The problem with a guarantee is that you can't be sure whose you can trust. Apparently, no longer mine. I was hoping to have pictures of at least an unsuccessful fishing trip to show you this month, and I guess, in a way, I do. Although, if you never actually go fishing I don't think you can classify it as a fishing trip...
That being said, here's a picture of the windmill in the fishing village I went to in an attempt to get some fishing in:
I was unable to locate anyone who could take me out in a boat, or for that matter, even take me to where the water was. I'd have walked myself, but I heard it was a fair distance off, and I didn't know the way. So, for two days I sat and watched the windmill turn and wondered what it would be like to fish for christmas.
So for actual Christmas I decided to head in to Diego and put failed fishing expeditions out of my mind. Of course it helped to have fun traditional Christmas activities to take part in at the time, like the lighting of the Star Wars LED balloons! Thanks to a most gracious care package, we had some lights to help celebrate our festival and everyone had fun inflating and throwing them at each other in the dark.
As one of the balloons met an early and inevitable end before the LED died, I came up with the inspired idea to use it as our Christmas tree topper, and so we had a great addition to our little festival with many lights!
After heading back from Christmas I decided to check in on the desk building and I was happy to see some finished desks waiting to got for the kids to use when they returned at the start of the new trimester in a few days. It's been quite a process getting them built, but they do keep appearing, and with any luck all of them will be built before I have to leave the country.
With a little time bit of time left to myself before classes started back up, I decided to check up on my corn farm! I planted some corn seeds sent to me from the US with the help of a neighbor. Here you can see we were in the midst of finishing the fence to keep the cows out. Unfortunately, I couldn't finish the fence, but I've left it in the capable hands of my neighbor who told me he would finish the work in my absence.
Here you can see some of the stalks beginning to come up. I'm excited for some American sweet corn, which is almost entirely different in taste and texture from the corn available here in country. And, I will get to share this with the people around me too which is also very exciting.
My green thumb continues this month with the planting of my orange tree. Its root system looked to be big enough that I figured it could survive on its own, so in the ground it went. Since I planted it, its grown another 8 or 9 leaves! As long as the rains keep coming, I'll be sure to have a nice looking tree to pass on to the next person who moves in after I go!
Something a little more temporary is my green beans, and boy have they shot up! After I returned from Christmas vacation I was surprised to see them so big. They've taken over my fence, and I couldn't be happier about it. I'm very excited to harvest some beans in the next month, so look forward to more picture and maybe even a good recipe soon.
Of course, I couldn't leave out my wonderful rosemary bush either. The thing is a champ, and with the rains, its been getting pretty huge. I am going to have to start looking for opportunities to add rosemary to my cooking so I can harvest some of the leaves and make a great dish.
Speaking of cooking...
I made pancakes for the first time. In fact I made way too many pancakes for the first time, but no worries, I passed some on to neighbors to deal with the excess. I used a simple recipe for the batter, 1 cup flour, 1 egg (only duck eggs available, but it got the job done), 1 cup milk (coconut milk, no other kind available) and 1 spoon of cinnamon sugar. Of course, not knowing how many pancakes that would make I tripled the recipe for safety and found myself flooded in pancakes. To top them I drizzled some honey on top and enjoyed immensely!
Another new creation I came up with is this, Salt Fish with Cinnamon Sugar Grits. The Malagasy people salt fish to preserve it or long periods, so it is readily available and I usually avoid it because it is like eating a brick of salt most of the time, but I finally decided to see what I could do with it and boiled it to pull as much of the salt out as I could, and hopefully reconstitute the fish to some extent. Success! Add some grits with a little sweetness to counteract the remaining salt and it was a great meal.
While dried and salted fish was the only ocean animal I got to see in person this month, I did have a few other interesting encounters otherwise.
Here is a tenrec along with her four newborn babies. The local kids discovered her in this tire and called me over to see. She seemed a little nervous with all the kids around, but they put her back after a little while, and hopefully now there'll be a family of tenrecs running around by my house fighting off all the other undesirable rodents.
Speaking of fighting rodents, here is a hawk. As I was walking along the road one morning a few of my students were sitting by a table under a small awning and called me over. Upon approach I saw said hawk, which they had tethered and are keeping as a pet. I don't know exactly what they plan to do with the hawk, but at the very least I got to see it up close and in person. A beautiful bird that will hopefully be put to a better use than just dinner.
Not that hawks aren't cute, but I don't think I'd be able to make it without a puppy picture. This sweet girl was hanging out with me for my two days sitting on a bench and not fishing, so at least I wasn't alone the whole time. She was a little shy at first, but once she realized what ear scratching was, it became hard to keep her away.
She also had a friend in this baby sheep. The farmer who owned the sheep took good care of her as she has some sort of condition with her eyes. Every morning he took her out of her cage and comforted her as he applied eye drops in each eye, and then bottle fed her to make sure she had enough to eat. The sheep would then wonder around very cautiously as she couldn't see very well, and when she'd run into a person, they would turn her around and send her on her way. All told a very sweet girl and surprisingly fluffy.
Hopefully she makes it and gets through her eye condition, but as I've come to learn, most life on this island is tough, and I mean that in many senses of the word.
Like this tree. I saw it on a walk through the woods past an old abandoned colonial-era post office. As you can see the tree has rooted in the roof stones of the building! Truly a beautiful sight, and somewhat representative of some of the things that can happen here where the old is left to fade away and become something new and unexpected. Maybe its not the way it would be done in other countries, but it certainly leads to interesting discoveries right where you might least expect them.
For now it's back to my house, and back to school, and hopefully back to something new and fun. I'll be sure to let you know when it happens.
