As I was swinging in my hammock on a rainy evening last week in Aguacate, I was listening to an All Songs Considered podcast. The theme was Memorable Summer Songs or something like that, and one listener submitted this Neil Young gem. This song completely captured the moment I was having, and it was stuck in my head through the next two days of bushwacking through the jungle in the rain.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Bitter Melon
Remember the spiny-cucumber looking thing that I bought at the market last week? Well, Doug and I decided to try to incorporate it into a stir fry that night. After some googling, we found out that you are supposed to core it and eat the spiny-skin part. You can stuff it with ground meat and spices, or roast it. To start, we decided to boil it in salt water for a bit to soften the skin and cut down on the bitterness. We were going to throw it in the pan with the other veggies but decided to taste it first - and it is BITTER. The bitterness blooms on your tongue slowly and then threatens to suck every bit of moisture from your cheeks. Thank goodness we cooked it separately because it would definitely have ruined the rest of the meal. Doug did what he could, sauteeing it with roasted chili peppers and honey, but I couldn't handle it. Doug was a champ though, I think he ate most of it!
The websites we consulted were not conclusive on where it is native to. Oddly enough, the next night we were watching Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel (we were wishing it was Anthony Bourdain, but alas...) and Andrew Zimmern was in Jamaica, enjoying a nice meal with a Chinese-Jamaican family that included stuffed bitter melon! We were excited to see how it was prepared, and not surprised that it was popular in China - I'm definitely not an expert but it seems to me that the Chinese appreciate stronger flavors more than other cultures.
It was a fun culinary adventure, but probably not something I'll try again. Today at the market I bought a bag of roasted cacao beans; if we can find a way to winnow and grind them I plan on experimenting with homemade mole!
Aguacate: pop. 570 1/2
That's what the sign says as you drive into Aguacate village. It always cracks me up a little bit; someone with a sense of humor took a permanent marker to the otherwise weathered and rusty sign. Here's some more information on Aguacate village, and my time there.
I just returned this morning from several days of exploring for archaeological sites and....community interaction? community participation? I don't know what to call the relationship that I'm trying to build with Aguacate. Technically it's called "community archaeology", but most people still don't really get what I'm trying to do. Mostly I'm just answering questions and listening - I want people to get used to having me there, to getting to know what my project is about, what exactly I'm planning on doing when I come back in January. Working with different pairs of guys and staying with different families has made it possible for me to talk to new people with each visit.
For example, Alejandro, the guy whose house I was eating at this time (I stay with one family and eat with another), asked about January, how many people I would be hiring, etc. And he asked what was the most important thing that Aguacate could do for me. Seeing a perfect opportunity, I said that the most important thing was to make sure the sites that I'd been visiting didn't get looted. He sort of smiled, because that wasn't what he was expecting, I think. I explained that if I come back and there are new holes in all of the sites, that I have to go somewhere else, leaving people without work. Most of the mounds that I've seen have at least one looter's hole in them, but some holes really aren't very big, and people have disregarded the smaller mounds entirely, most likely because they don't perceive them as important enough to have any jade.
There is an understandable but disproportionate value placed on jade here - everyone has heard a story about someone in the next village over finding jade, selling it to a tourist and getting rich. The reality is that even if they did find a polychrome pot, or a piece of carved jade, they would sell it for a fraction of what the middleman would get, not to mention the art dealer/auction house/ebay seller. The sites I'm interested in, and the kind surrounding Aguacate, are smaller households that most likely will not have anything fancy enough to interest big spenders. Furthermore, looting and the antiquities market are closely tied to narcotics trafficking in Central America and Mexico. In case you haven't heard how that is turning out for local farmers, read this.
Anyways, as much as I tell everyone that I'm not looking for jade, I still worry that I'm going to come back in January to a bunch of looted sites. But, I've been preaching the conservation ethic while I'm there, so we'll see if it works! There are a lot of tricky ethical issues here (such as, archaeologists placing an overwhelming value on jade in the first place!) but I will get off my soapbox for now and tell you about the last few days.
I stayed with the Choc family, whose land I've been trying to get on since March. There is a mound in his cattle pasture that you can see from the road, but he won't let me check it out. Technically, he is on community land, and others that I've talked to are surprised that he can keep me from going there since the whole community agreed to work with me; I'm not going to push it. Anyways, his family was nice and welcoming, though the kids were much more annoying than my last visit. They're just curious, but when I arrived I was just in no mood to be stared at, poked, and followed around.
On Thursday we explored the low hills behind the village, some of which I'd been up before. There is one badly looted sites up there that I'd seen, and this week I saw one more possibility. I would love to dig test pits along those hills, since I suspect that there are low-lying mounds and middens (ancient trash deposits) there, including under some modern houses. Here's some evidence of that:
This is a metate that Mr. Hun found when he was digging a drain next to his house (those are his kids). It's a beautiful, well-worn metate that may be historic and not ancient, it's hard to tell. Still, it means that people have been living here for awhile! (His wife offered to sell this to us, by the way).
Here's a view of the village from the hilltop:
It poured rain all morning, but my attitude is, once you're wet, you're wet. Around late morning it started to get sunny, which felt amazing. We took a long walk out to an overgrown field and bushwacked to the base of this pretty isolated little hill. There were 2-3 small mounds on top, with looters pits, but also some interesting sherds and paving stones. I got kind of beat up that day - I slipped on a root and slammed the side of my thigh into a tree stump. It hurt while I was hiking but I didn't really think about it until I went to bathe in the river that evening and saw the bright purple bruise. Yikes. And then I stupidly disturbed a wasps' nest on top of one of the hills and got stung 5 times - once in the thigh (the other thigh) and 4 times on my left hand. It seriously hurt, and my middle finger and the back of my hand were grotesquely swollen - I really should have taken a picture of that. It's ok now though, just really itchy. In addition to the injuries, Thursday ended up being a long, hot afternoon; consequently I got the best night of sleep I'd had in over a month. When my hosts turned the lights out at 8:30, I was a goner.
On Friday Juan and Salvador took me down a farmer's road past one site that I'd already visited. We climbed a really steep hill that hadn't been cleared recently so it was covered in what they call "high bush" - large tropical trees and palms with not as much undergrowth. Just when I was getting frustrated and expecting nothing but a rocky outcrop for the effort, we arrived at the summit to find a good-sized mound, I'd say about 5 meters in height. It had a looter's pit in the back corner, but was relatively intact. There were two more small mounds on the summit of the hill that hadn't been touched. Here's a picture of the looter's pit:
I know it's really hard to see, which is why I'm not posting a lot of pictures this time! My backpack is sitting on a ledge where they dug a second pit. You're looking straight at the pit, where they've dismantled one corner of the building, which continues to the right of the photo. The hill drops off dramatically to the left, and from where I was precariously standing.
After taking pictures and drawing some sherds I found in the looter's pit, we hiked down the hill, where my guide, Juan, said there were two more small mounds. The first one was built against the steep hillside, with a small flat corridor separating it from the second mound. A huge retaining wall was built to support the second mound. It seems that there is also a modified terrace at the base of the retaining wall, that may have a small mound. This was the most exciting place I'd been - a minimally looted, multi-component site down the road from two other smaller, but unlooted, sites.
Finally, we stopped by this hill (the one in the middle distance with palms on it) that had two structures, one on the top and one on the side of the hill. Can you see Salvador chopping his way through the bush? Gives you an idea of what it's like to hike during the rainy season.
All in all, I had a very successful two days. I have now seen pretty much all there is to see right around the village (besides that damn cattle pasture!) plus two that are farther away. Of course, now that I'm leaving everyone has another site to show me, but mostly they are about an hour's walk away so I think I'll save those for the dry season. My goal this summer was to find sites that fulfill my research goals (households in this corridor that can tell me about daily life and sociopolitical identity in the past) and are convenient for the field school (ideally close to a road, not across the river with no bridge, etc.). After this trip, I feel satisfied with what I've seen, so now I'm back in PG for the next few days. I have some other logistical tasks in and around PG to take care of before I leave - such as getting back to Tumul K'in to talk to a carpenter about building shelves for the lab.
I have other thoughts and stories about my time in Aguacate, so I think I'll keep posting this week. During the first week of August Anna is coming down to PG (she's doing dissertation research in San Ignacio, 3 hours north of here) and we are going on a week-long Birthday Extravaganza to Guatemala! We have a loose itinerary, but the trip will undoubtedly include chicken buses, markets, volcanic lakes, colonial towns, and beer other than Belikin. Doug will be traveling with us, as is our friend Mark, a fellow archaeologist who shares the awesome birthday that is August 8th. Stay tuned for pictures from the Birthday Extravaganza!!!!!!
I just returned this morning from several days of exploring for archaeological sites and....community interaction? community participation? I don't know what to call the relationship that I'm trying to build with Aguacate. Technically it's called "community archaeology", but most people still don't really get what I'm trying to do. Mostly I'm just answering questions and listening - I want people to get used to having me there, to getting to know what my project is about, what exactly I'm planning on doing when I come back in January. Working with different pairs of guys and staying with different families has made it possible for me to talk to new people with each visit.
For example, Alejandro, the guy whose house I was eating at this time (I stay with one family and eat with another), asked about January, how many people I would be hiring, etc. And he asked what was the most important thing that Aguacate could do for me. Seeing a perfect opportunity, I said that the most important thing was to make sure the sites that I'd been visiting didn't get looted. He sort of smiled, because that wasn't what he was expecting, I think. I explained that if I come back and there are new holes in all of the sites, that I have to go somewhere else, leaving people without work. Most of the mounds that I've seen have at least one looter's hole in them, but some holes really aren't very big, and people have disregarded the smaller mounds entirely, most likely because they don't perceive them as important enough to have any jade.
There is an understandable but disproportionate value placed on jade here - everyone has heard a story about someone in the next village over finding jade, selling it to a tourist and getting rich. The reality is that even if they did find a polychrome pot, or a piece of carved jade, they would sell it for a fraction of what the middleman would get, not to mention the art dealer/auction house/ebay seller. The sites I'm interested in, and the kind surrounding Aguacate, are smaller households that most likely will not have anything fancy enough to interest big spenders. Furthermore, looting and the antiquities market are closely tied to narcotics trafficking in Central America and Mexico. In case you haven't heard how that is turning out for local farmers, read this.
Anyways, as much as I tell everyone that I'm not looking for jade, I still worry that I'm going to come back in January to a bunch of looted sites. But, I've been preaching the conservation ethic while I'm there, so we'll see if it works! There are a lot of tricky ethical issues here (such as, archaeologists placing an overwhelming value on jade in the first place!) but I will get off my soapbox for now and tell you about the last few days.
I stayed with the Choc family, whose land I've been trying to get on since March. There is a mound in his cattle pasture that you can see from the road, but he won't let me check it out. Technically, he is on community land, and others that I've talked to are surprised that he can keep me from going there since the whole community agreed to work with me; I'm not going to push it. Anyways, his family was nice and welcoming, though the kids were much more annoying than my last visit. They're just curious, but when I arrived I was just in no mood to be stared at, poked, and followed around.
On Thursday we explored the low hills behind the village, some of which I'd been up before. There is one badly looted sites up there that I'd seen, and this week I saw one more possibility. I would love to dig test pits along those hills, since I suspect that there are low-lying mounds and middens (ancient trash deposits) there, including under some modern houses. Here's some evidence of that:
This is a metate that Mr. Hun found when he was digging a drain next to his house (those are his kids). It's a beautiful, well-worn metate that may be historic and not ancient, it's hard to tell. Still, it means that people have been living here for awhile! (His wife offered to sell this to us, by the way).
Here's a view of the village from the hilltop:
It poured rain all morning, but my attitude is, once you're wet, you're wet. Around late morning it started to get sunny, which felt amazing. We took a long walk out to an overgrown field and bushwacked to the base of this pretty isolated little hill. There were 2-3 small mounds on top, with looters pits, but also some interesting sherds and paving stones. I got kind of beat up that day - I slipped on a root and slammed the side of my thigh into a tree stump. It hurt while I was hiking but I didn't really think about it until I went to bathe in the river that evening and saw the bright purple bruise. Yikes. And then I stupidly disturbed a wasps' nest on top of one of the hills and got stung 5 times - once in the thigh (the other thigh) and 4 times on my left hand. It seriously hurt, and my middle finger and the back of my hand were grotesquely swollen - I really should have taken a picture of that. It's ok now though, just really itchy. In addition to the injuries, Thursday ended up being a long, hot afternoon; consequently I got the best night of sleep I'd had in over a month. When my hosts turned the lights out at 8:30, I was a goner.
On Friday Juan and Salvador took me down a farmer's road past one site that I'd already visited. We climbed a really steep hill that hadn't been cleared recently so it was covered in what they call "high bush" - large tropical trees and palms with not as much undergrowth. Just when I was getting frustrated and expecting nothing but a rocky outcrop for the effort, we arrived at the summit to find a good-sized mound, I'd say about 5 meters in height. It had a looter's pit in the back corner, but was relatively intact. There were two more small mounds on the summit of the hill that hadn't been touched. Here's a picture of the looter's pit:
I know it's really hard to see, which is why I'm not posting a lot of pictures this time! My backpack is sitting on a ledge where they dug a second pit. You're looking straight at the pit, where they've dismantled one corner of the building, which continues to the right of the photo. The hill drops off dramatically to the left, and from where I was precariously standing.After taking pictures and drawing some sherds I found in the looter's pit, we hiked down the hill, where my guide, Juan, said there were two more small mounds. The first one was built against the steep hillside, with a small flat corridor separating it from the second mound. A huge retaining wall was built to support the second mound. It seems that there is also a modified terrace at the base of the retaining wall, that may have a small mound. This was the most exciting place I'd been - a minimally looted, multi-component site down the road from two other smaller, but unlooted, sites.
Finally, we stopped by this hill (the one in the middle distance with palms on it) that had two structures, one on the top and one on the side of the hill. Can you see Salvador chopping his way through the bush? Gives you an idea of what it's like to hike during the rainy season.
All in all, I had a very successful two days. I have now seen pretty much all there is to see right around the village (besides that damn cattle pasture!) plus two that are farther away. Of course, now that I'm leaving everyone has another site to show me, but mostly they are about an hour's walk away so I think I'll save those for the dry season. My goal this summer was to find sites that fulfill my research goals (households in this corridor that can tell me about daily life and sociopolitical identity in the past) and are convenient for the field school (ideally close to a road, not across the river with no bridge, etc.). After this trip, I feel satisfied with what I've seen, so now I'm back in PG for the next few days. I have some other logistical tasks in and around PG to take care of before I leave - such as getting back to Tumul K'in to talk to a carpenter about building shelves for the lab.
I have other thoughts and stories about my time in Aguacate, so I think I'll keep posting this week. During the first week of August Anna is coming down to PG (she's doing dissertation research in San Ignacio, 3 hours north of here) and we are going on a week-long Birthday Extravaganza to Guatemala! We have a loose itinerary, but the trip will undoubtedly include chicken buses, markets, volcanic lakes, colonial towns, and beer other than Belikin. Doug will be traveling with us, as is our friend Mark, a fellow archaeologist who shares the awesome birthday that is August 8th. Stay tuned for pictures from the Birthday Extravaganza!!!!!!
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Aguacate Village Odyssey
The night before heading to a remote village, I recommend rum and guacamoleLast week I spent about a week out in Aguacate village, where I was hiking to potential archaeological sites by day and staying with a lovely local family by night. I'll post a map I recently made (with the help of my lovely editorial assistant, Meg Kassabaum) of the are so you all know where I am.
You should be able to click to enlargeI arrived in Aguacate on Friday afternoon, since the bus leaves PG at 11:30. It was an uneventful ride, except I felt horrible the whole way. I was coughing a lot and felt mildly nauseous. I spent the afternoon getting settled at Domingo and Ipefenia's home, on a small hill at the very far end of the village. They have eight children between the ages of 21 and 6, all but one of whom are still living at home. I brought my own hammock, because last time I spent the night in the village the hammock I slept in was, of course, Maya-sized, not Claire-sized. Since I adore my hammock and have not gotten a lot of use out of it since 2005 I was looking forward to sleeping in it again. For all the doubters out there, let me tell you that hammock-sleeping is extraordinarily comfortable - the key is to sleep perpendicular across the hammock so that it stretches out and forms to your body, not end-to-end like you are on a pirate ship.
Domingo and Ipefenia's house. You can hear howler monkeys at nightI was eating at a house across the way to "spread the wealth". Ruthelia and Mariano were also very kind and gracious people who introduced me to several new culinary experiences. I'm kicking myself now for not bringing my camera with me, but I promise I will get better at that. Here are a few things that I ate at their house: corn and flour tortillas, of course; salty eggs fried in lard; grilled armadillo!; freshwater fish called machaca; canned sardines (ew); lots of rice; chicken caldo (stew); jippi jappa.
I should really do a longer post about village food, but briefly - the grilled armadillo was delicious and quite meaty underneath that shell; Mariano's dog caught it in the bush. I had it for several meals, including breakfast, which was fine but not ideal. The first evening was the best, when it was grilled and then topped with a tomato-based sauce. The machaca fish had a lot of meat on it too, which was light and tilapia-espque though it had a lot of teeny tiny bones. Jippi jappa is a plant in the palm family, whose shoots can also be dried and woven into baskets. When they cook it is like a very tender heart of palm spruced up with spices and sauce or broth.
On Saturday morning I went hiking with two men from the village. I was feeling pretty terrible but chalked it up to dehydration and pushed on. It turned out that they wanted to show me sites that I'd already seen, which was disappointing. There was one cave site that they knew of, so we explored that. There were some Late Classic period (AD 570-900) sherds scattered outside the entrance to the cave and a few that we found inside. I drew them and took pictures, but there was nothing extraordinary about them. Caves were sacred places and there are often huge water jars, burials, and other ancient artifacts left inside. We hiked up some hilltops surrounding the village so I could see if there were ancient mounds on top, but we didn't see anything.
I was exhausted when I got back to the house, looking forward to an early bedtime. Even though Aguacate has power, the day still starts at sunrise and ends soon after sunset. For some reason, my family didn't have power, so when I would get home from dinner between 6:30 and 7:00pm the oil lamp would be lit and everyone would be swinging in the hammocks, listening to the radio or just chilling. The lamp gets blown out at about 8:30; I would read by headlamp or listen to podcasts for another hour or so until I fell asleep. It was difficult to get used to, but feeling terrible in the evenings didn't hurt!
The second hike was a long one - two hours to my guides' milpa with a stop along the way to look at one mound, and then two hours back. According to my map, I think we walked about 14km roundtrip that day. The one mound had a few sherds but a big looters pit in it, of course. The milpa had some more recent pottery, which was interesting but not ancient, and there were no mounds (btw, when I say mounds I mean the remains of ancient buildings, most likely houses, that are collapsed and now shaped like mounds). So, also disappointing, but I had some interesting conversations with my guides and now I know what is down that long road at the end of the village!
After that day I was wiped out. Everyone I saw in the village looked at me with concern and asked if I was tired, did I feel alright. I absolutely did not. One of the kids accompanied me to the community health worker, who gave me Tylenol and cough syrup, and took my temperature (no fever, though I sure felt feverish). Everyone said I was sick because of the weather - it was getting rainier at night, and they say that when the weather changes you get sick. I think I just picked up a cold at the conference I went to, but I didn't argue!
Monday I had to cancel the hiking and exploring, unfortunately, because I was supposed to go with the school principal who I've really been wanting to get to know. I laid in my hammock all day and read (I was reading The Help - what a fabulous book!) and slept. On Tuesday I felt a little better, but things got postponed again because there someone's house burned down and the whole village picked Tuesday to help them rebuild, so there was no one to go hiking with me. Wednesday I thought I would take the bus back to PG, get healthy, and try again the following week. But then it rained so hard that the two creeks you have to cross to get to the highway both flooded, and stayed flooded all day long. In fact, it had been raining so hard at night that the bus couldn't get through on Monday either; so no one had been able to leave town since Saturday. We were all getting stir crazy - at that point at I had read The Help one and half times. Thursday afternoon we left, though we had to drive through a couple feet of water to get over the submerged bridge.
God willin' and the creek don't riseIt was a good visit in some ways - getting to know people, talk to them about my project, about how it could benefit the community, what kinds of sites I'm looking for, why digging at sites is destructive, etc. I'm also hearing all sorts of interesting stories about the Old Maya, as they are called around here, and the ancient sites. For example, Domingo told me that some guys in town found an old carved stone in the bush, and brought it back to the church. The next day it was gone; the men found it back where it had been originally. They moved it back to the church, but the stone wouldn't stay. So they left it out there - where, no one's really sure now, that was a generation ago.
The bad parts were the sickness, the rain and high river, and the mosquito and fly bites all over my legs. And the blisters from my new rubber boots that I walked 14km in! I feel like this is the start to a really great Maya-bluegrass song....
Very glad I bought these - it's wet and muddy here!Tomorrow I'm heading back out for another 5 days or so, weather permitting. I've spoken with the alcalde (the mayor) and he is going to help me get access to other parts of the community's land that I haven't been able to see yet (but I can see the mounds from the road, so I know something is there). So this week should be very productive and interesting - I'm just hoping the mounds aren't all totally looted.
The pictures are from one of my walks through town; I haven't posted any of the archaeology pictures, mostly because you can't really tell what they are pictures of, or they are just of random sherds that only the nerdiest would enjoy! If I get some good ones though, I'll post them.
Village scene; the fresh palm fronds are to thatch the new house to replace the one that burned down.
Family compound; the middle house is where I stayed during a trip in March
Welcome to the Aguacate Roman Catholic school!
Iguana painted over a window at the school
Another school muralMonday, July 18, 2011
Look what I found at the market!
I've been inspired by fellow grad student blogs - Sara's blog from Peru, and Doug's blogs about food and culture/politics. I have about three weeks left in Belize but I think I can squeeze some posting and pictures in!
For those of you who may not know what I'm doing here: I'm setting up a community archaeology dissertation project that involves collaborating with Tumul K'in Center of Learning (a Maya-run high school) and Aguacate village (a Q'eqchi' speaking Maya village). This summer involves laying the groundwork for a joint field school with Tumul K'in students and about a dozen or so UNC undergraduates. I'm making trips to the high school to hammer out logistics and spending time looking at the archaeological resources on Aguacate land.
At the moment I am recharging in Punta Gorda with my friend Doug (we were in the MA program together at USF), who is graciously letting me stay in his amazing purple house in PG:
As a side note - I realized the other day that this house has now facilitated the completion of at least 4 dissertations and 1 MA thesis focused on the Toledo district. Doug and his friend Jillian have been renting this place since 2007 and subletting it to various people coming through PG, some of whom have been researchers. Maybe it needs a good academic nickname? Anyways....
So, last week I was staying with a family in Aguacate, which was wonderful in some ways but difficult in others. Really the only difficulties were that I got a terrible cough and head cold that put me in my hammock for two days, and the rain that flooded two creeks we had to cross to get back to PG (as Punta Gorda is called around here). But everything else was great - my next blog will be about the trip, I promise! Right now I really have to get some other work done so I'll post it tonight or tomorrow.
For now, here's some cool things I found at the market this morning in PG:
This is called sorosi, or bitter melon; they are reminiscent of cucumbers except the skin looks like melted wax. I bought it because I have no idea what it is!! The lady said to peel it, boil it and then stir fry it. We'll probably add chili pepper, turmeric and curry powder. I'll let you know how it turns out.
Here's the rest of the haul
Oh, and these delicious cinnamon rolls I bought from a guy on a bike - hurray for second breakfast!
For those of you who may not know what I'm doing here: I'm setting up a community archaeology dissertation project that involves collaborating with Tumul K'in Center of Learning (a Maya-run high school) and Aguacate village (a Q'eqchi' speaking Maya village). This summer involves laying the groundwork for a joint field school with Tumul K'in students and about a dozen or so UNC undergraduates. I'm making trips to the high school to hammer out logistics and spending time looking at the archaeological resources on Aguacate land.
At the moment I am recharging in Punta Gorda with my friend Doug (we were in the MA program together at USF), who is graciously letting me stay in his amazing purple house in PG:
As a side note - I realized the other day that this house has now facilitated the completion of at least 4 dissertations and 1 MA thesis focused on the Toledo district. Doug and his friend Jillian have been renting this place since 2007 and subletting it to various people coming through PG, some of whom have been researchers. Maybe it needs a good academic nickname? Anyways....
So, last week I was staying with a family in Aguacate, which was wonderful in some ways but difficult in others. Really the only difficulties were that I got a terrible cough and head cold that put me in my hammock for two days, and the rain that flooded two creeks we had to cross to get back to PG (as Punta Gorda is called around here). But everything else was great - my next blog will be about the trip, I promise! Right now I really have to get some other work done so I'll post it tonight or tomorrow.
For now, here's some cool things I found at the market this morning in PG:
This is called sorosi, or bitter melon; they are reminiscent of cucumbers except the skin looks like melted wax. I bought it because I have no idea what it is!! The lady said to peel it, boil it and then stir fry it. We'll probably add chili pepper, turmeric and curry powder. I'll let you know how it turns out.
Here's the rest of the haul
Oh, and these delicious cinnamon rolls I bought from a guy on a bike - hurray for second breakfast!
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