MAURITIUS

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If you’re like me, you probably know very little about the Republic of Mauritius, an island nation located in the Indian Ocean. During the past several centuries, it was controlled at various times by the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, and the British before finally gaining its independence in 1968. The Last Brother, written by Nathacha Appanah and translated by Geoffrey Strachan, describes a period during World War II, when Mauritius was under the rule of the British.

The book’s narrator is Raj, who is about seventy years old. He is a widower with a grown son. Raj asks his son to drive him to a nearby village so he can visit the cemetery. The grave he visits bears this inscription on the headstone: “David Stein 1935 – 1945.” Raj cleans the headstone and leaves a little red box containing a Star of David on the grave.

Raj recounts his childhood in the town of Mapou, where the sugar cane factory is the dominant presence. His father, a drunken brute, works in the sugar cane fields and his beloved mother works in the home of one of the factory’s bosses. Raj has an older brother, Anil, and a younger brother, Vinod, and the three boys are very close. A sudden and devastating storm brings great tragedy to the family, resulting in a move to the town of Beau-Bassin. There, Raj’s father takes a job as a prison guard.

Raj takes lunch to his father at the prison every day, and then hides in the bushes to see what goes on there. He is shocked to see a line of white people – men, women, and children – “…very thin, dragging their feet in silence, slowly following the dirt footpath, then spreading out across the compound.” A young boy about the same age as Raj moves away from the group and begins walking in the direction where Raj is hiding. The boy sees Raj too, and that is the beginning of their friendship.

Sometime later, Raj’s father beats him so badly that he must be cared for in the prison hospital, and the friendship between Raj and the boy – David – blossoms. David is in the hospital because he has malaria. The boys manage to sneak out of the hospital at night and play on the prison grounds, conversing as best they can in French, since neither speaks the language of the other. Raj learns that David is from Prague, both of his parents are dead, and he and the other people in the prison are Jews waiting for a ship to come and take them to Eretz – Israel.

Raj knows nothing of World War II, and it isn’t until much later in his life that he learns the sad story of the Jews who had managed to escape from Europe and make their way to Palestine, only to be turned away by the British and interned at the Beau-Bassin prison.

The Last Brother is a heartbreaking story, made even more poignant by the narrator’s regrets and grief, still fresh sixty years after he first met David. I will not soon forget these characters and their touching story.

COOK

After the trouble I had finding a dish to make for my post about Mauritania, Mauritius was a huge relief. According to Wikipedia, “Mauritian cuisine is a blend of African, Chinese, European (mostly French) and Indian influences in the history of Mauritius.” I found so many vegan or veganizable Mauritian recipes that it was hard to decide which one to attempt. I finally chose the Mushroom, Corn, and Cashew Curry recipe on the Mauritian Cuisine website.

This recipe was easy to make, and, aside from the fact that it was a little on the bland side, I was happy with the way it turned out. There was one ingredient – asafetida – that I didn’t have in my spice cupboard, but I was able to find it at an Indian market not too far from my house.

GIVE

A little over two years ago, the Japanese carrier MV Wakashio ran aground on a coral reef off the coast of Mauritius and began leaking oil. Ile aux Aigrettes, a nature reserve managed by the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation, was adversely impacted by the 800 tons of oil that spilled into its lagoon.

I found a project on the GlobalGiving website that allowed me to donate to the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation to help them monitor “the populations of plants, birds, reptiles and insects” that might have been affected by this spill. According to the project description: “The project will restore the ecosystem of Ile aux Aigrettes, an island nature reserve, home to endangered endemic plants and animals. Every year the islet welcomes 4,000 school children on a Learning with Nature tour, and another 15,000 tourists and visitors, making it a well sought after, unique and true ecotour experience. Maintaining such plant and animal populations also protects these species from extinction.”

More information about this project is available at Wakashio Recovery Action Plan - GlobalGiving.

NEXT STOP: MEXICO

MAURITANIA

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The Desert and the Drum, written by Mbarek Ould Beyrouk and translated by Rachael McGill, tells the sad story of Rayhana, a Bedouin teenager who lives with her mother and their tribe in a camp in the desert. Her father left the family when she was six years old, angry because of his wife’s deference in all things to her brother, the chief.

Rayhana’s life is happy enough, and she has a circle of friends with whom she spends her free time. One day, an itinerant mining crew sets up camp near Rayhana’s tribe. The Bedouins are uneasy about having them nearby, and the chief tells them not to go near the miners. According to Rayhana, “We closed our eyes to them because, deep down, we were ashamed we had allowed their presence to be imposed on us, ashamed of our failure to understand it, to confidently accept or reject it.”

This seems very much like the way Rayhana would feel later, when one of the miners, Yahya, starts spending time with Rayhana and her friends and begins a flirtation with Rayhana. She enjoys the attention, but is horrified when he sneaks into her tent at night while her mother sleeps nearby. She is afraid to say anything, since she knows that she will be blamed, and ends up quietly letting him do as he pleases. One day, the mining crew leaves without a word, and Yahya disappears from Rayhana’s life.

He has left her pregnant, a fact that enrages her mother when she finds out. Her mother ensures that no one else in their tribe finds out by sequestering Rayhana far away until after she has given birth. Rayhana bonds with her baby boy, Marvoud, but then her mother gives him to someone else to raise. She and Rayhana go back to their tribe, and when Rayhana tries to find her baby later, she discovers that her mother has taken him somewhere else. In her anger, Rayhana steals her tribe’s sacred drum and heads off into the desert alone in search of her son.

Rayhana’s travels take her first to the town of Atar, and later to the capital city, Nouakchott. In both places, life is very different from her desert existence with her tribe. For most of the book, it feels as though everything is taking place in the distant past, so it’s a shock when cars and cellphones suddenly make an appearance. Rayhana adjusts the best she can, but she also has to cope with the knowledge that members of her tribe are looking for her and the tribal drum, and that they won’t stop until they find her.

Throughout The Desert and the Drum, I hoped for a happy ending for Rayhana, as her journey took her from carefree young girl, to the plaything of an unscrupulous man, to devoted mother, and finally to a fugitive from her tribe because of the stolen drum. As she says toward the end of the book, “Their pain was nothing to mine. They’d lost a drum; an object was no longer in its proper place. I had a crater in my soul. Only reunion with my child would fill the void.”

COOK

It was tough to find a recipe for a Mauritanian dish that I could veganize. Beignets are mentioned in several places throughout The Desert and the Drum, but not the Café Du Monde powdered sugar kind that we’re used to. The Mauritanian beignets are served with a spicy sauce made with “onion, garlic, tomato puree, pepper and salt,” but I couldn’t find a recipe for them online. Apparently camel and goat are staples of the Mauritanian diet, but as far as I know, no one is making vegan versions of those meats yet (although I saw a vegan lamb burger on the menu at a local restaurant recently). Finally, I found a recipe for Coconut Pepper Steak on the “What’s Cooking in your World?” blog, and decided I could veganize that.

I took a lot of liberties with this recipe. For the skirt steak, I substituted Gardein b’ef tips, and I used vegetable bouillon instead of beef bouillon. I couldn’t conceive of any way to deconstruct a coconut that didn’t involve hurting myself, so I bought a carton of coconut water and a package of Trader Joe’s dried, lightly-sweetened coconut strips, then rinsed off the top layer of sugar. And I couldn’t find corn flour, so I used coconut flour to thicken the sauce, since coconut was already part of the recipe anyhow. When I was done, I had a tasty enough dish, albeit a little too spicy, but I’m sure it bore no resemblance to anything that’s ever been eaten in Mauritania. Oh, well… 

GIVE

Although Mauritania faces severe consequences due to climate change, I couldn’t find a way to donate to any organization addressing that problem. GlobalGiving listed only one Mauritanian project on their website, but it was a good one – helping to educate 120 girls.

According to the project description, only 42 percent of females in Mauritania are literate. “Girls are restricted to chores inside the home as ‘house servants.’ This prevents them from attending school and developing the skills they need to succeed in life and understand their rights.” This program will provide a “dance program, which develops 7 cognitive & life skills – such as memorization, discipline, creativity – needed for success in school and life. The girls will receive 3 additional services to change their lives: sponsorship in formal education, psychosocial counseling, and nutritional support, enabling the girls to develop confidence, academic readiness, & the sustained ability to make positive life decisions”

More information about this project is available at: Educate 120 Girls in Mauritania - GlobalGiving.

 

NEXT STOP: MAURITIUS

MARSHALL ISLANDS

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I couldn’t find a book written by an author who was born in the Marshall Islands, so I got the next best thing: a book of stories told by Marshallese storytellers to a non-Marshallese writer. Marshall Islands Legends and Stories was collected and adapted by Daniel A. Kelin II, and illustrated by Marshallese artist Nashton T. Nashon.

According to Kelin, “It is not customary for storytellers in the Marshall Islands to share legends with just anyone. By custom the iroji [chiefs] own the legends, and the ones who are chosen to remember them can share them only when the iroji says so.” Kelin traveled from island to island meeting the local storytellers, and he shares short profiles of each of them in the book. These pieces include information about the recent history of the Marshall Islands, especially during the World War II years, when Japan was in control of the islands.

Several themes recur often in the stories collected in this book. There are many cautionary tales about not following the rules or customs, frequently ending in the death of the rule breaker or someone close to them. For example, there’s a story about an iroji who married two demon sisters and wanted to take them back to his island. Their parents told him that if he took their daughters with him, he must keep them beside him at all times. One day, he forgot and went fishing by himself. A storm blew him away and he was never seen again.

The importance of sharing is another popular theme, along with the need to stay on the good side of the iroji by bringing him gifts. In one story, a woman is struggling to find food for herself and her son. A man appears to her in a dream and tells her what she needs to do to find enough food every day. She does as he suggests, and suddenly has more than enough food. She tells her son that they must follow the custom of ejtōbtōb. “If you eat good food and don’t share with the others of the island, then you’ll always stay hungry. But first, we give some to the iroji.” 

Demons play a key role in many of the stories. One legend that I found interesting was the belief that if “a man went away before his pregnant wife gave birth, she’d become a mejenkwaad [demon wife] ready to devour her husband when he returned.” There are also several stories about Letao, the trickster, many of which include this ending: “Letao is now in America. That’s why the people there are so smart.”

The book is illustrated throughout by Nashton T. Nashon, who “consulted elders and researched traditional Marshallese history and culture to create the drawings and tattoo design.”

I enjoyed learning a little about the Marshall Islands through these stories and drawings, especially since I’d known nothing about the islands previously. 

COOK

The Marshallese dish I prepared for this blog post was so good that my husband Phil and I ate the whole thing before I even finished reading the book. It was Marshall Islands Macadamia Nut Pie, from a recipe I found on the allrecipes website. I took a couple of shortcuts – buying a frozen pie crust shell instead of making my own, and using So Delicious CocoWhip instead of trying to create a vegan coconut-flavored whipped cream substitute myself. The only thing I did to veganize the recipe was to replace the eggs with JUST Egg. The pie was delicious – very similar to pecan pie. 

GIVE

The Marshall Islands are expected to be severely impacted by climate change. According to an article on The Conversation website: “By 2035, the U.S. Geological Survey projects that some of the Marshall Islands will be submerged. Others will no longer have drinking water because their aquifers will be contaminated with saltwater. As a result, Marshallese would be forced to migrate away from their homelands.”

There was only one project for the Marshall Islands on the GlobalGiving website, but I was happy to see that it related to climate change. According to the project description: “The project will help disseminate information about the climate crisis to disadvantaged communities, which often do not have a strong infrastructure for climate change education, promote dialogue between climate activists and indigenous frontline communities, and empower youth, especially from indigenous communities and other marginalized communities, to take action.”

More information about this project is available at: Activating Frontline Communities - GlobalGiving.

 

NEXT STOP: MAURITANIA

MALTA

 

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The setting for Children Come by Ship, written by Oliver Friggieri and translated by Marina Lowell, is a small, unnamed village on an unnamed island. The book’s editor quotes the author in an afternote saying that “[t]he general surroundings evolved from my efforts to recreate, on a literary level, the small world of family life during the Fifties in the Balzunetta neighbourhood of Floriana, where I grew up and lived for many years.”

The village in Children Come by Ship is very traditional, a place where things are always done a certain way and a person’s or family’s honor trumps all other considerations. It is a place where the “powerful Northwest wind itself was not strong enough to blow away even one old idea and replace it with a new one.”

This rigidity is on display in the opening chapter as a young woman named Susanna appears late at night on the doorstep of the kindly local priest, Fr. Grebjel. Susanna’s parents have discovered that she is pregnant and they have banished her from their home. Having nowhere else to go, Susanna begs for help from Fr. Grejbel. He invites her in and hears her story – a love affair with a young man who abandoned her as soon as he found out she was pregnant. For her part, Susanna says she really didn’t expect to become pregnant, as she didn’t know what was involved in conceiving a child. She explains, “I had never learnt anything about these things. My mother used to tell me that children come by ship…”.

Fr. Grebjel is the most caring, least judgmental of priests, and he helps Susanna in any way he can throughout the book. He allows her to spend the night in his spare bedroom, attempts to reconcile Susanna and her parents, and finds her a job in a neighboring village. He believes in the power of love to overcome any obstacle, although Susanna frequently tells him that he is naïve and too good for this world.

There are times throughout this book when it seems that everything will turn out well for Susanna, and times when it’s clear that they will not. There are also times when it seems impossible that Fr. Grebjel will be able to continue to minister to people who are scandalized by his inability to be offended by the same things that offend them.

The book did not have the ending I wanted, but I was interested to learn that the author wrote a sequel, Let Fair Weather Bring Me Home. I don’t know whether I’ll read it or not – I’m not sure I could take the disappointment of another sad ending.

COOK

Food was rarely mentioned in Children Come by Ship, but that was just as well since I’d already decided what Maltese dish I was going to make. I found a recipe online for froga tat-tarja, which is basically a pasta omelet. I found a couple of recipes for a vegan version, but they were complicated and had way too many ingredients, so I found a non-vegan recipe on the International Cuisine website and made the necessary substitutions: JUST Egg replaced the egg, and vegan Parmesan replaced the dairy-based Parmesan.

It took a little experimentation to get this recipe just right. The original recipe called for two eggs, which would be six tablespoons of JUST Egg. That wasn’t nearly enough, so I kept adding more until the mixture had the desired consistency. By the time I was done, I had added the entire bottle of JUST Egg, but it was totally worth it. I loved this dish, and will definitely make it again.

GIVE

In keeping with my desire to make donations to projects or organizations focused on climate change, I was delighted to discover that Malta has its own Friends of the Earth nonprofit organization. Among other things, they have been active in opposing “development on Malta’s pristine beaches and countryside.”

According to their website, Friends of the Earth Malta “creates and participates in vibrant campaigns, raises awareness on a number of pertinent national and international issues, and mobilises people to participate in decision making processes.”

Their Facebook page states that Friends of the Earth Malta also “develops creative solutions based on sound knowledge and information and promotes alternatives to environmentally harmful behaviours. The organisation lobbies, mobilises and influences the policy community towards a more just and sustainable society.

 

NEXT STOP: MARSHALL ISLANDS

MALI

 

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The Fortunes of Wangrin, written by Amadou Hampaté Bâ and translated by Aina Pavolini Taylor, tells the story of a hustler and a swindler. As a child in French-controlled Mali in the late nineteenth century, Wangrin attends the so-called school for hostages, a French learning establishment where the goal was to wean African children away from their culture so they would identify instead with the French colonizers. Wangrin uses his education to become an interpreter to the local French Commandant.

Wangrin is never content with his current circumstances, whatever they may be. He begins his career as a teacher, but when he discovers that being the Commandant’s interpreter is a better job, he schemes to take the job from the current interpreter. He then builds a network of informers, and finds ways to enrich himself and those closest to him. And so goes his career. He takes every opportunity to move up the ladder, without regard for anyone who may be harmed by his upward mobility. This tendency earns him some powerful enemies.

His conniving ways often result in legal difficulties for him, but he somehow manages to come through relatively unscathed. He’s also very superstitious, relying heavily on patron-gods, marabouts, geomancers, and other mystics and holy men to look into his future and advise him on how to proceed. Sometimes this works in his favor, and sometimes it doesn’t, especially if he doesn’t do exactly as he’s told.

The Fortunes of Wangrin is also a book about colonialism, and the uneasy relationship between the colonizers and the colonized. When Wangrin first begins working as a teacher, the French Commandant tells him that “… it is our mission to bring happiness to the Black peoples, if need be against their own wishes.” Apparently they mean to do that by substituting the French way of doing things for the Malian way of doing things. Being the trickster that he is, Wangrin is usually able to find a way around the French administrators, although he is not always trusted.

The author, who also attended the school for hostages, based the character of Wangrin on a man he met when he was a child. He used many of the stories told to him by that man to form the basis for this book. As a historian and a folklorist, Bâ was uniquely qualified to turn these oral stories into written literature.

The Fortunes of Wangrin occupies an important role in African literature, both for its portrayal of French colonization and its respect for oral literature. As Bâ himself was fond of saying, “Whenever an old man dies, it is as though a library were burning down.” With The Fortunes of Wangrin, he managed to preserve one such library after an old man’s death.

COOK

The Fortunes of Wangrin didn’t provide me with any inspiration for a Malian culinary creation, so I did an Internet search to see what I could find. There were a few options, but I decided to try the one that sounded most unusual and unlike anything else I’ve cooked for this blog: plantain and coconut stew. The recipe was on the Together Women Rise website, and it was attributed to The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa, by Marcus Samuelson. The ingredient list didn’t mention chilies, but the instructions did, so I included one chopped jalapeño pepper.

Gotta say, this wasn’t one of my better culinary efforts. I’m not used to cooking with plantains, for starters, and the vinegar in the stew made it a little too sour. Maybe it will taste better tomorrow, after the flavors have melded, but I’m not holding out much hope.

GIVE

Mali is approximately two-thirds desert, and climate change has resulted in both extreme floods and devastating droughts. This makes it difficult for families to grow food, since they are never sure what the weather will bring, and some crops that grew well previously may not produce as much food now.

Climate change is especially hard on Malian women. According to Foune Coulibaly Wadidie, Minister for Advancement of Women, Children and Family of Mali, women “make up half of the country’s population of 20 million and contribute between 60 to 80 per cent of its food resources. However, climate change severely affects agricultural and related sectors, and economic constraints stemming from cultural norms mean that women’s livelihoods are dependent on the climate.”

I searched the projects at GlobalGiving to see if I could find one that might address this issue. I found a project organized by AGILE-International that would drill two wells for 186 women farmers in Mali. According to the description, this project provides “income-generation opportunities through agriculture, allows rural women to gain access to education, achieve economic autonomy, feed and shelter their families. AGILE will train women to drill wells, maintain them, and manage water resources.” More information about this project is available at: Drill 2 wells for 186 women farmers in Mali - GlobalGiving.

NEXT STOP: MALTA

MALDIVES

 

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In December of 2004, an earthquake off the coast of Indonesia caused a massive tsunami that devastated the coastal regions of several countries and killed more than 200,000 people. Fifty-seven islands in the Republic of Maldives experienced severe flooding, and 108 people on the islands were killed.

This tragedy appears to have been the basis for the plot of Ocean Hues, by Maldivian author Amyna. The author offered to send me a copy of this book when I wrote to her a few years ago to ask if she had been born in the Maldives. I had been planning to read her book, Foiled, but was delighted when she sent me Ocean Hues, so I decided to read it instead. 

The book opens with an introduction to a young couple, Hawwa and Hussein, who are living happily on an island in the Maldives with their five-year-old son Shuaib. Hawwa has not seen her parents, who live on an island a twenty-minute boat ride away, for more than a year because Hussein has been too busy with work to go with her. She persuades him to let her and Shuaib go for a week-long visit without him. They are very much in love and have never spent a night apart during their marriage, so the idea of being separated for a week is hard on both of them. Nevertheless, Hawwa and Shuaib embark on their short journey to visit Hawwa’s parents.

The first couple of days go well, with friends and family coming by to visit. But one morning, when Shuaib and his cousins are playing on the beach, a huge wall of water comes toward them. They can hear Hawwa’s voice pleading with the boys to come to her, but they are powerless to move.

The tsunami has also reached their home island. Hussein clings to a pillar to avoid being swept away, and watches as the water carries several items out the door. After the water subsides, he tries to call Hawwa, but there is no phone service. He finds an acquaintance who is willing to take him to the island where Hawwa and Shuaib are staying. When he reaches his in-laws’ house, he’s overjoyed to see that Shuaib is safe. His joy quickly turns to sorrow, however, when he learns that Hawwa is missing.

Meanwhile, a beautiful young woman has been found unconscious, floating in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Sri Lanka, by a group of men on a pleasure-fishing excursion. They rescue her and take her to a hospital, where it becomes apparent that she has amnesia.

The plot drew me in and kept me interested from beginning to end. Almost all of the characters were likeable and honorable, trying to do the right thing for everyone involved. The suspense came from the circumstances that kept the characters in the dark as they looked for answers following the chaos that nature wrought.

COOK

When Hawwa and Shuaib go to visit Hawwa’s parents, they have a lunch of the curries that Hawwa’s mother had cooked in anticipation of their arrival. I looked online for a Maldivian curry recipe and found one for tharukaaree riha, a vegetable curry, on the International Cuisine website. It’s different from other curries I’ve made because it doesn’t contain curry powder or any type of curry spice blend. Instead, the recipe calls for six curry leaves, which I found at a local Indian market. It also calls for pandan leaf, which I wasn’t able to find at all. I searched the Internet to see what I could substitute for the pandan leaf, and found several suggestions, most of which bore no similarities to the others. Since one of the suggestions was cilantro, which I had on hand, I just used that. The dish featured sweet potato, pumpkin (I used butternut squash instead), green beans, carrots, and coconut milk, and I really enjoyed the rich taste. I would definitely make this again.

GIVE

GlobalGiving, which is my go-to organization for international non-profit projects, didn’t have anything listed for the Maldives. So I did a little Google search and found the Maldives Whale Shark Research Programme, which “is a research-based conservation charity dedicated to studying the whale shark and fostering community-focused conservation initiatives in the Maldives and the greater Indian Ocean.”

According to their website: “…we seek to advance the field of whale shark knowledge and to advocate for sound conservation policy in the Maldives. By encouraging and valuing community and industry stakeholder participation, we are able to leverage the scientific research to safeguard the rich biodiversity and fragile marine ecosystems that are the basis for not only whale sharks, but also life, livelihood and culture in the Maldives.”

More information about this organization is available at Maldives Whale Shark Research Programme | Conservation through Research and Community Mobilisation.

 

NEXT STOP: MALI

MALAYSIA

 

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The Rice Mother, by Rani Manicka, is a sweeping family saga, beginning in the early twentieth century and continuing into the twenty-first century. It’s the story of Lakshmi, who was born in Ceylon in 1916, beloved daughter of a woman who had married badly and who tries to do better by Lakshmi. She arranges fourteen-year-old Lakshmi’s marriage to a thirty-seven-year-old Malayan widower with two children, whom she believes to be a man of wealth and position. After the wedding, the groom, Ayah, takes Lakshmi back to Malaysia with him and she never sees her mother again.

When Lakshmi arrives at Ayah’s home, she learns how badly her mother had been deceived about Ayah’s circumstances. Nevertheless, she takes on the challenge of setting up housekeeping and improving their situation. Over the next several years, she is often pregnant, giving birth to six children by the time she is nineteen. While the family is not rich, they manage well enough, and the children have a fairly happy childhood.

However, everything changes on December 13, 1941, when the Japanese invade Malaysia. Murder, rape, and theft by the Japanese occupiers is rampant, and Malaysian families go to great lengths to hide their daughters. Some, like Lakshmi’s daughter Anna, have their hair cut short and are dressed in boys' clothing to hide the fact that they are girls. Others, such as Lakshmi’s uncommonly beautiful daughter Mohini, are hidden completely from the outside world.

The Japanese occupation lasts for more than three years, but the psychological and physical damage caused by the occupation stays with Lakshmi and her family forever. Their stories are collected on tape much later by Lakshmi’s granddaughter Dimple, and the book’s chapters are narrated by various family members at Dimple’s prompting.

Lakshmi is a strong woman, whom her son Sevenese refers to at one point as the “Rice Mother.” He tells Dimple that she is “the keeper of dreams. Look carefully, and you will see, she sits on her wooden throne, holding all our hopes and dreams in her strong hands, big and small, yours and mine. The years will not diminish her.” Yet even a matriarch as fierce as Lakshmi is unable to prevent the fates that await her children and grandchildren. 

The Rice Mother held my attention from beginning to end, despite the tragedies faced by all the characters. What a wild ride it was!

COOK

Many of the specific dishes mentioned in The Rice Mother were from Ceylon, where Lakshmi had spent her childhood. A couple of Malaysian desserts that made their way into the book – coconut cookies and Nyonya cake – sounded delicious, but required ingredients I couldn’t get and appeared to be more complex than my cooking skills would allow. So I searched the Internet and found a recipe at VeggieDesserts.com for laksa, a spicy soup made with vegetable broth and coconut milk, to which rice noodles, snow peas, mung bean sprouts, and baby corn are added. It sounded like it should taste better than it actually did – it was a bit on the bland side. I used low-sodium vegetable broth, but I think a little salt would have improved the flavor immensely.

 

GIVE

One effect of climate change throughout the world has been the decline in healthy coral reefs. These reefs are needed to provide food to countless numbers of marine species, and their loss could threaten the entire ocean food chain. On the GlobalGiving website, I found a project that would help protect the coral reefs on the Malaysian islands of Tioman, Mantanani, and the Mersing group.

According to the project description: “Coral reefs provide food source and employment for millions around the world, especially coastal communities. They act as an important carbon sink, which helps in our fight against climate change. Despite being ecologically and economically important, coral reefs are under increasing threats from human pressures such as overfishing, marine litter, sewage pollution, unsustainable tourist numbers, and coastal development. They also face natural threats from climage change and global warming.”

This project will provide funding that Reef Check Malaysia will use to “track and monitor the health of coral reefs at over 220 sites around Malaysia. Equipped with reliable data, we will develop reef management and conservation plans according to site specific needs. Recently damaged coral reef sites can be rehabilitated. Coral reefs that are affected by pollution can be addressed by promoting environment-friendly tourism practices. We will also advocate for policy changes to reduce human impacts in marine park areas.”

More information about this project is available at Protect Coral Reefs in Malaysia - GlobalGiving.

NEXT STOP: MALDIVES