01/19/2010
Groundnut Soup
January 19, 2010
Feeding an American
The first order of business after being met at the airport by Ranjan Hettiarachchi, chair of the department of media studies at the U. of Colombo, was to feed me. It was six a.m. I had arrived at 4:30a.m. It had taken an hour and a half to pass through customs and collect my bags. We hopped into a Range Rover-like vehicle made in China and our driver had pulled away as a policeman shouted at us for stopping in a no-stop zone.
As we made our way through the streets of Colombo, I was reminded of Accra and the low buildings with kades, street-side market stalls, and tiny shops lining the roughly paved streets. We headed out of the city. I was surprised by how quickly the city limits turned to rural farming villages. Paddy fields and rubber plantations dotted the landscape. Coconut, jackfruit, banana, plantain, and mango trees grew like weeds in just about every available space. The huge oddly shaped jackfruit hung like tumors while giant orange clusters of coconuts were interspersed.
The first question after how was your flight:
“Have you eaten Sri Lankan food before?”
“No.”
There was a hurried conversation in Sinhala between Ranjan and our driver. I quickly realized that they were discussing what do you feed an American.
“I love spicy food. I have a Thai friend, Chananya, who makes curry in the traditional way. What she calls Thai hot.”
A smile spread across Ranjan’s face. “You like hot?”
“Yes, hot. The hotter the better.”
More discussion.
We drove in silence for an hour. According to Ranjan the Sri Palai campus of the University of Colombo was 30k from the city. But with the winding, unimproved roads, the drive was much longer than the 30 minutes I had predicted.
After some time, we pulled over to a small food shop. A window was rolled down and conversation with proprietor ensued. He seemed to be shaking his head. Ranjan rolled up his window and we sped off.
At 8 a.m., we pulled off the main road into what appeared to be a residential community surrounded in dense vegetation. Along this track the driver turned at a sign that said “Guest House” in English. I figured this must be where I’m staying. As we drove up the driveway through the dense brush, the truck turned into a courtyard with a one-storey colonial type building spread out around it. On the wide porch that wrapped around two sides were wicker lounge chairs that seemed to come out of a 1940s film set during the British Empire. Our driver stopped at the front entrance. The place was desolate. It seemed at first as if the place had been abandoned. The truck idled as we waited.
Finally, Ranjan went inside. A minute or so later he returned.
“Let’s have breakfast.”
We entered an unlit hall with tables and chairs scattered around. Someone came out and turned on the television. A Sri Lankan cartoon played loudly.
According to Ranjan, the guest house was owned by the Tourist Board and was not a guest house, per se, as it was a restaurant. But not one that seemed to get a lot of business. While we waited for our meal, out of nowhere six old men in saris appeared. They swept the courtyard, the porch. They stood at the edge of the room and stared at us.
“This is not where tourists come,” explained Ranjan.
Our meal consisted of cold string hoppers (tangles of steamed rice noodles), coconut sambal, dahl, and mackerel curry. Ranjan made sure that the waiter brought out a fork and spoon for me, but our driver and Ranjan ate with their hands. After a couple of bites with my fork, I felt foolish and used my right hand as well. Ranjan seemed amused that I ate the food.
He kept asking me, “It’s not too hot?”
And when I replied that it was not hot at all. He seemed skeptical. I suspect that he told the waiter to make the sambal and curry very mild because I could barely detect any hot pepper.
Later, after we had arrived on campus and driven up the partially paved track to the top of a mountain where my house was located, Ranjan, the driver, and Samantha, the caretaker/house person, drove me to a food market in the tiny village of Harana where we spent more than an hour buying food for two days. The difficulty was that no one seemed to know what an American might like to eat, but at the same time they weren’t inclined to ask me. We roamed up and down the aisles of the small store with Ranjan and Samantha discussing heatedly what should be purchased. One of the difficulties was that even though I had a kitchen with a gas burner, there was no refrigerator. Anything that might spoil could not be purchased.
At the strangest times, show tunes can pop into my head. In the food shop the song “What to do with a girl named Maria” from the Sound of Music” began it’s endless loop that would not end until I fell asleep three hours later after being awake for almost 48 hours straight. But the lyrics were changed to “What do you feed an American”.
After much discussion, we came away with canned tuna, two frozen chicken drumsticks for lunch and dinner, rice, coconut powder, coconut oil, Ceylon tea, and spices. Then we crossed the road dodging a large parade of people in support of their presidential candidate. The road was lined with military, armed with AK-47 and those menacing banana clips dangling from the stock. We squeezed through a group of marchers and stopped at the fruit and vegetable stand. Ranjan bought leeks, potatoes, carrots, green beans, cucumbers, eggplants, hot peppers, kaffir lime leaves, limes and onions. Enough to feed me for a week. The only fruit the stall had was small bananas so we bought two dozen of these as well.
That afternoon Samantha prepared eggplant in coconut curry, a carrot/onion/hot pepper sambal, and a chicken in a dark gravy. Though the food was mild, Samantha kept worrying if it was too hot, despite my assurances that I loved my food hot.
No matter how much I assured them I wanted authentic Sri Lankan dishes, they didn’t believe me until lunch two days later when Ranjan and I had food brought in from the canteen. As the two of us sat at the table eating with our hands, three faculty members and Samantha stood around and provided a commentary on my eating in Sinhala.
