Pigor and Sunday lunch

Monday morning and back to "work" again....

Yesterday was our one day of rest - the hospital, in common with most government offices here, works a six day week which is more than just a bit of a nuisance as it severely restricts opportunities to see more of Flores. Travel on Flores is a major operation and to get to any of the other towns is usually a full day trip. For instance, Ende is about 150km away but is an eight hour trip by car. Anyway, yesterday started with a visit from two friends who work in the hospital and live in the dormitory building near our house - Hartadi is a nurse in the operating theatre and Kristo works in Cleaning Services. They arrived at 8am (this was a lie in on a Sunday morning after a late night on Saturday) with a large bunch of bananas and took over our kitchen to produce a huge tray of pisang goreng or PIGOR (remember the Indonesian predilection for contractions that I mentioned before ?) - fried bananas or banana fritters to you lot.

Ok, how many types of banana can you name ? You're probably thinking, well a banana is a banana is a banana, isn't it ? Well, it may be at home, but here there are plenty to choose from. This list is not exhaustive :

• Pisang susu - milk bananas, very small
• Pisang merah - red bananas, not very common but are available
• Pisang meja - table bananas
• Pisang brangah - "normal" bananas
• Pisang bugis - green bananas with three sides, fatter than other, used for pigor. Originally from South Sulawesi
• Pisang Ambon - from Ambon, not sure yet what they are like.

After feasting on our pigor, we headed off with Hartadi and Kristo to visit a village called Wololora,near Lella - about thirty minutes' from Maumere. This is where a friend of Hartadi's lives, and in true Indonesian style, it was considered quite normal for him to turn up for lunch and bring along a few friends.
We had a very pleasant few hours there, drinking coconut juice (freshly harvested by Kristo), chatting to the children of the extended family, taking plenty of photos and then we sat down for Sunday lunch.

The tables were set outside and all the men sit down and wait for the food to arrive - we had rice (of course), cooked papaya flowers, tofu, some small pieces of smoked fish, and a big plate of meat. You may not wish to know what this was, so I won't spell it out except to say that it was a meat that is not normally eaten where I come from and comes from an animal usually kept as a pet in Western society. The meat was ok, dark and quite strongly flavoured but with lots of bones. As well as the plate of meat, most meals also consist of a large bowl of soup or stock with plenty of big bits and lots of liquid to spoon over your rice. I was glad that I didn't delve too deeply into this bowl but my friend Peter fished out some distinctly recognisable parts, let's just say that they gave him paws for thought. Hmmmm, maybe vegetarians have the right idea after all...
After the food has been served to the men, drinks poured and refills of rice brought to the table, the women all disappeared inside the house to sit on the floor and have their own lunch with the children.

There are a few things that always strike me about visiting these rural village communities : the first is that the whole family lives cheek by jowl and stays together - yesterday there were three generations of thirty to forty people all living in very close proximity to each other. The next is the willingness to share - it is an honour rather than an inconvenience to have guests visit and to have foreign guests is a special treat. Some of the smaller children were a little overwhelmed by the sight of their first bulehs (palefaces) and were very nervous about coming too close - one little girl kept sneaking up behind me and stroking my hand to see if my white skin felt different from her dark one !