Categories: uncategorized
Date: 08 June 2006 14:30:52
As has been chronicled before I am a member of a Church whose congregation is made up mainly of those of the Pacific Islander persuasion. Two of the Church have become Chaplains in the Local High Schools and whilst doing the role one is also teaching Pacific Island culture as a class. Last week saw the Chaplains take about 30-40 students out to our Pastors place for some cultural "education". The kids would help prepare a UMU and then eat of it's bounty. A UMU is the traditional way of cooking above the ground like a hangi but way different.
Seeing I had never seen how this was done and I had the day off I accepted the invitation. It was fun to see the kids learn their own culture or bits of a new culture. The menu included taro, taro leaf with coconut milk (my fav but too many and you get a funny tummy), potato, pumpkin, chicken and pig. It all had to be cleaned and peeled and then wrapped in alfoil. In the Islands they use various leaves to wrap the food in for cooking but in the Land of Chops they don't worry about the leaves and go straight to the alfoil.
A fire was built with several large logs boxing it all in together and then once the fire was going stones were placed on and thenas the fire died down, the embers were taken out the logs picked up and moved whilst half a light!! The stones were flattened out and then layers of food placed on with more stones and alfoil in between. This was all topped with several layers of newspaper. Once again in the Islands they would use leaves. After an hour and a half it was time to pull it all out and serve. Each student and and teacher were given a generous portion and some did as tradition dictates went back for seconds. I had the pleasure of being responsible ofr placing chunks of rast pork on kids plates. I will admit I took pleasure in placing these large chunks on the small girls plates. One of the rules was you had to eat everythign you were given or give it someone else to eat.
At the end pastor and his wife presented the students with sarongs called sulu's in Fiji. My pastor is Samoan and his wife is a Kiwi (anglo saxon) and their son is one of the Chaplains. It was funny at the end when I was introduced to one of the student teachers who was in attendance who thought that I was actually the Chaplains brother!! I guess we must be hanging out together way too much for someone to think that we could possibly be brothers.
Till Next Time We Are All Brothers Aren't We Comrade?,
Chops