Costa Rica Wrap-Up & Plans For March!

February was so short!!!! Well....since I gave up coffee for the month, the mornings of February did tend to ddrrrrraaaaaagggggggg, but overall, it went by so fast!

I enjoyed my pleasant day-dream vacation in Costa Rica this month. I can honestly say I've thought about living in a treehouse every day since my blog about Finca Bellevista, and even the crazy bright colored bugs have grown on me as I've looked at more and more pictures. Costa Rica's "pura vida" lifestyle is pretty enticing and I very much hope to visit one day.  I definitely want to take a zip-line tour over the canopy of one of the cloud forests, and I'd love to see how my attempt at gallo pinto stacks up...and maybe to take a cooking class:)

Studying Costa Rica was definitely a departure from my time with the Congo, and I must admit I had a form of culture shock switching out of thinking about some of the heavier subject matters discussed in my January blogs.  Life in the Congo is so different from my lifestyle, which made studying their customs and way of life fascinating. At the same time, I felt a lot of sadness for the unfortunate and, at times, unconscionable situations that many Congolese people face. To switch from reading current news stories about rape being used as a weapon of war in the Congo to seeing headlines about Costa Rica as a leader in environmental policy and being a top tourist destination was about as drastic a change as possible.

It was really heartening to learn about the "Switzerland of Central America" (they abolished their military in 1949!) and to marvel at the beauty of their well-preserved ecosystems.  I felt inspired to take a second look at the land on which I live - I've tried to more appreciate the plants and creatures around me (even the darn green parrots that hang out in a tree on my street and squawk up a storm).  I also really really loved the gallo pinto I made on feast night and the Lizano sauce I bought - I will absolutely continue enjoying Costa Rican food!!!!

All in all - I had a great month immersing myself in Costa Rica!

Soooooo, are you ready to hear where I'm armchair traveling to this month????.........Korea!!!!!!!

Congo: Ant invasions!!!

I just read part of The Poisonwood Bible where there is an ant invasion that absolutely creeped me out. eeekkkkk....makes my skin crawl!!!! Cousin-Roomate and I had our own bug invasion (on a much smaller scale) a few years ago when we had a fly invasion in our old apartment - we killed 150 in a night and it was the closest I've ever been to being in a horror movie. Sooooo, with that being said, the ant invasion in the book was plague level and completely terrifying! In the novel, a character describes the invasion by saying: "Every surface was covered and boiling, and the path like black flowing lava in the moonlight. Dark, bulbous tree trunks seethed and bulged. The grass had become a field of dark daggers standing upright, churning and crumpling in on themselves." That sounds absolutely terrifying. I tried to find pictures or videos on line of ant invasions in the Congo, or even anywhere in Africa, and had little luck. That might be for the best...I have a feeling ant invasion scenes could be the stuff of nightmares for me. No thanks! It does make me wonder why there is no footage though. I suppose ants don't have regular migratory patterns, so you couldn't really guess where they would attack next. It also probably has to do with weather patterns I'd imagine, and I'd doubt many people in the villages would have any recording devices to capture imagery at the moment...although, maybe I'm misjudging the spread of technology to the Congo. Anyyyyways....I guess I can see why there isn't much footage available.

It was definitely interesting to read about though. The ants, which the locals in the book call Nsongonya, attacked at night. Man, that would make it so much worse to be woken in the middle of the night by ants biting you and invading your room and bed...eeeuuughh. The whole village immediately fled for the river, basically the only safe place. When they came back they found animal bones with all the flesh eaten off.

I wonder how often invasions of the magnitude happen?

The Congo: Fufu for everyone!

Right now I'm reading Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible - a novel about a campmeeting Evangelical pastor uprooting his family and moving them to the Congo for an ill advised attempt to prostletize 1960's Belgian Congo. I've enjoyed being transported by Kingsolver's vivid descriptions, and the culture shock the characters experience is far beyond any other similar story I have read recently.

I know basically nothing about African culture in general, let alone in the Congo, so I figured I'd begin my armchair traveling in this south central African nation. Haha...well, just in looking up maps of the Congo, I've already learned something I didn't know (a sign of how un-knowledgeable I am about geography and world events) - there's not just one Congo right now - there's the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the neighboring Republic of Congo. Ok, adding that to my list of things to research a bit more....good thing I started this project!!!

One of the things that caught my attention in the book was the description of a staple food item - fufu. I know I know, of course I am writing about food before anything else...it is what usually interests me first/most about other cultures! Anyways, fufu is mentioned in Kingsolver's book as being an essential part of the Congolese diet, and it is a gluey paste derived (after a ton of work) from a giant tuber. See photo below:

After the arduous work of digging the tubers (known as manioc) up, soaking them in the river, drying them in the sun, and pulverizing them, creating a dough of sorts, then the pasty substance is either steamed or put into soups.

One of the characters in the book refers to how fufu is one of the only dependable and readily available sources of food, to the extent that the word fufu becomes another word for food, and anything else is considered something somewhat extra-ordinary.

Well, I'm going to try out some Congolese recipes, but I doubt I'll be able to find any manioc to try out making fufu....plus it sounds SUPER hard to make! If anyone knows of any restaurants in SoCal that have food from the Congo, let me know!