three bowls

At the end of the first East African Community Services adult Computer Literacy series, we had a potluck with the students, volunteers (of which I was one) and EACS staff.  It was to share food and watch a series of PowerPoint presentations that were the students’ final projects.  This event is the only recorded time in human history that people have actually been eager to watch a PowerPoint presentation.

I was too harried to bring a camera, but let’s face it: I would have been too shy to take pictures anyway, what with the fit of picture-taking-shyness I’ve had in recent years.

So how else can I communicate what the evening was like?  Can I give you a sense of the evening thru…words?  Like, pictures created in your mind from my words, maybe?  A word picture, if you will? Of course.  I mean, people love interesting writing.

You know what I love?  Interesting nouns.  My friend, the President of the Debate Club, and I have a similar degree, if different styles, of ADD.  One of the ways this manifests itself is that our conversations with each other tend to feature a lot of interesting nouns.  If we don’t have a tale featuring flamboyant gay vampiric bosses getting into near-fistfights outside Manhattan clubs, or the discovery - while on a conference call with Padma Lakshmi - that one’s cat has helpfully deposited his latest freshly-killed rat IN a garbage can, we just don’t feel like we’re really…doing our conversational duty, you know what I mean? 

When we get on the phone and have a bunch of regular nouns to say to one another, it is, quite frankly, a little awkward.  Recently, the Prez started telling me about her husband’s taste in Thai food or something like that and cut herself off with impatience saying, “I’m not going to tell one of those wife stories!”

Anyway, for both of us, though, it’s less of a judgment call than it is what makes our brains hum along happily.

And so, truth be told, that is the main reason why I am one of those card-carrying multi-culti types.  Multiculturalism and diversity are all bound up with the concept of political correctness, which, I know, some people are suspicious of.  (I have always been confused by the furor over being PC. I always thought that not calling people things they don’t want to be called was actually referred to by the word "manners." Then again I know what it means to receive a calling card with the top left corner folded, so I s’pose I am a bit out-of-date with some things, she said primly, picking lint off her white glove.)

I like the idea of being tolerant and inclusive, but the real reason I am a fan of multiculturalism is that it comes with a whole big boatload of new (to me) and interesting nouns.  In usual sensualist fashion, it’s the pleasure I get from it.  All those little pings of new information.  Brain cat nip.

So as you can imagine, my brain was bathed in drooly joy at this event, which not only was attended by a lot of people from a lot of places, but also had those PowerPoint presentations, which featured information about places and things the students were curious about (or were directed to be curious about by Ahmed, the program’s charming and goal-oriented young leader).

It did get off to a bit of a disappointing start, as the student I’d worked with the closest, Sadia, didn’t show up, and I’d wanted her to taste my unattractive but still tasty version of these Candy Bar Cupcakes by Elizabeth Falkner from Demolition Desserts.  I’d made them as Sadia had seemed most excited by the idea of cake when she and I had talked about the potluck.  The cupcakes are supposed to look like this:

Mine did not. 

Mine wound up deflated and flat, and I had trouble prying them out of the mini-muffin tin.  They looked more like muffin tops, only unintentionally.   Then my frosting was so thick it was impossible to spread, so the muffin tops then had an unappealing blob of matte chocolate on top.

However, they did taste good.  Ahmed noted he was a little skeptical about them, but tried them anyway, because, he said, “I have to try everything,” and then regretted not taking more before the children who were also there descended on them.  Children can be both highly forgiving of and greedy about failed desserts.  

My other students, Halima, was there, with her completely adorable children.  Since both she and Sadia had worked on our presentation, it was nice that at least one of them got to see the finished product.  Ours was on henna, which was Ahmed’s suggestion.

Sadia always had her fingernails dyed a dark orange, and so as she and I tried to think of a topic, he pointed to them and said, why not henna?  That was the start of my learning; I’d seen henna hand designs, but despite watching her hands all series long as she learned her way across the keyboard and with the mouse, I’d never thought to wonder what was on her nails. 

I also always thought of it as an Indian cultural thing, and didn’t realize that the North and East African world used it too.  In our image searching, Salima and I also found some Western style henna, and she was tickled when she realized the design in that one was made up of words.

(Left to Right - Indian, African and Western)

There were other students there, too, also presenting.  There was Marjorie, who’s originally from Trinidad, which, she said with humor, often inspires people to ask where in Africa it is.  She also lived in Yorkshire in the UK for a while, but never made it to London.  She brought rice and peas and worried it wasn’t as tasty as it could be, but it was delicious.  She said her mom will make it with exactly the same ingredients, but it doesn’t taste the same when she makes it herself.  We both noted how challenging it is to keep up your cooking skills when you are living alone.

Marjorie did a presentation on Ireland, a subject that I think Ahmed assigned to her mainly because he seems to be very curious about the country himself.  (He assigned it to another, absent, student too.)  He stopped at a few points in the presentation to clarify and elaborate on some interesting points they’d learned through their research. He was especially interested in the IRA and Guinness Book of World Records. We had two natural redheads in the room – one volunteer and Melody, the volunteer wrangler – so as you can imagine, we had good odds that at least one of them could help fill in some Irish info for the questions Ahmed had.

Julia was there, a new tutor I’d never met before.  She is here in Seattle working as an au pair, and came to volunteer because she found herself with extra time, which I found heartening in the way I always find young people’s generosity or selflessness.  I was so self-centered at their age...  She’s from Quebec City and looked very much like Bjork.  I knew her accent was French, but her resemblance to the singer kept making her a Scandinavian in my head.

Another student, Alex, is from Ethiopia, and so of course, I asked him to translate the name of the Ethiopian song I’m obsessed with (the very one featured in my recent post on Ethiopian food).  He did a presentation on Nairobi in partnership with another student who was from there.

Now, I was busy feeling smug talking to Marjorie, because I know Trinidad is in the West Indies but I swear to god all this time I think I thought Nairobi was a country, so that was humbling.  Alex included this picture of Nairobi, and I also realized that while I had not previously had a mental image of it, had I ever bothered to form one, it wouldn’t have looked like this.

When the below photo came up in the presentation, Alex’s tutor Bryson included the tidbit that the absent student said he never saw giraffes on the streets of Nairobi.  I'd only just begun to romanticize Nairobi, and already, a disappointing little reality check.

Another gentleman was there, whose name is escaping me, a student from a different class.  He brought homemade Ethiopian food, a delicious Wot, spiced vegetables and rolls of injera.  I tried grilling him for cooking tips, but it turns out it was his wife’s cooking. It was so delicious: the Wot had a powerful kick, just to the edge of too much without going over, the way I like it.  His wife use to cater, he told me, but now she works with children and it’s a little bit easier on her physically, he said.

In addition to the ugly cupcakes, I also brought some bubbly water and some lemon-ginger syrup to make a nonalcoholic cocktail (since the majority of the folks who come to EACS are Muslim, alcohol was not a good option for the evening).  One of the kids in attendance picked up the squeeze bottle of syrup and asked what it was for.  I explained, “It’s to make a soda.”  She looked at me quizzically for a moment, then explained, “Soda is my name.”

These kids, btw, and their fashion. The girls wear the headscarves and skirts their religion requires, but then top it off with a fleece hoodie.  The way they mix and match patterns and layers…it’s a fashion lesson, I’ll tell you.  I wonder if you have to grow up in a culture influenced by the horror vacui style of art to be able to pull of a hodge-podge and have it look fabulous and not a mess.  Because I would look a mess.

Ahmed, the leader of the program, (who said he thinks he gets the most out of the Computer Literacy Program, even more than the students) brought food too.  He’s a young bachelor guy, but that hasn’t kept him from trying to learn about cooking.  He brought a dish of potatoes with peppers that he said he learned on a “Sunday cooking show with Martha Stewart.  Just five ingredients!” 

He is Somali, and I told him that I had considered and abandoned the idea of making two Somali recipes I’d found online, the Maraq Bilaash (Cherry Tomato Sauce) and Muufo Baraawe (Somali Bread). 

He thought the sauce sounded authentic, but was unsure about my description of the bread, saying it didn't sound like anything he was familiar with. 

He said that Somali cuisine was hard to make without spending a lot of time on it because "it uses a lot of broth" which takes a long time to make.  (I know, right!!)  He also said the stock called for a lot of special ingredients, like bay leaf, and then asked me if I’d ever used that herb. 

Had I?  I told him I’d made bay ice cream, he was once again, skeptical.  However, I can tell, Ahmed likes himself some interesting nouns too.  He might recoil at the theoretical idea of bay ice cream, but I know he would eat it were it in front of him, because, as he’d already told me, “I have to try everything.”

Click links to go to photo sources: Indian henna pic, African henna pic, Western henna pic, Nairobi skyline, Giraffe pic.