Following My Call: My Journey to the Island: Let's Get Cookin'

I have been helping cook for large groups since I could walk. I don’t remember it, but my mom says that I started helping cook at church as soon as I could put salt and pepper shakers on the tables. As I grew up, I graduate to helping chop things, make lemonade, serve the food, and everything else in between. Sometimes, I am even allowed to add the garlic (I am known for adding too much garlic). Here at Masombahoaka the women cook together for groups of visitors too. Last month, I helped to wash dishes and serve rice to whoever walked in the door at church, and this week I have been helping to prepare meals for a group of visitors to Masomabahoaka. We have a group of vahiny (visitors) here for a two day meeting, they are staying in the dormitories that students used to stay in and the teachers are working together to prepare the meals.

So, after arriving just in time to help wash dishes last night after dinner, I decided I would wake up early this morning to cook breakfast. My alarm went off at 4:45, I quickly brushed my teeth and grabbed my lamba ohany (similar to an apron) and headed to the kitchen here at Masombahoaka. Having forgotten about ‘gasy time (again) I was the first one there, but the others arrived soon after, wearing their lambas and bandanas (not to keep the hair out of the food, but because they had just woken up and had yet to do their hair.) Instead of beginning with chopping vegetables, as we often do when we cook at church in Minnesota, we started with lighting the fires. 4 fires, one for rice, one for loaka (side dish, this morning was meatballs), one for coffee and one for tea. And of course, there was the far too common, “oops, we better run to the market” situation. After all of the visitors ate everyone who helped to cook sat down and ate together. Sure, it wasn’t stew or potato soup, and there weren’t any bars for dessert. But, the similarities were striking, even to the thin coffee that followed my rice. I drank 5 cups, I don’t usually like ‘gasy coffee, but because of the situation thin church coffee felt just right. Washing dishes was a group effort, as usual, but no industrial dishwasher, of course.

Tonight, I will help again to wash dishes after I finish with choir rehearsal. It is a blessing to spend time cooking here, and I am sure that when I return to Minnesota, I will arrive at the kitchen at Servant of Christ with my lamba ohany tied around my waist and wonder where the rice is.

Miandry (my host mom) starts the fire for the rice.