flotsam & jetsam

Over summer, it is a weekend ritual to have morning tea with Tom’s parents and stretch our grey matter with the Saturday Weekend Liftout “Wordsmith”: a box with nine letters, from which can be made one nine-letter word and a number of smaller words. Tom’s mum presented us with an envelope full of wordsmith sheets to be rationed at one per week over the season. With brain matter stimulated, we sustain ourselves on almond milk chocolate smoothies for one blissful day of blending. It is Mother’s Day in Aus, but the phone tower is broken so we can’t send love messages to the mums at home.

There are only four private cars in the village, with regular transport by foot, bicycle, or scooter. We walk or ride our pushies everywhere, so it is exciting to join friends, Cath and Les, on an outing in their rented ute. The mission is to gather driftwood and cow shit from the south coast, both of which I plan to use to enhance to garden. Our previous driftwood hunts have been by bicycle, and there in lies the limiting factor of what can be salvaged.
Over the headland, the coast bares the full brunt of the onshore trade winds and I revel in the wild and salt laden air. We find a plastic tub with the words “Helinika Broome” and a phone number printed on it. We imagine ringing them to ask if they would like to come and retrieve their tub from the flotsam. The beach is littered with driftwood and my eyes dance like a kid in Toyworld; the creative potential is endless – chair, sculpture, plant holder, mobile, towel rail – every piece screams to be collected. The cow shit is not so vocal or enticing. Cath is collecting thongs for a collage. She fills two cement bags with multicoloured rubber in varying degrees of decay. Tom has a crazy idea about using the thong bounty as roof insulation. I will file that one away for Armageddon.

bananarama

Our tropical produce garden has begun with the gift of five small banana trees. A local girl carried them for an hour on her scooter. The compost bucket is steaming, in readiness to feed the hungry young plants. It's Saturday and we have polished off the 100 bananas bought at the market on Tuesday, so we look forward to the day when we can pick directly from the back yard.

Wellam, the electricity boss, must have fallen asleep on the switch as we have unexpected power in the middle of the day. I whip out the fastest cacao and banana smoothie possible, fearing a blackout at any moment.

A delicious and cooling way to deal with our glut of papaya is blended with fresh ginger, frozen, then reblended into a smooth granita. Who needs ice-cream?

baba ganoush

Market day again, and our plan is to split up and pounce early. I am after lemons and Tom is on the search for avocados and green bananas. We have success with lemons, oranges and bananas, but no avos. We ordered twenty to be sent over from the mainland; if, and in what condition they arrive is yet to be seen (note; they never arrived). Tom has bought a parang (machete) to begin coconut-opening lessons, and I lash out on four sarongs to cut up and sew into a mattress cover for our patio daybed. The mattress manufacturer’s taste in fabric is consistent with Indo kitch, and the bright nylon blue and yellow flower print has got to go.

Today is the third day without a phone signal and internet connection. Just when you get comfortable with something, an unknown force rips it away. Sweet demonstration of attachment causing suffering.

Finally, we manage to find someone keen enough to spend half a day scraping paint of our kitchen floor. We foolishly trusted the claim on the Indonesian cement paint that it would be “hard and long wearing.” Within a week, it was peeling off and looking like a crazy Picasso. The options were to hit it with a grinder, filling every orifice of house and self with cement dust, or find a patient local willing to scrape it off with a parang.

Tonight's raw gourmet delight is tempe open "sandwiches" with baba ganoush, salad and alfafa sprouts. For dessert I make a chocolate macaroon mixture from the almond milk meal and mush it up with bananas.

Raw Baba Ganoush

Ingredients
4 eggplant
apple cider vinegar
3/4 C tahini
4 cloves garlic
1/4 C lemon juice
1 T garam masala/curry powder

Method
1. Peel & chop eggplant into cubes
2. Cover with water and soak for 1 hour (asian eggplant do not require salting)
3. Drain off water, cover eggplant with apple cider vinegar and soak for 1 hour
4. Combine in food processor with tahini, garlic, lemon juice and garam masala

rock on

There are 40 plus blokes on the block next door building a rock fence. From 7am until 6pm, it is a cacophony of hammer on rock. Chip, chip, bash, bash, chip, chip. The laughter and banter between them is insistent, however as they are speaking Delha, the local dialect, we don’t understand a word. Delha is a vowel driven language, with many words totally deplete of consonants. Any local under 70 years old is bi-lingual, using Bahasa Indonesia to talk to us, or to someone from another region. Unfortunately, their preference to speak Delha between themselves means we miss the immersion effect that accelerates learning a new language.

Dry stone walls are standard throughout the village, in part to define boundaries, but mainly to keep out the pigs and goats that roam freely. In reality, unless the wall is 6 foot high, the goats enjoy the challenge and jump straight over. The pigs have a harder time of it, and try to head butt through the gate.

Our front wall serves as a grandstand. Not only do spectators get to watch the construction, they get to watch me doing utterly normal things that are strangely captivating.

cinderella never had it so good

I am on my hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor with steel wool to remove the last remnants of paint and knife scrapings. Listening to Erkhart Tolle, “A New Earth”, on the ipod, in an attempt to deem the task more meaningful and satisfying. Me ego is having a field day with the tedium of the chore.