Sunday, June 18, 2017
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
BRUNEI
READ
One of the
biggest challenges in attempting to read a book from every country is finding
books that have been translated into English. When I made my preliminary list
of books for this blog, I was able to find only a couple of novels available in English written by
authors from Brunei, and neither book actually seemed to relate to that country.
Finally, I learned about Written in Black, by K. H. Lim, which is set in Brunei and centers around a
Bruneian-Chinese family.
The book’s
protagonist is ten-year-old Jonathan, who is reading Huckleberry Finn when he receives a phone call from his uncle
telling him that his grandfather has died. That begins a series of
life-changing events for young Jonathan, as his family’s problems cause him to
do things he would never have attempted otherwise. We learn that his mother left
the family six months ago, ostensibly for health reasons, and Jonathan is
desperate to talk to her. Somehow, she always manages to call when he’s not
home. His older brother also left home, seemingly the action of a rebellious
teenager. Jonathan’s father, then, is left to raise Jonathan, his older sister,
and younger brother.
They leave
their home for a few days to stay with Jonathan’s uncle in order to perform the
customary funeral rites for Jonathan’s grandfather. While talking with his
cousin, Jonathan learns that his older brother Michael has been in frequent
contact with their mother, which leads to Jonathan’s decision to sneak away and
find Michael. What follows is misadventure upon misadventure, or as Jonathan
later describes it, “…so far, I’d survived a ride in a coffin, a cursed house,
a horde of bats, a pack of wild dogs, and a gang of lunatics.”
While
Jonathan is no Huck Finn, and the author of Written in Black is no Mark Twain, this was a fun story about a boy who decided to
take matters into his own hands. The plot’s twists and turns kept me interested
all the way to the end of the book.
COOK
No particular Bruneian dish caught my eye when reading Written in Black. However, there were several descriptions of the lush fruit trees and extensive vegetable garden at Jonathan’s uncle’s house. In particular, there are two leafy mango trees that provide shade for the cage of Pak Tut, a nearly five-foot-long monitor lizard. When I googled Bruneian recipes, I found one for mangoes with sticky rice, which I decided to make in honor of Pak Tut.
The recipe I
used was on a website called Asian Recipe, and was very easy to make, something
I really appreciated after some of the more difficult recipes I’ve attempted
for previous blog posts. I wasn’t able to find coconut cream at any
of my grocery stores, so just used coconut milk instead. The rice didn’t turn
out to be very sticky, but this was still a delicious and refreshing dessert.
GIVE
I spent a
long time searching online for an organization in Brunei with a mechanism for
online donations, but I didn’t have any luck. In particular, I had hoped to
donate to the Brunei Darussalam AIDS Council, “a non-profit, community-based organisation
tackling the HIV & AIDS situation in Brunei Darussalam,” but couldn’t figure
out an easy way to get money to them. So at this point, I have not made a
donation to an organization in Brunei, but if I find a way to do that in the
future, I’ll update this page with that information.
NEXT STOP: BULGARIA
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