Green Lights, Baseball Bats, getting fat.

         We are preparing for an upcoming party.  Thanksgiving, but really more then just the American one.  A house full of boys from 8 to 18 have been working each day building their house plumbing, electricity, roofing, gardening on and on.  It is school summer holidays and they are expected to work from 7 till noon each day and then they are free to what ever they want.  Surprisingly enough most choose to come back to work, house building, after their midday football game.  I had a funny thought that most parents when there kids make a stick figure house they put it on their fridge, we live in ours!  But this fiesta is really Thanksgiving, it is saying thanks to all the boys for doing such a good job and working so hard.  We told them that they could request whatever meat they wanted, (clean of course).  So we have orders for steaks chicken and goat.  We are putting on a huge spread for them that I am sure will rival any American dinner, (Jo thinks she is in oven heaven!  Much to my delight I might add).  Since it is summer here it is more like a 4^th of July BBQ.  We have also invited our widows, another kids center of an American lady named Lee, then many of the American ex-pat community.  I even told the Mormons to bring it on and our kids would take them on in baseball.  They hesitated so not sure what is going to become of that.  Preparing for this on John’s end I have been trying to get the atmospheric lighting up and shinning.  We have installed 8 exterior lights around the property, another 6 to go before the party.  It’s great, Joao (13) has become the chief electrician showing the other boys how to mount, run and wire the lights (he and Juli had been helping me wire the house as well).   Most of the lights are halogen lights shinning up into the Mango and Cashew trees.  This gives a great effect like these green clouds floating just above the ground illuminating the area in our completely dark neighborhood (most of our neighbors don’t even have electricity the nearest street light is 300 meters away.  Going the other direction the nearest street light is miles away).  One of the little kids, Ze I think, tonight was running back and forth through the lit areas for a good half hour singing “It’s beautiful outside!  It’s beautiful outside!”  It has brought about a distinct change in their behavior.  On moonless nights one couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face and the kids are terrified of the dark.  There is a very strong belief in ghosts, goblins and the like.  It is common for me riding at night on my bike with my head lamp to terrify people (mostly adults) thinking they are being approached by a ghost.  My nick name in one neighbor hood that I always pass through is ‘phantasma’, ghosty.  So during the day when I ride in they will call out me phantasma, phantasma.  Then at night on my return trip the same people will flee in total panic screaming if I turn towards them and ride towards them when the call out to me.  Yes I know, I have a sick since of humor, life’s joys are simple.  There is also a bit of a story that ghosts will go up in the branches and shake the mango trees for the others to gather on the ground.  Why nobody asks the question ‘why are the mangos still on the ground then?’  You should have seen the dumfounded silence the first time I asked that question.  ‘If the ghosts can’t pick up the mangos how can they shake the branches?’  (you can just see it on their faces ‘ya he’s got a point… but I still think its ghosts’)  It is a bit odd though, I guess it just hits that certain temperature at night (usually 2 or 3 in the morning) and within seconds a huge number of mangos will fall out of the trees all at once, so you will wake up to this machine gun like fire, I do have to say that the first couple of times it happened it freaked me out, the boys screaming ‘there are ghosts in the trees, there are ghosts in the trees!!.  But the boys are climbing trees at night (with the ghosts) getting mangos at night now, just because they can.  They obviously have a joy about them going back and forth rather then a panicked dash.

         We were donated a case full of baseball stuff years ago which has be come a favorite sport of many of the boys.  A couple nice aluminum bats as well.  One of them has hit a few too many home runs (6’s in cricket) and has been retired with many ‘wrinkles’ in its surface.  The other bat was a little kids bat which was like trying to eat peas on the back side of a fork.  So we decided to make our own bats.  They have come out various sizes and shapes- and even names.  My bat with a slight bend in it is called ‘wild thing’ in memory of Jarius.  Another that looks like a cave mans dating tool (smack them over the head with the knobbed branch and drag them to the cave by the hair) has been named ‘Barabbas’.   Then another is called Meredith  (I think it’s Freudian).  Many others with various connotations… even a cricket bat, But my story is this--- because of all the thieving that we under go all the bats don’t return to the baseball equipment case, but tend to be leaned up against a wall, in a corner or next to a bed waiting for someone to just try it… (while we are awake anyway).  I’m still the only one that lives full time at the property, I had gone over to the other place get my supper at the old place leaving our green clouds floating in the darkness by themselves.  After I had grilled my garlic bread and dished out my beans I headed over to green heaven, leaving everyone else at the old place.  With in seconds of arriving here a crazy drunk came staggering down the road just by the new place yelling, kind of singing badly at the top of his lungs.  I have no idea what he was going on about it was all in dialect.  Next thing I know I hear a herd of elephants coming running at me.  I look and see a bunch of kids 8 to 14 running with Barabbas, Wild Thing, Old Wrinkles and Mr Cricket in hand to defend my honor in their new found green cloud courage.  Now the disparaging thing is they mistook, crazy drunk singing badly in dialect at the top of his lungs, as me calling for help… so much for my enunciated Portuguese. They were as surprised to see me sitting at my computer as I was to see this underage lynching mob coming my way (isn’t it your bed time?).  After a good laugh at each other, the green cloud warriors returned bravely home and I sat and pondered how cool it is that I have a group of pint sized men that storm out with baseball bats to defend our home.  I guess we’ve watched Lord of the Rings too many times.

         I forgot to put this letter on my memory stick so you get the post party letter as well.  Our party was a great success we had about 50 people come and fill their bellies full.  We played baseball (the mormons were a no show) a bit of volleyball and made several new friends.  Many of the Americans that came were new and I had not met them before.  The others that have been here but rarely get to see.  The kids got to sample all this new food that they have never had before.  Jo made cashew pies to a pecan pie recipe, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, but they were a bit different because they were sweet potatoes rather then yams. We had cashew peanut butter cookies, and chocolate chip cashew cookies.  I have no idea what else was there, I was manning the BBQ after the baseball game and the game was called because of darkness so I didn’t get a good look at the food.  By the time I had cooked all the meat all the other stuff was gone!  So I was basically a carnivore that night and we had plenty of it!  Turkey, beef sausages, steaks, chicken, hamburgers… the boys I think had at least one piece of each thing so they all filled their bellies… but, but, we had the typical question… where is the rice!?!  Some in this culture feel if you haven’t had rice, you haven’t eaten.

         You may have noticed that I mentioned cashews a lot, we have several trees on our property that are giving a good harvest this year.  So we are roasting cashews nearly daily now.  It is a pretty weird plant all in all.  The fruit looks like an apple the taste is not really comparable to any other that I know of.  But it is thin skinned like an apple the meat is not as firm nor crisp, a bit fibrous (but not like the mangos).  It is very juicy and usually need a good face wipe when your done, maybe even change of shirt if you didn’t bend over a bit when you first bit into it.  The nut is on the outside and dangles from the bottom of the apple nearly half the size of the apple.  It looks like an appendix gone wrong.  Now you can’t merely crack and eat this nut, it’s toxic… cyanide I’m told, and in no small measure.  You have to roast it first.  You get a nice flaming hot fire going then put the cashews in John’s homemade Cashew roaster (basically a wire basket with long handle, kind of reminds me of a very porous bed warmer…ouch don’t get into bed with that!)  Put on your heavy leather gloves and stand back at the end of the handle.  The nuts start sweating and sputtering nearly right away.  The gas/liquid is very flammable (they say inflammable here in Africa) and you don’t want to be anywhere near the basket, thus the leather gloves and pan handle.  The handle is 30 inches 750mm long and you wouldn’t want to cook these things with out the gloves I should have made it longer!!  These things turn into a literally roaring ball of fire, with solar flares that could get your gloves.  With the bedpan handle and at arms length you can still feel the heat on your face and the vibrations of them popping and exploding.  This is just cooking two hand fulls, say 100 cashews!!  In about a minute they will have burned up the toxins and burn out.  I dip them in water, other wise they just remain smoldering coals.  Then return then to the side of the fire to dry out the water and finish off the cooking.  The tricky part is to burn up all the toxins with out turning the cashew itself into charcoal.  But also make sure the cashew itself is cooked.  Then you take off the gloves to shell the charred husk and get really black and sooty to find the nice, (hopefully) white nut. As you are munching on the successful product you think to yourself , this would have killed me just two mins ago!!! (Is there any residue left on my fingers!?!?)  After a few mins everyone is happy, talking with their mouthful, black hands and face.  Grace especially who has been wandering from person to person asking them to give up their final products to a little smiling, cheek stuffed, black smeared face.  Who could resist.

         Just as fun as cooking them… is the harvest… CASHEW APPLE WARS!!!  They are great fun, they don’t hurt, really juicy and make a great messy splat when you plug someone.  It’s kind of like grenades –pull the pin (the nut) and chuck, then ssssppllooottt!!  The goats don’t like them so they are everywhere!! We had a unfortunate misunderstanding the other day.  I was with the boys and had about 2-3 buckets full, we were preparing a secret invasion of the ‘Dave forces’.  Then a couple of middle aged guests came walking up with Dave.  I said to the boys ‘don’t plug the strangers’ … they misunderstood…  When it was all over with, the slower of the two guests had cashew apple skin dangling off his glasses.  The guy didn’t stand a chance-- he was surrounded nowhere to run… many of the kids were very good shots.    The reason he came over, we later found out, was to tell us he wanted to start tithing some of his family’s business’ profits to Kedesh…  easy come, easy go. He took it quit well, all in good humor.  He stuck to his original intention, cleaned off his glasses, (shirt, pants, shoes) and purposed his offer.  That really could have gone wrong!

         But alas the war days are over… we are beating our fruit into jam, puree our grenades into juice, Jo is our piece maker, piece of pie, piece of cake, piece of jam and toast pieces of chocolate and nuts in your cookies.  It’s horrible!  Do you have any idea how hard it is to ride my bike into town now?!?  Oh ya you thought ‘John is getting fat’  No!!! Jo has cookies in the oven or some other sort of something I may miss out on if I leave.  Biques or Kedesh???? Biques or Kedesh!!!