DOMINICA

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This blog post is about Dominica, a small island in the Caribbean, not to be confused with the Dominican Republic, which shares a larger island in the Caribbean with the country of Haiti. Dominica was a European colony, first governed by France and then by Great Britain, from the late 1600s until 1978, when it gained its independence.

The book I read for this post, The Orchid House, was written by Phyllis Shand Allfrey, whose family had been among the earliest colonizers of Dominica. It’s a semiautobiographical novel about a British family that has lived on the island for generations. The father (The Master) in The Orchid House has returned from World War II with what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. There are three sisters who have all moved away from the island, with the middle sister, Joan, being the one who most closely resembles the author. And there is the sisters’ old nurse, a black woman named Lally, which was also the name of the author’s nurse when she was growing up.

Lally is the narrator of the book, which opens with the mother of the three sisters (Madam) visiting Lally in the one-room house where she has lived since she retired from taking care of the sisters. They share some wine and Madam tells Lally that the sisters are all coming for a visit. Two of the sisters, Stella and Joan, each have a small child who will be coming with them, and Madam asks Lally to come out of retirement to take care of the children while they’re on the island. Lally is fiercely loyal to the family, and we see both their good and bad character traits through her loving eyes.

Both Stella and Joan married men without much money, and the family’s economic situation on the island has deteriorated over the years. The only thing keeping the family afloat is the fact that the youngest of the three sisters, Natalie, married a rich man who died not too long after the wedding. The biggest crisis facing the family is the narcotic cigarettes that the Master has smoked ever since he returned from the war. The rest of the family both hates and fears the man, Mr. Lilipoulala, who sails to the island periodically to bring him his supply of these drugs.

There is also a friend from their childhood, Andrew, who complicates the sisters’ return home. He has developed a life-threatening illness, which means he rarely leaves the house. He lives with and is supported by Cornélie, who is a cousin of the sisters, being the daughter of their womanizing uncle and a black seamstress, who were never married. Each of the sisters spends time with Andrew upon their return to the island, causing a great deal of consternation for Cornélie.

One of the more interesting aspects of this book, from my point of view, is the introduction written by Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, professor of Hispanic studies at Vassar College. This introduction helped provide a context for the novel itself by giving the reader a look into the life of the book’s author. Much like the character of Joan in The Orchid House, Allfrey was a social activist committed to improving the lives of people on the lower end of the economic ladder. While Joan tried to organize the jobless people on the island to fight for unemployment benefits in the novel, Allfrey founded the Dominica Labour Party and became the Minister of Labour and Social Affairs in real life.

All in all, this short novel kept me entertained and provided a unique perspective on a country about which I knew nothing before I embarked on this project.

COOK

The author didn’t spend much time talking about food in this book, so I went to the Internet to find a suitable recipe from Dominica. I found one that featured bananas, which were mentioned during a particularly fateful night in the novel’s plot. A storm was pounding the island, and Lally observed that “[m]eanwhile the wind had come up, and I thought me of how next day the banana fields would look like a battlefield of wounded soldiers.”

The recipe I made is for sunny days, not stormy ones. These frozen carob bananas turned out to be one of the best things I’ve made since I started this blog, and they will be a perfect treat to make again during the scorching Sacramento summer. I found the recipe on a website called Caribbean Choice. I couldn’t find the raw carob powder the recipe called for, but I found roasted carob powder, which worked just fine. They were super-easy to make, and I highly recommend them!

GIVE

There are no projects for Dominica currently listed on GlobalGiving’s website, but it wasn’t hard to find a worthy cause to support on the Internet. Dominica was devastated by Hurricane Maria last September and is still trying to recover. The Dominica Hurricane Relief Fund is collecting donations “to support the people of Dominica with basic materials such as temporary roofing, blankets, and non-perishable food through aid relief. Our goal is alleviating the plight Dominicans who have been left with nothing.” More information about the Dominica Hurricane Relief Fund can be found at https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/dominica-hurricanerelief?ref=pageredirect.

NEXT STOP: DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

DJIBOUTI

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Quick – tell me everything you know about Djibouti! You may be better informed than I am, but about the only thing I knew for sure before this week’s reading was that Djibouti is in Africa. One thing I love about this project, though, is that it’s filling in so many holes in my knowledge base. Reading Abdourahman A. Waberi’s Passage of Tears taught me about this tiny country’s history and culture, as well as its strategic importance to countries in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and even to the United States, which set up a military base in Djibouti in 2001.

Djibouti, a country about the size of Vermont, is on the east coast of the African continent, bordered by Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia. What surprised me, however, when looking at the map, was Djibouti’s close proximity to the Middle Eastern country of Yemen, which is a scant eighteen miles away. The two countries are separated by a strait called the Bab-el-Mandeb (“Gate of Tears”). The distance is so small that plans have been discussed to build a bridge connecting Djibouti and Yemen.

The protagonist in Passage of Tears, Djib (short for Djibril), was born and raised in Djibouti, but left behind his parents and twin brother Djamal fifteen years ago to move to Montreal, Canada. He works for an economic intelligence firm and is back in Djibouti to analyze the country for a company interested in its uranium potential. According to Djib, “My mission consists in feeling out the temperature on the ground, making sure the country is secure, the situation stable and the terrorists under control.” He feels confident in his ability to put together the necessary reports, but the longer he’s in Djibouti, the more the country seems to resurrect old memories and fears.

Woven in between the chapters narrated by Djib are the writings of a condemned inmate in a nearby prison. This inmate is the scribe for a man he refers to as his venerable Master, and they are both facing execution because of their involvement with an Islamic terrorist organization called the New Way. The inmate knows everything about Djib’s movements from the moment he arrives in Djibouti, and he is extremely critical of Djib’s life in the Western world. His writings become increasingly ominous the longer Djib remains in Djibouti.

In addition to the book’s obvious themes, such as the clashes between cultures and the difficulty in going home after a long absence, Passage of Tears invokes the work of German Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin throughout. Djib appreciates the work of Benjamin because of “his encyclopedic mind, his intuitive method and, above all, by his conception of history, which was not theoretical or arid in the least.” The condemned inmate discovers the story of Benjamin, who spent years on the run from the Nazis before finally committing suicide, in an old account left behind by a previous inmate. It takes on a special meaning for him: “What is this book if not a homage to the human spirit and its immense aura?”

Passage of Tears held my interest and taught me things I never knew. What more can one ask of a book?

COOK

There wasn’t much mention of food in Passage of Tears. In one recollection from his childhood, Djib talks of eating “a paper cone full of peanuts or hot spicy fritters.” I did an Internet search for recipes from Djibouti and found one for fritters, although not the hot spicy variety. The recipe, from InternationalCuisine.com, was for banana fritters. It seemed like they would be simple enough to make, with only a few ingredients and a minimum of preparation and cooking time required. The picture that accompanied the recipe showed something that looked like a stack of pancakes, but that’s not how my fritters turned out. Mine were kind of gooey on the inside, and if I were to make this recipe again, I’d try putting all the ingredients in the blender to make a smoother fritter. You win some, you lose some.

GIVE

GlobalGiving.com doesn’t have any projects in Djibouti, so I had to search the Internet for another option. It wasn’t easy because, even though many organizations have projects in Djibouti, they are generally operating throughout Africa and it’s not possible to designate my donation specifically for Djibouti. I finally found a GoFundMe project to raise funds for a school serving 150 homeless children in Djibouti. More information about this project can be found at https://www.gofundme.com/supporteducationforall.

NEXT STOP: DOMINICA

DENMARK

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I love thrillers and suspense novels, but somehow, I managed to miss Peter Høeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow when it was an international bestseller back in the 1990s. When I was looking for a book to read from Denmark for this project, it seemed like the perfect choice.

Smilla Jasperson is a scientist who is originally from Greenland, but is living in Copenhagen. In the same apartment building lives a young boy, Isaiah, who is also from Greenland, and his alcoholic mother. Smilla’s not really into children, but since Isaiah’s mother is rarely in any condition to care for him, Smilla ends up spending more and more time with him. When she comes home one day and discovers that he has fallen off the roof and is lying dead in the snow, she doesn’t believe it was an accident. Feeling that she owes it to Isaiah, she undertakes her own investigation to figure out why he was on the roof and what caused him to fall off.

Ice and snow play a major role in the plot, and these are elements Smilla has a sixth sense about, not merely because of her scientific studies about glaciers and seawater ice, but because of her childhood experiences in Greenland with her mother, an Inuit. She also has an uncanny gift for navigation. Smilla will have to call upon all of her knowledge and skills as she seeks the truth about Isaiah’s death. At times, I found the scientific discussions to be tedious, but the plot and the characters kept me interested in spite of those technical interludes.

I was especially interested to learn about the relationship between Denmark and its former colony, Greenland. Greenlanders who live in Denmark are mostly Inuit people, and they are very different in both appearance and culture, from the Danes. Friction resulting from these differences figures into the plot of Smilla’s Sense of Snow, in large part because Smilla herself is both Inuit and Danish.

This was a very satisfying book, with both a gripping plot and a wealth of information about things I hadn’t known before, and I’d be interested in reading more works by this author.

COOK

I had hoped to make a type of Danish cookie called spekulaas for this blog post, since a woman that Smilla interviews about Isaiah’s disappearance is baking them during Smilla’s visit. I found a recipe for a vegan version, but the recipe’s creator seemed to have left out some information I needed. Instead, I found a recipe for vegan Danish butter cookies on a blog called Wallflower Kitchen, and boy, are they good! A few notes about the recipe:

1.       The measurements are in grams, so I converted them to cups: 7/8 cup vegan butter; 1 cup   

        powdered sugar plus a little bit; and 2-1/2 cups flour.

2.       The temperature in the recipe is given in degrees centigrade. For Fahrenheit, the correct  

        temperature is 350 degrees.

3.       Corn flour, in this recipe, refers to cornstarch.

4.       I didn’t have a cookie press, so I just rolled out the dough and used cookie cutters.

I am never making these cookies again because they are so good that I can’t seem to stop stuffing them in my mouth. If you decide to make them, consider yourself warned!

GIVE

GlobalGiving had only one project listed for Denmark, but it turned out to be the perfect one to go with the book I read for this post. Blue Cross Denmark offers a program that provides support to the children of alcoholics, such as little Isaiah in Smilla’s Sense of Snow. According to the project description, “[o]ne in ten Danish children is negatively affected by parental alcohol consumption, and at least 122,000 Danish children grow up in families with outright abuse.” Two community centers operated by Blue Cross Denmark provide children with the opportunity to spend their free time in a safe environment, where they can receive counseling or talk with other children who are experiencing similar situations. More information about this project is available at https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/support-for-children-of-alcoholics-in-denmark/.

NEXT STOP: DJIBOUTI