot of dalo and cassava, which are common Pacific island root crops) but each cultural afternoon has had a very unique spread. Below the next paragraph is a picture of the meal from 2 weeks ago.

This upcoming Friday, however, we're doing something a little different. Instead of going to a village for a cultural afternoon, each group of trainees in a community is going to prepare two dishes and bring them to a cookoff, à la Iron Chef. I don't know if our dishes will actually be judged, we're hoping they will be though. We're also hoping people like spicy food, for there will be a liberal addition of peppers.  I, and the 3 other trainees in my village, have been given the recipes for coconut chutney and eggplant curry (in Hindi: nariyal ke chutney and baigan ke tarkaarii, respectively). We went to the market in the nearby town today and got ingredients. We bought all of the produce at the market there, which is open-air and packed with vendors selling their own produce. Much like an American farmer's market, but with less English. A lot less English. Recipes are as follows:

Coconut Chutney

-2 cups grated coconut

-Handful chopped cilantro

-4 cloves chopped garlic

-Chopped chilies, to taste

-Salt, to taste

1. Mix ingredients well.

2. Serve.

Eggplant Curry

-2 tbsp. oil

-1 tbsp. mustard seeds

-1 tbsp. cumin

-1 tbsp. fennel seeds

-3 cloves crushed garlic

-2 cucumbers

-2 medium eggplants, chopped

-2 carrots, chopped

-1 onion, diced

-Chopped chilies, to taste

-Salt, to taste

-Pepper, to taste

1. Heat oil in frying pan, add spices/seeds and garlic. Cook one minute

2. Add onions. Cook one minute.

3. Add eggplant, cucumbers, carrots. Cook until tender.

4. Serve.

I've eaten each of the dishes above, and they're both tasty. Meals in my settlement vary a lot, with no particular food reserved for each mealtime. This morning I had chickpea and potato curry and roti, for lunch I had scrambled eggs and roti, and for dinner I had chicken curry and roti. Like I said, Indo-Fijians eat a lot of curry. And roti.

Tuesday and Saturday are the days people in my settlement go to temple, and on those days we don't eat any meat. I'm pretty used to the schedule of training at this point, so I feel fairly settled. However, this doesn't have any implications for my actual settlement into my...um...settlement.  I'm still a far cry from being conversational with Hindi, and I doubt I'll be that much closer by the end of training in 3 weeks. I'm getting to know my host family and some of the neighbors better, which has helped my cultural education more so than my language. They all speak decent, if not good, English and tend not speak in Hindi when conversing with me. This is probably for the best though, namely because when people speak Hindi to me I can only decipher every 5th word...